French Government Bans Term 'E-Mail'

Licensed2Hack writes "'Goodbye "e-mail," the French government says, and hello "courriel" -- the term that linguistically sensitive France is now using to refer to electronic mail in official documents.' . Curriel? 'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!" Especially if you don't actually speak french ;)

Comments

if the french had created e-mail...

[sydlexic]

we would now be calling it 'freedom mail'. while I think the french culture police are a bit over the top, the same can be said for a lot of people on capitol hill.

Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think it's perfectly legitimate for a language to have new words for new technologies/items and use words proper to the language rather than import words from other languages. That's what it is to be living language."

No, its not normal. Normally, lanaguages evolve by their speakers, not by a government based commission.

Still more proof that french culture is dead.

Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent?

[grondu]

For the last six years I have been living two miles from Quebec and one thing I notice is that from the french people's POV, no matter what country you are from, either your "one of us" (French) or "one of them" (non-French).

For the last 51 years I have been living in the USA and one thing I notice is that from the American people's POV, no matter what country you are from, either your "one of us" (American) or "one of them" (non-American).

Word importing

[Cappy Red]

English is probably more open to importing words from other languages because England was invaded several times in the middle ages(Normans, Vikings), and is populated with people originally from an area in northern Germany. Thus, English gets its Germanic roots, and large numbers of words from(or through) French and more German(Vikings spoke... something. Norse variant of German is as far as I got on short notice).

This story is just goofy, though. "Mail" comes into English from French. "Courrier" came into French from Italian.(Electronic and variants come directly from Latin)

Languages survive through the adoption of new words, whether they be homegrown or imported. Attaching more value for one method over the other is just silly.

(More info on borrowed words in English. French and Norse invasions mentioned a few paragraphs from the bottom of the page.)


*honk*

Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent?

[Sanity]

I think it's perfectly legitimate for a language to have new words for new technologies/items and use words proper to the language rather than import words from other languages. That's what it is to be living language.

Of course, but the question is whether the government should be in the business of controlling and regulating the use of that language, as the French government does. If the French language cannot survive in its current form without artificial government intervention, then its current form is not a "living" language at all - but a nostalgic fiction.

I speak with some experience on this subject having grown up in the South of Ireland where almost all school children are forced to learn the virtually extinct language "Gaelic" from the ages of 4 to 18, spending similar amounts of time on it as they do with Maths or English. The result? Most people hate the language because they resent having it forced down their throats.

Unless they are in a work of Orwellian fiction - governments have no business telling their populations what words they can and cannot use.

Re:This is stupid

[Lars T.]

To Americans arrogance is something they only recognize in others.

Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent?

[dbretton]

Apparently you did not read the article:

"The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon. "

Or perhaps, in French, 'le ban' is translated as, "it would be nice if you didn't do this"...

This is simply another example of French arrogance, believing their language to be superior to other languages to the point that they fear its adultering by using (gasp) an English word!

language=identity

[misterpies]

When you're looking down from a position of linguistic dominance, it's very easy to ridicule other culture's attempts to preserve their identity. Language is the cornerstone of most cultural identities - right down to the accent that identifies which village you come from.

And language is more than merely a tool for communicating. It influences the way you think. For example, not all languages have the same number of words for basic colours. (English had no word for "orange" until the middle ages. It was considered a shade of yellow). Neurological studies have shown that without the word for a colour, your brain doesn't even recognise that shade as being different from whatever other shade the language assimilates it to. (So in a language where red and green are the same word, the entire population is red-green colorblind). [If you wonder how different societies can end up with different words for colours, imagine you spend your life in the arctic. Differences in shades of white will be far more important to you than telling red from yellow.]

Also, before laughing at the French, Americans should look at their own history. Following independence, there was a deliberate attempt to cement the new American identity by differentiating the language from "British" English. A certain Mr Webster took this to heart and drew up a dictionary where he deliberately created differences from accepted English spellings (there was no such thing as truly standard spelling in those days). And that's how the US ended up with color, thru and -ize.

So should the French government be trying to protect the French language? Well let's just say that it's not as crazy as it sounds.