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

can't you tell by my ridiculous accent?

[sweeney37]

The more interesting fact is the word "courriel" was coined by a professor in Montreal.

If the French are working so hard to keep their language pure, why did they deicde to use a word a French-Speaking Canadian came up with?

Mike

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

[Jucius Maximus]

"If the French are working so hard to keep their language pure, why did they deicde to use a word a French-Speaking Canadian came up with?"

Uh, because the guy us a Francophone? It's still French whether it's in Canada or France. Mind you, there are definite differences between Quebec and France French, but they are still the same language.

In QC, Anglophones are a hated minority. Everything is tilted to the advantage of the French. Anglo universities don't get any of the juicy funding that the French ones do and so on. It is illegal to put up a sign where French and English have equal prominence. It must be all French or the English must be smaller.

Btw, there is no Canadian flag in front of the Quebec government buildings ;-)

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

[grokBoy]

I don't see what all the fuss is aboot.

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

[AndroidCat]

This will be about as successful as the Quebec Office de la Langue Français' attempts to get people to stop using hotdog and hamburger. (They invented words for those too.)

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

[Oniros]

Actually there are lots of linguists in Quebec that works hard at defining French words for a lot of things that didn't have one.

email => couriel
BBS => babillard
Frequently Ask Questions => Foire aux Questions

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.

English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

chien chaud, colis !

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

[oogoliegoogolie]

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).

It would be like me calling myself German eventhough my ancestry in the new world dates back four generations.

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

[fehlschlag]

Ah, those wacky French. There is a legend that their word vasistas (a little window on the roof or over a door), comes from when Napoleon's troops entered Germany and saw folks peering down from these windows screaming "Was ist das?" (what is that) at all the noise.

So any time you receive a courriel just point at it, laugh, and say "Was ist das?"

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

[bryanp]

English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are.

The Japanese are probably the most "acquisitive" linguists. If you don't believe me, ask the next Japanese person about it over a nice cold biru.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as an Anglophone in Quebec, I think "hated Minority" is quite the overstatement. But hey, you can spread your ignorance however you want, I guess.

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

[rvega]

The Dutch also have no qualms about borrowing words and phrases from other languages (especially American English) and inserting them wherever they fit. This is very common with (popular) technical terminology, but also with slang phrases -- probably because of the Dutch habit of subtitling foreign-language film and TV instead of overdubbing it like the French and Germans.

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?

[jrockway]

or just send them an E-meiru

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

[AndroidCat]

Yeah right. Hang around LaFleurs at 2am and take notes on how many people order "chien chaud" and how many order a "'otdog". Damn I miss deux all-dressed, fries and a coke at 2am -- with cayenne pepper. (Maybe I'm thinking of LeDibblers?)

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).

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

[kidlinux]

"Uh, because the guy us a Francophone? It's still French whether it's in Canada or France."

Not really. From what I've heard, and to say the least, France does not like Quebec french. It is surprising that they're using a term coined by a guy in Montreal.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Poppycock! (From Dutch, meaning soft shit.)

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

[AndroidCat]

BBS => babillard

That one was in common use in Montreal back when BBSs were big. (Or at least in Laval where Babillard was located.)

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:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent?

[saden1]

All western languages are derivative of Latin and other languages so are the French going to give credit to the person who coined the word e-mail in their dictionary?

Couriel
- we took the English word "e-mail" and inserted it into a language parser and vula, out came out Couriel. Please note that this word was coined by Joe Shmoe.

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

[Trolling4Dollars]

Spot on my good man! Spot on! Welcome to my friends list. It's embarassing to live in a country that just seems to be going backwards more and more every day.

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

[roard]

Are you kidding ? We love the Quebec accent :-) sometimes they use some words we could find funny, but that's it. I never heard somebody saying that he "does not like Quebec french". And really, people love Quebec (at least that's my point of view, and I think it's shared by a majority of french ! ). Mind you, a french-speaking country in the love-hated america's continent...

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

[saden1]

It is either you are with "us" or "against us."

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

[Veles]

Well, that's not really informative.

The Quebecois treats the anglophones of PQ the same way the normal Canadians treats the Quebecois.

It's more casual teasing than hate.

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

[Spankophile]

The government is not "forcing" the French to use a different word for email. They are "promoting" the use of a different word.

It's not so different from the US government promoting words and phrases like "Weapons of Mass Destruction" over "Unconventional Weapons." Or Surgical Strike over Decapitation Strike (or better yet, Assasination).

Or my favourite of late (in Canada anyhow) is the use of "STI - Sexually Transmitted Infection" since the word "Disease" is apparently too stigmatising.

They're not forcing anything on anyone, but if the sheep see it enough, they'll start using it themselves.

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

[Matheo]

Anglo universities don't get any of the juicy funding that the French ones do.
Wrong... all universities in Quebec (either french or english) are the same for the minister. The fees are all the same for students.

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

[Ed Avis]

Not true that all Western languages are derivatives of Latin; only the 'romance' ones are (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, and many small languages / dialects like Occitan, Friulian or Corsican). English, Scots, German, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish and many others are Germanic languages and not derived directly from Latin, though they do share a common origin. Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and others are Celtic. (Copying words isn't enough to make a language a derivative of another - eg Japanese copies many words from English but is not a derivative of English.)

'derivatives of Latin and other languages' - well every language today spoken is the derivative of some other language, apart (arguably) from Elvish or Klingon etc.

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

[Bazouel]

PLZ MOD PARENT DOWN !

Your comment is so oversimplistic and full of nonsense that it's a sign that you're either completely ignorant of Canada and Quebec's politics or are a fanatic with a hatred for French Canadians.

Let me get this straight : what you are saying is *not true*. And the part about universities is just ridiculous !! How about they receive "juicy" funding from Canada ? And they do receive funding from Quebec too !

Nothing is ever black or white, especially in politics ! There was and there still is abuse on both sides. But you clearly don't have any clue about what's going on over here ....

I hope your comment gets modded down like it should have been in the first place.

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

[usotsuki]

Kore wa "World Wide Web" no "Browser". "Location" de toko ni "URL" ...

Watch Perfect Blue sometime.

"Onegai Rumi-chan! Nihongo de setsumei shite!"

-uso.

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

[Poltras]

Are you kidding ? We love the French accent :-) sometimes they use some words we could find funny, but that's it. Mind you, a french-speaking country in the love-hated europe's continent... Hehehe :P (Desole roard, mais je la trouvais bonne) Sincerely, we personnally think it's important for a person who comes to Quebec to speak french (and it's the majority of french quebecers who thinks that), as much as it is important for a person to speak english if he wants something in USA or spanish in Spain (or Russian in Russia, etc etc etc). If you don't, then there is a chance that the person will understand and answer in english, but (depending on places) it is unlikely since most people don't learn english (and don't want). But that's changing in places like Quebec and some places where the population is growing "fast". Montreal is the exception though, being the only parts where you may talk in french in a McDo and get answered in english then talk back in french and the person WILL answer in english. Funny :) But most people there are bilingual. Unversity minority? Naaah... again, you have to go to montreal to get the view. But hey!, try to find a spanish university in USA ;)

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

[EulerX07]

Total an utter slandering.

Ever heard of McGill University in downtown Montreal? Go take a walk there, you won't feel like it's not getting it's "Juicy Share". If 80% of the students are french, don't it make sense that french universities get 80% of the funding. There is no "tilt", it's just common sense.

If you don't know what the hell you're talking about, why do you bother talking about it, and why is this "informative".

FYI, the english are not a hated minority. Go to Montreal yourself, go to a restaurant, and you WILL be served in english with a smile. If you go outside of Montreal (like real far, 100+miles) you probably will run into some places where they don't talk english, because they don't need to.

I was born from francophone parents that were bilingual, and now I work anywhere from the southeast US to Northwest Ontario to the Maritimes. And I've been told in some backwater places that I shouldn't be allowed to speak french to my french technicians. But I don't judge every single anglophone because of a handful of bigot rednecks.

Remember bigotry starts with ignorance and gross generalization, it's seems to be just fashionable when it's against french speaking people. Quebec and France history has been separated since about thirty years before France's Revolution. The people in France and Quebec have a radically different history in the past 243 years.

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

[roard]

oui :-)) effectivement j'ai fait un peu preuve d'ethnocentrisme, désolé.
But hey, this guy clearly stated something false, at least I never heard people claming they don't like Quebec. I don't know, perhaps sometimes some Quebec people ended on some assholes in France, but frankly, imho the majority of french just love Quebec.
I was in Canada some years ago (just for holidays), and it's right that it was surprising to speak in french, responded back in english, etc.

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

[jrockway]

I wish they would call it a "yuu-aru-ai" instead. We need hyoujyun-compliant nihongo!

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

[Anonymous Coward]

why did they deicde to use a word a French-Speaking Canadian came up with?

Because the French may feel their langauage is threatened on a global scale, they don't worry about it as much on a *local* scale.

That is to say, the French obviously aren't worried about the French language losing its toe-hold in Paris. The Quebecois, on the other hand, have to be much more vigilant to prevent the loss of their language, surrounded as they are by the rest of (English-speaking) Canada and the U.S. So they are more likely to come up with new words.

Another example of this is the Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgians), who are vigilant against the encroachment of (ironically) the French language. So you have the same situation: the Dutch themselves are more than happy to import English and French words (and they do all the time). The Flemish however will make up a 'real' Dutch word to use.

I remember the word "washing-machine" as an example, but I forget the words - any Dutch speakers out there want to tell me what the Dutch and the Flemish use to say this?

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

[CrowScape]

Well, the Bush administration did use the phrase "Decapitation Strike" for it's "Shock and Awe" campaign, and I think the US government reserves the term "assasination" for only those countries that the US has not declared open hostilities against (honestly, I think that's a reasonable definition). As for WMDs, it's a bit more descriptive than the term "Unconventional Weapon" is. I mean, I could kill someone with a slinky. Certainly the slinky, in such a case, could be considered an unconventional weapon, as one of the definitions for unconventional is "out of the ordinary". However, I think a better example than those you brought up would be replacing "suicide bomber" with "homicide bomber". Of course, the administration hasn't passed a law that requires all government documents to stop using the term "suicide bomber" and instead use "homicide bomber," so it still is different than what the French government is doing.

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!

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

[waterford0069]

Uh, because the guy us a Francophone? It's still French whether it's in Canada or France. Mind you, there are definite differences between Quebec and France French, but they are still the same language.

The differences are not insignificant. Quebec French, Parisian (France) French, Manitoba-LaBroquerie French, Cajun French, etc. all differ in accent and slang. Sometimes even the grammatical structures are different. You can not simply take a native speaker of one, and expect them to effectivly communicate with a native speaker of another, with no training or practice time.

As a non-bilingual Canadian, I can understand a lot of Parisian French (if only by guessing the 'latinesque' roots and the translating that into english). I can not understand Quebec french.

It's like the difference between the Queen's English and 'Ebonics' (that language where you get to axe questions).

I do think it odd though that the French Govnement has a Ministry that will make-up/find words just to replace words that have begun to creep into French from other languages. Languages grow over time. If 'E-mail' continues to maintain its hold in the French language, I'm sure it will end up as something like E-maille and then emaille.

Interestingly enough maille translates into English as a link/mesh/net (and I suppose you could take it as far as a web). I think that would much better path for it to take.

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

[roard]

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

That's right, but you know, it will be only for official documents. They won't force people to use it for daily use (well they couldn't do it anyway :)
But as a government, and as the word "courriel" sounds nice and some people use it, well, I think it's logic for them to use this word and prefers it rather than e-mail. Courriel is used a bit by people -- even if the majority use "mail" or "e-mail". In the end, the word will only be used broadly if people like it, but a small push from the gvt like this decision won't hurt.

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

[efaust93]

While I respect anyone's right to have their own culture, I will say this...

If you don't like American Culture, then don't partake of it. Create your own. Enjoy your own. Stop blaming America for your problems.

Go ahead, argue. You know I'm right.

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

[big_pianist]

Speaking as another, more politically-and-culturally-minded anglophone in Quebec, for the benefit of all those on slashdot, while I agree that "hated minority" is an overstatement, it may not be too far off the mark and I would hardly call it igorance. It's an awareness. Not only are Anglophones in minority but they have fewer privilages with respect to their language than francophones. Anytime a government takes specific steps to inconvenience or discriminate against one group of people for reasons of beliefs, language, culture, etc, there is a problem.

This is not a case of poor application of "linguistic" equal opportunity. Nor is this a case of poor reasoning, "Oh, look, we have more than twice as many francophones as anglophones, therefore the french type on all signs should be at least twice as large!" This is not even a case of ignorance on the part of the Quebec government -- No, these laws are clear, direct, were passed with intent, designed to be abused.

Many laws specifically refer to english as it relates to french and many laws use the mother tounge of a citizen or of his parents as justification to alter the rules.

Case in point, English public schooling is a perticularly sticky topic here in Quebec: It's all here. Many francophone parents are realizing that learning proper English is important in today's world. Not that we all won't still have our mother tounges, with which we can speak whenever we want, but for business and academics, for critical technical discussion, English is the prefered medium. But because of close-minded aspirations of nationalism and cultural purity, generations of governements here in Quebec have managed to legislate, against the will of many Quebecers, any purely francophone couple sending their children to English school. This is discrimination against potential anglophones. One of many. Immigrants are not permitted to study in English-language schools either.

It is also wise to note that the Quebec laws are only operating under a loophole in Canadian law. Otherwise they would not be constitutional and certainly a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

And if you're confused or maybe you disagree with my appraisal of the situation citing bais or prejudice, you need only look up a few choice addresses of either Levesque or Parizeau to get a good impression right from the horses mouth.

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

[CrowScape]

But the fact that people in France were using the phrase "e-mail" shows that, in deed, that is exactly how French works. However, the French government keeps stepping in to remove those words to keep the French language "pure". It's a bit like saying your hedges don't work by growing on their own despite the fact that you have to continuously trim them to keep their shape.

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

[dbretton]

The term, "...hated Minority..." is a bit strong.

A more appropriate phrase would be "culturally abandonded".

The French-allying portion of Quebec is much like the Spanish speaking portions of Central America: They aschew their curtural ties to the US in attempt to identify themselves with (South American/European) counterparts. However, they simply end up becoming cultural bastards, belonging to neither.

Other Canadians look at the 'French Canadians' as not really Canadians, and the French' look at the 'French Canadians' as not French.

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

[bogado]

Here in Brasil there is a poster of some nationalist movement trying to convince people to use alternate words. like instead of "mouse" use "rato".

I don't think there is nothing wrong in adopting foreing words, I just think that the word should be incorporated using the gramatical and phonetical of thr national language, for instance one would write "mause" for "mouse" in portuguese. This would make more sense and would help people to write the words coming from other languages easier.

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

[Cappy Red]

Only French government agencies are involved in this story at this point, and they are forced to use "courriel" over "email". (RTFA)

And it is very different from the examples you cited. Those involve no word bans(so far as I know), and are intended to gain a more advantageous connotation. This decision bans one word in favor of another, simply based on origin(and a short memory as to origin as well).

I know the PR to be gained from the former examples, but not the latter. "STI" is stupid(barring reasonable explanation), but stupid in a different way than "courriel".


*honk*

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

[efaust93]

I am guessing the Gauls were very upset about the Romans imposing their culture on their people and land...

Wait, they wouldn't have been "gifted" with "French" culture had it not been for the Romans.

American culture wouldn't proliferate if people weren't interested in it. People want to see American movies and watch American TV - if they didn't, the rules of the market would push it out of circulation.

But then again, there is a large population of North Americans who want to be in America (hence America's major immigration problem on it's southern border).

Maybe you should go and preach to them that they should stay in their country and be happy with their culture?

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

[Coke in a Can]

Apparently you did not look close enough:
"government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites"
The French are free to use whatever word they want.

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

[slashmenno]

Still more proof that french culture is dead.

No(n)! French culture isn't dead, Anglo-American culture is dominating. I am Dutch and hardly speak any French, and often think that the French are trying a bit too hard, but it is not a bad thing to try and preserve a language and culture.

I wish the Dutch people were more careful about their own language, however most people can't write more than 5 sentences without making a lot of errors.

Ok, Dutch language has always been influenced by a lot of other languages (Latin, German, French, Indonesian, Spanish, English, etc.) due to the trading culture and foreign occupation throughout history. It is OK to use words from a foreign language if you don't have any word for it in your own language, or if the foreign word is more appropriate, but what is wrong with using a perfectly normal word from your language if there is one?

The French call a computer an 'ordinateur'. The Germans sometimes call it an 'EDV' (Elektronische DatenanlagenVerarbeitungsmachine), in which case, I must admit, 'computer' or 'komputer' is a lot easier. The South Africans call it a 'rekenaar', which is a nice literal translation of the word 'computer' and would fit nicely in the Dutch language, too, but, Dutch peope are used to screw up our own language with imported words and use the English one for a lot of things we have perfect Dutch words for:

computer: rekenaar;
meeting: bijeenkomst/vergadering;
party: feest of partij(tje);
organizer: (elektronische) agenda;
'inloggen' (log in): aanmelden; ...going through the average business report you can find a lot more examples...

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

[ReTay]

Ever spent any time looking at a dictionary? Most languages are influenced by other cultures. English is a composite of Gallic, German, Spanish and others. The languages around it influence every language. It has just been regional until now. Now what will be interesting is to see how the Internet will change this.

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

[usotsuki]

Hyoujun? Nani yo? *blink*

-uso.
I'm not a native Japanese speaker.

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

[SN74S181]

French culture isn't dead. Another dose of penicillin might do it, though.

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

[jc42]

A linguistics prof in one class that I once took illustrated this with a tome published several centuries ago by a Japanese scholar who was upset by the widespread "corruption" of the Japanese language by borrowings from Chinese. So he wrote a major work that documented the old Japanese language very thoroughly. His work is considered quite valuable by linguists today. The fun part was that his title consisted entirely of loan words from Chinese.

The prof pointed out that this is difficult to do in English. Despite all the borrowings, it's still difficult to write more than 2 or 3 words in English without using a word of Anglo-Saxon origin. English is still at heart a West Germanic language, and all the "little" words are Germanic.

And it is true that the Japanese continue this approach, but now with heavy borrowings from English. They mangle the pronunciation badly, but look at what English does to Latin or Greek words. And our borrowings from Hebrew and Arabic are hardly recognizable.

Japanese and English are far from the only such cases. Swahili and Malay are both artificial "trade" languages that were constructed from several other languages of their respective areas, and they're about as much a mish-mash as is English.

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

[jrockway]

> hyoujun
standard, as in standards-complient :)

> I'm not a native Japanese speaker
i don't know if i can believe that, based on your nick ;)

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

[krusadr]

Nothing is ever black or white, especially in politics ! There was and there still is abuse on both sides. But you clearly don't have any clue about what's going on over here ....

OK The hows this for black and white. Quebec forces the whole of the rest of Canada to be Bi-Lingual (costing billions of dollars and effectively rendering Canada banckrupt for several generations).

This means all public signs and official documentation must give equal prominence to French as English even in far flung places as rural BC where a French speaker is about as common as rocking horse shit, and then several years later passes a law to exclude itself from its very own law so that Quebec can legally be 100% French language (or have English displayed less prominently). In fact as if that isn't enough they then make it ILLEGAL to display English equally as prominently as French on signs in Quebec.

Can anyone lucidly and consisely defend this outrageous behaviour? I thought not. Like most things French it is indefensable (including France apparently)

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

[SN74S181]

Oh, come on, now.

We don't need any little white flags.

How would France help? By lobbing in le nuke? They only do that in the South Pacific.

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

[topham]

The rest of Canada just gets annoyed at the extra expense of requiring french labels on products in places where French is almost non-existant. The requirements for French language skills on some jobs; often restricting the jobs to Quebecois only as a non-native French speaker is virtually eliminated at the outset.

It doesn't help that with Federal requirements of bilingual for specific government jobs, and the fact that French, outside quebec is taught so poorly (it is; few exceptions). doesn't help.

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

[dnahelix]

The Universal Translator will fix that!

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

[mikedaisey]

"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."

Actually, most living languages undergo this process dynamically, rather than having comissions that declare what can and can not be said. Check your history books--languages ebb and flow and replace one another all the time.

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

[benoitg]

Languages grow over time. If 'E-mail' continues to maintain its hold in the French language, I'm sure it will end up as something like E-maille and then emaille.

Actually that was considered by the french, but sounded ridiculous. E-mail has a meaning, it's a contraction of electronig mail. And guess what courriel it? Yep a contraction of courrier électronique (electronic mail).

The Quebec government has teams of linguists to come up with words, and (unlike the académie francaise) doesn't take years to come up with terms. Some of them catch on, some don't, and for many words most quebecers keep using the english word. But at least they had a chance to come up with a french generic term.

In many ways the frenchs are worse off, they often use the english word but with a french prononciation. At least in Quebec, the english word is used with english pronunciation (even by people who don't speak english) so at least the word remains "flagged" as a foreign word.

But trying to come up with frech equivalent to hot-dog and hamburger was uncommonly silly. They are not generic terms, they designate a dish, no matter how common.

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

[GMC-jimmy]

c-mail ?

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

[EEGeek]

Last year I had the opportunity to meet a (Francophone) Quebecois family. They were vacationing in Western Canada, and were friends of my sister-in-law. They seemed like very nice people, and were actually quite friendly. They grew more in love with my area of the country when they found out that we here in Western Canada dislike the people of "Golden Triangle" that area around Toronto and rest of the "centre of the universe". My father used to be stationed in Quebec while in the RCAF during the cold war. He loved Quebec... the people of that province are extremely friendly. I don't know much about the Francophone/Anglophone laws, so I won't delve into that subject. I just think that a few extremist Quebecois have ruined it for the rest of the great ones. Vive la Quebec!

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

[caluml]

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

It's outrageous, ahem.

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

[linzeal]

Um, how large is the government as a job supplier in france. I thought it was pretty high, isn't it?

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

[benoitg]

Well, the government "forcing" itself to use a single, coherent word for something hardly has any ethical implication that you "forcing" yourself to say hi instead of hello. It's not like they won't read anything you send them with the word email on it.

Whether using a currently less pervasive word than the one in common usage is a good idea is a separate debate.

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

[ShadowDrgn]

If you don't believe me, ask the next Japanese person about it over a nice cold biru.

A nice cold building? Funny how the Japanese borrowed two English words and made their pronunciations very similar. I don't type or read romaji much, but it seems to me that beer would be "biiru" for the extended vowel sound.

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

[Paul Jakma]

But you forget.... English and Dutch are both descended from the same language(s). (that which the Angles, Saxons, Friesians and other germanic tribes collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons spoke, who invaded and took over England). Apparently the language closest to ye olde english which is still spoken today is Vries (Friesian / spoken in the Dutch province of Groningen).

Anyway: Dutch, German, English - the one family of languages really, shouldnt matter if they import words from each other (or just from english). You could even include the scandivian languages in there too - they share a lot with the germanic languages (presumably cause of the vikings). The scandinavians though are, i presume, unique in western europe in that their languages were not directly affected by Latin influences via the Romans.

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

[benoitg]

LOL, if you ask. In France they would say "branleur" which has the same literal and semantic meaning. In Québec, they would say "crosseur", which has the same literal meaning, but a different semantic one...

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

[GrimSean]

It's precisely this attitude that causes a good number of Canadians to dislike Americans out of hand - it's called smug superiority and it's effing annoying.

If you don't like American Culture, then don't partake of it. Create your own. Enjoy your own.

We have our own culture. We had more of it before some people realized that they could make more money by showing/playing cheaper imports from the USA (which leads to our Canadian content rules for radio and television). Ever heard of The Tragically Hip? How about BNL? Read any Mordecai Richler lately? Maybe some Robert J Sawyer?

Stop blaming America for your problems.

I will stop blaming America for problems when America stops causing them (and that includes discussions like this where I'm probably going to get modded -1 Troll for being Canadian).

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

[bryanp]

If you don't believe me, ask the next Japanese person about it over a nice cold biru.

A nice cold building? Funny how the Japanese borrowed two English words and made their pronunciations very similar. I don't type or read romaji much, but it seems to me that beer would be "biiru" for the extended vowel sound.

Possibly. I've seen it written both ways many times. Romaji (Romajii is also a common spelling) can be a bit problematic. That and my Japanese skills are truly awful. ^_^

Q: Bryan, how much Japanese did you learn? You lived there 4 years.

A: Not as much as you'd think.

Q: Why not?

A: Because just about every Japanese person I knew wanted to practice their English skills on a native speaker, and their bad English was usually much much better than my atrocious attempts at Nihongo. Being lazy was quite easy. And I was a high school student so being lazy was in my nature. :)

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

[anagama]

biru = beer

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

[daveq]

I don't think it's unreasonable for a country to choose an official language and use it. In parts of the southwest USA you've got whole communities of spanish speakers who don't understand english, and it only creates a mess. It's a severe waste of time and money if you have to set up two signs on every road, translate every legal document (which would be a source of great argumentation among lawyers), etc. If you're going to live in a country, just learn the official language and speak it like everyone else in schools and in public places.

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

[anagama]

Sorry - guess I ought to read to the end.

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

[slashmenno]

You must be kidding, right? Frisian is spoken in Friesland, not in Groningen! The fact that English and Dutch are related (not descended of the same languages), is not a reason to just neglect Dutch and start using English words for everything. Language is part of a culture and a culture is what makes a people unique: something worth preserving! But what I am trying to say it that you should only use foreign word (not matter whether they originate from a related language or not) if it is necessary (there is no equivalent) or better (the native word(s) is (are) too complex/long, like the EDV example) to do so. In the Netherlands a lot of people are blindly using English words (with a lousy pronunciation, most often), simple because it is 'heavy', 'cool', 'hot', 'vet', 'kicken' or whatever buzz word they have to show their enthousiasm about those words. The only decent education in my own language I had was (and most children in this country get is) in primary school. In secondary education the focus is on reading books and explaining what the author meant by his book. I think I had my last Dutch grammar lesson in the first or second year of secondary education. ...and getting back to the original subject... The French have good reason to protect their language from poisoning by foreign languages! And if you really think we should exchange more words, I suggest the English/Americans should adopt the Dutch word "gezellig", because they do'n have a decent equivalent. No, the word you will find in the dictionary doesn't cover its meaning. ;-)

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

[Dunkalis]

English grammar is very similar to German. Its different enough to be a totally different language with its own grammar rules, but its pretty easy to see how English is derived from German (if you speak both; note I do not speak fluent German (getting close!)). Both languages share thousands of words and a fairly similar technical vocabulary. Most languages borrow some words, some languages more than others. In the American southwest, you can see English acquiring terms and words from Mexican Spanish, and most people here think nothing of using a Spanish word or two in their daily speech. All languages borrow words, but the reason English and Japanese borrow so much is because of their environment. Think: The English fought many wars with the French, and dealt with them more than the German states. The French had an emperor before the English really had a need for a term for "emperor." The Latin word for emperor "Caesar," the German "Kaiser," and the Russian "Tsar." The French word was Emperur (or something similar, I speak no French). Since we were dealing with the French more than the Germans or Russians, we acquired their word for emperor. I'm not a linguist, this is just how I see the word being acquired.

Its simply an evolution of language. I bet that a vast majority of other languages in the world will begin taking more English words (the Germans have no problems with using English words...). Once English and the English-speaking nations begin to decline (Don't laugh. Even the Roman empire fell after the Pax Romana ended.), another country will attain power and their language will become the lingua franca of the world. Other languages will adopt words from that language, and the cycle continues.

THe French just don't realize that eliminating English words from your language really stagnates growth of theirlanguage.

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

[drinkypoo]

I'd rather have some ice creamu and listen to my cd prayer. Meanwhile the french couldn't even let cd player alone, they had to come up with their own fruity word which I can't even remember. Because it's too fruity. Meanwhile people all around the world are learning english, and we're not (for the most part) learning any foreign languages. Whether that's because we're lazy or because we don't need to remains to be adequately explored.

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

[ibm1130]

"English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are."

And partially explains why this exchange is taking place in English and not, oh say, French.

IBM

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

[Sanity]

i really wonder what is the more arrogant between sending military troups illegaly in a few countries and trying to promote latin-based words in a latin-based continent instead of english words.

I think we need a new version of Godwin's law that applies whenever someone drags the Iraq war into an unrelated conversation.

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

[gurensan]

There are a lot of people in this world who can't learn their ancestral languages. Not because they are essentially dead, but because in many countries where they were originally spoken there is considerable force from the government to kill them. Unless I am mistaken, the only 'country' in the British Isles where you have the right to be tried in the language your ancestors spoke is Wales.

I am of Scottish descent from people who immigrated to North Carolina in the early 1700s. My lineage can be traced back fully for 8 generations, and 8 only because no one in in Isles could be bothered to keep decent records before that time. My ancestors spoke Gàidhlig for probably a single generation. My ancestors before that were in the midst of having their culture destroyed by the English (na Sasunnaich, the Saxons).

I agree that a government does not have the right to force the people to use certain words over others and that languages are meant to evolve naturally, but the government also has NO right to try to kill them, either. This has happened with ALL of the 'modern' Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The French killed Breton outright and with extreme prejudice almost a thousand years ago, and a strictly French speaking government will kill English in Quebec.

The last truly native speaker of Manx died in 1974, thanks to the British government. Because of that we will probably never hear that language in its correct form again, and a large part of Manx culture is gone from the world.

Be thankful you are still allowed to learn Gaeilge. In other places you have to fight for it.

This will eventually happen in every bilingual country in the world, and, if anyone can't tell, I'm extremely touchy on this subject.

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

[domninus.DDR]

please god. i wish i could get almost anything other than the crap that they show on tv in america (few exceptions for discovery channels, cartoon network etc). except, i'm glad i dont get any british channels ;)

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

[littleRedFriend]

Having lived in Paris for a couple of years (didn't really speak French when I came here), this sort of things still makes me laugh.

Some other funny examples.

Footing in French means jogging, it is especially funny since the French think this is what it is called in English.
Chewing gum means chewing gum, only you pronounce it as swing gum. Made me laugh this one.

I mean, think what would happen to the English language, if we were to remove all words from French origin. There would be almost no English left.

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

[Gilmoure]

Didn't Tolkien base the rules of Elvish on ancient languages he was studying?

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

[Nurgled]

As disappointing as it I imagine can be to see foreign language words infiltrating your mother toungue, I found that when I spent some time in Holland I at least could read Nederlandic signs and menus with minimal floundering.

With my quite limited knowledge of German and my English I was able to read almost everything, in extreme cases falling back on context to pick out the missing nouns I couldn't get.

I was impressed that many Dutch people had almost perfect spoken English, even well outside the standard tourist spots. One guy I spoke to for a while said he mostly picked it up from watching subtitled American TV, which I guess is why everyone seems to know all of the American slang but were set back by my occasional British slang.

I'm not really sure what my point is, anymore, so I'll just post this as a hats-off to the Dutch for being, on the whole, the nicest people I've encountered on my travels.

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

[andrewski]

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

Well said. However, I think that governments must maintain a singular official language if at all possible. In America we have a lot of people here from different parts of the world (in some places anyway, the rest is crackertown ;>) . If everyone didn't learn and speak English, big cities would be so much more of an unbelieveable clusterfuck that I would have to go live in the woods somewhere. My point is that English glues together Amreica, for better or for worse. I have never been anywhere in Canada but BC before, but I like it.

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

[andrewski]

Unless you don't count anything north or west of France as part of Europe, I'd hardly call Europe as a whole 'latin-based.'

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

[Papineau]

Minor nits on the status of English schools in Québec.

Any private school is free to offer an English only curriculum, as long as they don't receive money from the government (the vast majority of private schools receive some, usually more than what parents pay per child, and not that far from what public schools receive).

Also, children of parents who studied mostly in English in Canada (not only Québec) can attend public English school, which offer the same things (although in English rather than in French) than other French public school. Are there Spanish public schools in the southern US?

Another point: all this applies to elementary and secondary schools only. College and up are not bound by those rules, so you're free to get your higher education in whatever language you want, even in public institutions.

Two last things: please note that the teaching language is an object of debate here since quite a few years now, and that the main goal of the past and existing (and probably future) laws on the subject is to facilitate the integration of immigrants to the majority French-speaking population. And it's entirely possible to attend public French school and become quite accustomed to English, provided you practice outside. A second language practiced a few hours per week won't be perfected, you need much more practice in reading, listening, speaking and writing for that.

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

[jawtheshark]

The Germans sometimes call it an 'EDV' (Elektronische DatenanlagenVerarbeitungsmachine)

Before you keep misinforming people around here: EDV means "Elektronische Datenverarbeiting". Yes, and I looked it up in the "Duden". As far as I know it doesn't translate to "computer" but is more the german equivalent of "IT".

For the rest I agree, as my native language is dutch too.

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

[LowTolerance]

a government regulating the integrity of language is nothing new. the US does it in censorship. by deciding certain words should not be used in TV, we are basically saying that they should not exist. france just offers an alternative that more correctly flows with the somewhat poetic feel of the french language.

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

[ibm1130]

A short history lesson.
As a result of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), France lost much of its North American holdings to Britain. This included what is now Quebec.
On the whole British rule over this part of their empire was relatively benign. Things that directly affected the everyday lives of the (in)habitants were left as they were. So land holding, inheritance, religion, everyday language etc continued roughly as they had before.
However, the British were very much interested in business and that was run according to the way the British thought it should be done. In English and by English Law.
As a consequence of this dichotomy and through the influence of the Church the range of professions French Canadians adopted was limited. Local retail, lawyer, doctor, etc were OK but the Church frowned on science and industry. Education was largely run on a confessional ( Protestant=English and Catholic=French ) basis
This state continued more or less for some 200 years. Then in the 50's and 60's French Canada woke up and realised they'd been holding the wrong end of the stick. Technology, industry, and science became more important in Quebec and for instance the third largest aerospace conglomerate in the world ( Bombardier ) is based in Quebec. Meanwhile most immigrants who've come to Quebec had assimilated into the English side of the equation. Some 19th century Irish ( hence Francophones named O'Neil ) and 18th century Highland Scots married into and were absorbed by the French majority.
Fast forward to 1970. A nationalist party, the Parti Quebecois is elected to govern the province of Quebec and proceeds to pass legislation which among other things says you must use French in business and immigrants must send their children to French schools, the term immigrant included even Canadian Citizens. The law is Bill 101 and its father is one Dr Camille Laurin ( considered something of an asshole even by members of his own family ). It took something like 15 years to get some of the more blatantly unconstitutional aspects of that law overturned. What the nationalists couldn't ignore they tried to subvert. As for instance school boards. Protestant school boards were controlled by English speakers and that was unlikely to change so for a long time the PQ was trying to get the education regime changed notwithstanding it was constitutionally protected. Quebec now has non-confessional shool boards but quess what they aren't protected and have far less protection against the ill intentions of future governments of Quebec.
Anyhow, I digress, the means of enforcement of Bill 101 is the Office De La Langue Francaise or the Language Police. They can fine people if they have too much English on commercial signs and are generally about as popular as Nazis at a bar mitzvah in the English community of Quebec.
Something else that probably isn't well known is that one man-one vote is something of a farce in Canada and that the population of a parliamentary didstrict in Quebec can be approx half what it is in places like Alberta.
And here endeth the lesson.

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

[misterpies]

Have you considered that maybe Central Americans are trying to preserve a Central American identity, which includes aspects of Spanish culture, and the Quebecois are trying to keep their French-originated Quebecois identity.

And frankly, it ill behoves Americans to accuse others of being cultural bastards. You think that the Irish think Irish Americans (i.e. anyone with one or more Irish ancestors within the last 200 years) are Irish, or Italians that watching the Sopranos and eating spaghetti and meatballs (which is never seen in Italy) makes someone Italian?

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

[Coke in a Can]

Meh. People can still say whatever they want in their homes, or in (most of) public. Just the people who work for the government can't say it at work. At least that's how I see it.

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

[Lars T.]

And the punishment is invasion of poster's country for posession of WMD.

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

[big_pianist]

Absolutely! As a country, in greater Canada, our official languages are English and French.

I have no qualms with a government or province who wishes to specialize in a perticular language of representation to better serve the population; that's their choice and if properly handled will make life easier for the majority of the occupants. Pick any official language you want, put your road sign in any official language you want, keep your legal documents in any official language you want, etc... and I'll be forced to learn it less I stumble around like a blind man.

Similarly, I expect a government to respect my choice to express myself in whatever language I choose, e.g. don't screw with me when I want to place a purely English sign on my storefront. I suppose any francophone who doesn't understand English will skip my business for one with a sign that he or she understands but that is my loss and my responsibility, not the responsibility of a provincial government body, to correct if I so choose.

There is a sharp difference between choosing an official language of respresentation and dictating language preference to a whole population.

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

[Papineau]

The real question is, what the hell does this have to do with anything? The parent poster was not an American, he identified himself as a Canadian living in Quebec. Why bring the US into this?

People often talk about something without knowing anything about it. From abroad, the situation in Québec is often depicted as a French majority trying everything to get rid of it's English minority. By comparing the situation to the US (the vast majority of readers on slashdot come from the US), they have something closer to them to compare to, something they may have already thought about.

Furthermore, the situation of Hispanic immigrants living in the US is not at all like that of citizens of Quebec.

What's the main difference? Immigrants vs citizens? In both cases, immigrants need to attend school in the majority's language. Citizens? There are no Hispanic public schools there, while there are English public schools here. So Québec's anglophones are better served for their scooling needs than California's Hispanics (unless you bring me some other points to prove me wrong).

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

[slashmenno]

I stand corrected... You are right about the abbreviation. It's what I was told once. Indeed it is not a literal translation, but neither is the French one: "ordinateur (electronique)". EDV-Gerät and ordinateur electronique, however, cover the purpose of the machine a lot better than "computer".

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

[Sabalon]

FYI, the english are not a hated minority. Go to Montreal yourself, go to a restaurant, and you WILL be served in english with a smile. If you go outside of Montreal (like real far, 100+miles) you probably will run into some places where they don't talk english, because they don't need to.

Three of us were in Vermont skiing and drove to Montreal for dinner. Went to some pizza place. About the only problem we had was I had to tell the bartender how to make a white russian.

Everywhere we went in Montreal we were treated nicely. Waiter came out and asked us something in French after dinner, even though he knew we didn't speak french. My friend answered We, and then asked what he said. He laughed and told us we were brave to answer yes to something we didn't understand.

Only other "problem" we had is they gladly take US money, but give the change in canadian. For all I know, we were getting shafted. Made figuring out a tip kinda difficult.

But like your last paragraph says - just because the language is mostly the same, doesn't mean everything else is. US isn't the same as Austrailia or the UK. And I'm sure there are some people who think the Chinese and Japanese speak the same language jsut cause it isn't english.

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

[Simonetta]

Hello,
I grew up in New England and studied French in high school because French was 'cool' and knowing a little French would bring me that much closer to people like Brigette Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Therese Liotard, or, hell, any one of the 30 million women of French descent.
It wasn't until a chance trip to Quebec that I was even aware that there was a French speaking country right across our northern border. What a shock. Everything changes right at the border. All the packaging and graphics on the products are the same but the language is different. The only place that I've seen anything like it is on the German-French border where again everything just changes according to the line across the map.
It is possible that English could be considered a distant and bizarre dialect of French because over 50% of the words in English are direct cognants and often have an exact parallel word in French. However the pronounciation is completely different between the two languages and they are mutually incomprehensible.
Since French North America has only about seven million people and the rest of the continent is divided between 300 million English speakers and about 100 million Spanish speakers, it is likely that without the draconian Quebec language laws the use of French language would fade away over time. However their current implementation is absurd. Quebec would be much better served by a massive campaign to get Quebec's media widely distributed throughout the world. The most effective means of encouraging the learning of French language in the USA has been the Canadian law requiring every product sold in Canada to have all text in both French and English (except in Quebec where the law requires French only). The extension of this law to cover DVDs has also become a major tool for French language study. Many new movies released on DVD have French audio soundtracks and subtitles available. However the audio and the subtitles are usually done by different translators so the French titles never seems to follow the spoken dialog. It's also usually impossible to get the French subtitles and English titles on the screen at the same time.
Nevertheless, this is a great new resource for learning a new language. But if you're living in the USA, why learn French? Spanish is our second language. The further away that you get from Ivy League universities and Quebec itself the less French seems like an important global communications tool and more it seems like an obscure regional European 'legacy language'. I've lived in Portland Oregon for twenty years and I've overheard a spoken French conversation only once. And I ride the public buses a lot, where in an average hour you will hear Spanish, Chinese, Southeast Asian, Russian, and ancient Central American languages like Mayan spoken. But never, never French. It's as if it just doesn't exist.
I really like French language. I will spend the he extra couple of hours to watch a DVD for a second time with the soundtrack set to French to try and become a little bit better at catching the words. But I can't help but wonder, Has it all been a mistake? It would have been much better to have studied Spanish, since one hears it everywhere.

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

[big_pianist]

I don't believe I said anything to the contrary. I am well aware of the laws; I live in it.

But you must be aware of the socialogical impact of decisions like this: "As long as you, provided you, if you, you're free to": you're parents are not free to select the language of your initial instruction and not everyone is willing or able to make the effort to compensation for this. It's easy to see that a child that recieves instruction predominantly in one language will continue their higher education in that same language. And many parents either cannot or will not accept the cost of an imposed tariff for sufficient private instruction in another language. It is easier to go with the flow.

With the ubiquity of English language colleges and universities all around the world, comprising the absolutely cream of the academic crop, any potential academic who is not completely fluent and articulate in English is at a disadvantage. Note: I'm not recommending that the world drop everything and start learning English; I am recommending that the parents of future generation of Quebecois be permitted the option to allow their kids every advantage they believe is worthwhile.

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

[Shippy]

Wow, talk about naive. French has a certain flow about it. The word "e-mail" just doesn't really fit in. Using their own words, they can keep the flow in a very beautiful language. Your statement is an example of American arrogance. Let's say an arab comes up with an arabic word for something new. Do you think we'd all start using the arabic word? Ignore the fact that there are different alphabets. Just think of the way the arabic word sounds. Again, do you think we'd use the word? Hell, no. Americans wouldn't stand for it. We'd come up with our own word and I wouldn't be surprised if the government came up with the new word and spread it like the plague, just like they have with other phrases during the war (you've seen them in other posts).

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

[zerocool^]

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).

For the last 2 years I have been a systems administrator, and one thing I notice is that from the system administrator's POV, no matter what level of intelligence you are, either you're "one of us" (BOFH) or you're "one of them" (users).

or something.

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

[archbish99]

Really? Can't say I'd agree entirely.

I had the wonderful opportunity to take a linguistic history class a little over a year ago. It's true, certainly, that new words and usages are introduced by individual speakers. However, when that was the only force at play, that gave rise to the times when you literally could not travel more than 50 miles before the other people who supposedly spoke your language spoke something completely incomprehensible to you.

It was the introduction of dictionaries, grammars, and the legal mandating of a certain linguistic set that has brought us to the languages in use today. Yes, we have minor vocabulary differences, such as "pop" vs. "soda" vs. "soft drink", but we speak the same language. Liberty and equality cannot coexist without limits -- to have the equality of mutual comprehension, we have to surrender a little bit of our freedom to speak however we want.

Where we (and the French especially, I would say) have gone wrong is that we're not only making the effort to standardize, but to stifle. I don't argue with the idea that we should all agree on the spelling and meaning of a word, for the purposes of mutual comprehension. However, what the French government has done is "outlaw" those words which drift in from other languages -- we've done precisely that for centuries. Since the beginning of linguistic standardization, there has almost always been a component of society idolizing the language of the previous century for its purity, and cursing all recently-introduced changes.

French culture is not dead -- but the French government does what linguists have frequently done. They forget that language is dynamic, and cannot be locked into last decade's dictionary for the next century.

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

[oogoliegoogolie]

Umm....close analogy, but not quite. There is a major distinction:

Americans consider their countryman to be "Americans", no matter what your ancestry is. Doesn't matter where you came from or if you immigrated to the US last year or your great*4 grandfather immigrated here 200 years ago. If you take the POA and get your citizenship, you are looked at as American.

OTOH, if you are an Anglophone in Quebec, from the Francophones POV, you are not a real Quebecer. Doesn't matter if you're a 5th generation Anglophone, you are still looked down on and thought as 'not one of us'

That's the difference!

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

[Papineau]

But you didn't mention it, that's why I mentionned it.

To your second paragraph: same thing with healthcare. The public system offers you something. If you don't like what's offered (financed by everybody), you're free to go get a doctor which is not affiliated to the RAMQ. Of course you'll pay much higher than if you went to the nearest hospital. But it's your choice. In a restaurant, if you don't like today's soup, you can choose another one, but it'll be costlier.

To your third paragraph: what I'm saying is it's absolutely possible (and usually more efficient) to pickup English as a second language elsewhere than in elementary and secondary school. Are there much English public schools in Germany or in Russia? Are German or Russian scientists at a disavantage because of that? Not to my knowledge. Same thing for Chinese or Japanese scientists. So why would Quebecers be any different?

Last point, I promise: you mention the cost of education as a limiting factor, then you jump to the absolutely cream of the academic crop. You're well aware that such colleges and universities charge an arm and a leg to attend, are you? If you really want to go, you'll pay. Else, you go elsewhere.

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

[AndyChrist]

I dunno about the other countries you listed, but Japanese...hell, they might be at a disadvantage because of the 6 years of english that anyone graduating in the last couple of decades had to take. I don't know what they're doing wrong, but I know I picked up Japanese better in 3 years than most japanese get english in 6. Hell, and german in 2 years, for that matter (and my teacher for that sucked).

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

[Leolo]

In QC, Anglophones are a hated minority.

What /.ers must realise is this is only half the story. The bit that Anglos Québecers always omit (either through ingornace or malice) is that 30 years ago they were also the hated opressors.

-Philip

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

[bm_luethke]

I went to montreal a few years back. I went to a few restaurants and was treated well. That is true - though the fact that I was paying them probably had something to do with it.

Out in the streets was another story - I know about three french words - none of them nice polite words. Simply saying "Excuse me, could you please direct me to ?" got one of the few words I recognise quite often. Of course they could have been double hatred for me as I am American also. As the question I asked wasn't exactly what you would call rude I don't think it was what I said. While they was a minority, it was a large enough minority that I encountered it several times a day. Most were indifferent (read ignored me)though that could just be city life. The portion of people that were nice was about the same as the rude (outside of restaurants and the conference).

Having never payed any attention to language squabbles before I can't say I predisposed to experience this. I could care less what people speak.

Outside of the conference/university and resaurants the reception was horrid - the worst I have ever had on travel.

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

[Simonetta]

The purpose of forcing the use of French is British Columbia is to make sure that when the rest of the world has forgotten French (along with all the other irrevelant 'legacy languages') BC will be able to forge secret alliances with far-flung former French-speaking enclaves; hence the Kamloops-Kinshasa Konnection. Smoke some more BC bud and it all begin to make sense. Smoke a little more and even Ottawa will start to make sense.

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

[Papineau]

So it's better to learn a language outside of school. That's what I understand from your post.

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

[Ed Avis]

Yes, I think Elvish was based on bits of various languages, but I don't think it counts as 'derived' from them in the sense of real people speaking one language and morphing it into another.

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

[Omestes]

Might be a troll, don't mean it as one though:

If you are in a country different from the one you pledge loyalty too, then move to where you are proud of. I don't know about Quebecs issues, but I live in Arizona, where we have TONS of Mexicans running around screaming their pride in their motherland, "La RAZA, La RAZA!" This attitude has never made much sense to me, if you like Mexico (France) so damn much, why don't you just go home? I understand the difference in that most of our Mexican are 2nd Generation max, and a lot of the French Canadians are long time familial residents. I still say, move to where your loyalties lie, otherwise you just sound like a hypocrite.

Yes, you can be proud of your roots, I am proud of my forefathers homeland, but I also am first and foremost and American.

Also, this might be a tangent, America is just as guilty (thank god) of only teaching english, Phoenix even passed a proposition making ESL classes limited, even if the damn superintendent didn't want it, and ignored it. (the will of the voters is often ignored in Arizona, the most backward state!). Also in the state constitution it has a clause that all commerce must be in english, this too is ignored. (IANAL, BTW)

There is a VERY fine line between perserving your culture and looking like a moron. France is skirting over to the moron side, with their protection of their film/music, and their protection of language. Good, keep the damn Americanism at bay, I commend that and wish America could keep itself at bay, but you also have to respect the tastes of the people, and recognize that culture EVOLVES, and in a global society culture is going to mush together. To deny those two things, is to look like a nostalgic old fuddy duddy of a nation.

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

[Hydrogenoid]

Nearly nobody uses those words, they are only required for government and administration texts.

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

[Gauchito]

Don't you mean Freedom arrogance?

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

[mattbelcher]

Let's say an arab comes up with an arabic word for something new. Do you think we'd all start using the arabic word?

Sure. Algebra. Admiral. Algorithm. Assassin. Arsenal. Almanac. Artichoke. Azimuth. Azure.

I'll let you do the rest of the alphabet.

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

[tarth]

For example, the word algebra, which was taken from an Arabic book on mathematics: Hisãb al-jabr w'al-muqãbala. Al-jabr was corrupted into that word every middle school child knows and loathes, algebra. And yet, no signs of trying to get rid of it.

Of course, you do have a point. If GWB knew what algebra was, he'd probably be trying to get it replaced. ("Mathermaticating," perhaps?)

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

[john82]

Do you think we'd all start using the arabic word? Ignore the fact that there are different alphabets. Just think of the way the arabic word sounds. Again, do you think we'd use the word? Hell, no. Americans wouldn't stand for it.

Hmm... You mean a word like "Algebra"? Nah, we'd never do anything like THAT. Then again, there was the book "Al Gebr We'l Mukabala" by Al Khwarismi. You can find a reference here or here.

Now as for the French, who are you calling naive? If this was America pulling this stunt (can you say "Freedom Fries") we wouldn't hear some lame ass crap about messing up the language. This is just more anti-Anglo behavior from France. Or do you consider it conicidence that they also have restraints on how much American music can be played on radio stations? That's been around for ages.

Wow, talk about naive.

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

[Shippy]

You're missing my point. Either this word is not really arabic, or it _has_ been changed in pronunciation and/or spelling, which is essentially what the French have done:

Algebra: From al-jabr. Different spelling and pronunciation.
Admiral: Probably the closest one, but this is mostly from Old French and Medieval Latin.
Algorithm: From "algorism". Different spelling.
Assassin: From "hassass", or "hashish user". It wasn't the present form until it passed through French and Italian, at which point it came into English.
Arsenal: Actually italian "arsenale", which is from arabic "assina'a".

Anyway, I could go on and on. The point here is we've changed all of these words in some manner or another to fit into our language better. It flows better and sounds better. This is simply what the French are doing with their own choice of words.

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

[tarth]

I think you mean "Try to think different (like Apple)."

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

[Shippy]

You said the key thing. We "corrupted" the word into algebra because it sounds and flows better in our language. Same thing the French are doing. They "corrupted" our "e-mail" into "courriel" to better fit in with their language.

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

[Shippy]

I've already explained the "Algebra" thing in a couple other posts.

As for the "Freedom Fries" crap, nobody complains because nobody cares. America is turning into an apathetic pile of fat and lazy bastards. The French actually want their language to remain more French than English. Who cares? We're supposed to be the melting pot, not them.

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

[floydigus]

IANAL (...linguist)

But, a quick search on dictionary.com for the word 'mail' shows that there is some evidence for the word having its origins in Old French. Whether this applies for the postal usage (versus in the context of armour for instance) I don't know. Any actual linguists have any more info on this?

This article states that
"Some words inevitably crossed national borders - l'Académie française failed to impose the word courriel as an alternative to email or mail (the Frenchified spelling mél is sometimes used)."

I can understand why the French don't like the English words creeping into their language (e.g. le parking, le weekend), but these words aren't replacing French words, they are used for new concepts. If the French want to get a chance to use French words for new things, then perhaps they should invent some new things of their own.

P.S.

Ah say, ah say, ah say - mah dog 'az no nose!
'Ow does he smell?
'e smells of garlic, and 'e eats onions and ah let 'im shit in ze street!

*Ba-dum-tsssh!*

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

[_KhlER3L]

As a non-bilingual Canadian, I can understand a lot of Parisian French (if only by guessing the 'latinesque' roots and the translating that into english). I can not understand Quebec french.

I think it would be a mistake to equate Quebec french with 'joual', the slang of the Quebecois. Sure, it may represent a unique variation of french, and one similar to ebonics in terms of it's relation to the mother-language, but it is not the only sort of french being spoken. There are many flavors and accents active throughout Quebec.

And I notice that Quebecois can turn off the slang, just as English speakers can speak more or less formally. 'Joual' seems to be something made in addition to a well-grounded understanding of French, rather than something that has taken it's place.

I have spoken to Parisians who were, to form, snobby about their language, and felt that I shouldn't learn Quebec french. They thought it sounded very antiquated, like language old farmers might use. But, the difference is minimal once we get away from 'joual'.

Speaking as a non-linguist, the difference between Parisian and Quebec french in pronounciation and vocabulary seems to be on the order of the difference between American and Irish english. Clearly they are different, and initially incompatible. But it doesn't take long for people to cross over from one to the other.

And as another poster mentioned in this thread, American english has not thrown out it's anglo-saxon roots. In the same way, Quebec french remains a latin language. In written form, Quebec and Parisian french would appear almost identical, except for differences in idiom and minor ones in vocabulary, for example, using 'gens' to the exclusion of 'mecs', a word Parisians prefer. The real problem, I think, is idiom.

_khl - also a non-bilingual anglo

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

[tarth]

No, no corruption going on. Unless by corruption you mean "invention by a Montreal professor and institution by the French government."

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

[jejones]

Yes, we've heard of/read them. For that matter, we've listened to Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Ian and Sylvia, Rush, and Liona Boyd, and having done so, it's that much harder to understand why Canadian broadcasters evidently have to be forced under penalty of law to include Canadian content.

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

[Slack3r78]

I don't see this as "French arrogance" so much as the French trying to prevent their language from turning into a bunch of English words arranged with French grammar. The French aren't the only ones worried about this. German, for example, tends to simply "Germanize" the spelling of English word for anything new. (Do note that IANANGS - I am not a native German speaker) The result being that there are a lot of German words that are essentially the same as the English words. The worry is that, after a while, the language will cease to really be German anymore.

The easiest comparison to what the French are doing, and why, that I can think of is the example of telephone. The "actual" German word is Fernsprechen (ie: curriel), but the more "common" usage is Telefon. I don't see this as anything limited to the French, nor do I see it as arrogance. It's simply trying to keep their language from becoming something that it is not.

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

[jejones]

I couldn't say whether most other languages are as paranoid about purity as French. Mario Pei writes about similar attempts at linguistic purity in Fascist Italy, which had linguists chuckling in some cases because the proposed replacements weren't really Italian (he gave "albergo" for hotel as an example). Icelandic has largely eschewed foreign borrowings, but I don't know whether that's from any notion of fending off supposed cultural hegemony or not.

Japanese borrow words from other languages with the same reckless abandon as English. Some example garaigo: terebi (television), biiru (beer), baikingu ("Viking," but meaning smorgasbord), and one near and dear to /.ers, anime. "Karaoke" is a compound including a garaigo, "oke" (orchestra). They're not all from English: the Portuguese traders who visited Japan left words behind (e.g. "pan," bread) and of course the Japanese borrowed a lot of words (or at least pronunciations) from Chinese, not to mention the ideographs.

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

[andy_fish]

This is simply another example of French arrogance

I think you guys are taking this one action out of context. For a long time, the French government has been actively trying to weed English-isms out of the language, and to keep it "purely" French. In fact, it's possible (not sure on this fact though) that all communication within the government is restricted to pure French words.

Either way, their response to the word "email" was just inevitable, and if anything, it's surprising that it took this long.

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

[jejones]

If you don't understand that each country has its own culture, and that its culture is not the american one, you should go back to school asap.

I recall reading that the French post offices used to stamp letters addressed in Breton "Addresse en Breton interdite" and return them to the sender. Great respect for culture, that.

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

[FurryFeet]

Except, in this case, the country is Canada, and its official languages are both French and English. Quebec has decided to promote one over the other. However, any Canadian should have the right to speak only English.
To follow your analogy, this would be like New Mexico deciding that you can't go to an English school, but to a Spanish one.

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

[dvdeug]

Let's say an arab comes up with an arabic word for something new. Do you think we'd all start using the arabic word?

jihad. alcohol. algebra. (or from another enemy: cosmonaut, perestrokia, vodka). Americans have borrowed many words from other languages, including Arabic.

In any case, it's not a matter of whether or not we would start using the word; it's a case of whether or not the government would dictate that another word be used.

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

[FurryFeet]

A not-so-minor nitpick.
Central America is a part of the continent, from Guatemala and Belice to Panama.
You probably meant Central USA.
Remember, the country is the United States. America is the continent.

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

[AndyChrist]

Only if you're learning it where the language is spoken by most of the population, really.

I met very few japanese people who spoke useable english who hadn't been abroad for at least 6 months.

And my Japanese wasn't ACTIVELY useable until I'd been there a couple of weeks.

Honestly, if I had a point, I don't know what it was.

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

[Tonytheloony]

Your post is complete bullshit, especially your worthless conclusion which shows your complete lack of knowledge concerning anything even remotely associated with french or France. This is ONLY a standardization on a word for use in government ministries, which could have been email, e-mail, mel or something else. They chose courriel, end of story. Personally, I'll continue using email and so will everybody else.

By the way I believe they did much the same thing in Quebec (in Canada for ignorant people such as yourself).

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

[macshit]

Oh, I don't know; it strongly depends on the person, anyway. I'm constantly meeting Japanese who say they haven't studied English since middle-school, but who definitely still can speak it to a functional level -- sure it's slow and rusty, but man, they haven't studied in 15 years! Just the sheer amount of vocabulary they remember boggles my mind (about all I can remember from my high-school french is `Je ne sais pas').

I know the Japanese english-education system is widely derided, and I'm sure many people don't learn much, but it's really amazing what a bit of individual dedication can do...

What I do find odd is that there doesn't really seem to be all that much difference between the above-mentioned sorts, and the ones who are actively studying english as adults.

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

[arkanes]

The evolution of the pronunciation of a word to fit the accent of the people who borrowed it, and then the spelling to fit the pronunciation, is a hell of a lot different than the wholesale replacement of a word or phrase by governmental fiat. Especially when said word is already in popular use.

An excellent example was the "Freedom Fries" debacle, which was (rightfully) treated with scorn and derision by almost every, even in America.

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

[leviramsey]

I was impressed that many Dutch people had almost perfect spoken English, even well outside the standard tourist spots.

Part of that is that, for a long time, the high school gradution exam in the Netherlands was approximately one-quarter in Dutch, one-quarter in German, one-quarter English, and a quarter French.

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

[RodgerDodger]

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.

Of course they can. A government has the perfect right to say what words go into official government reports. They're not going to stomp out the word 'email' in non-government reports, after all.

Furthermore, the government has the duty to define the official language; the education department sets the curriculum by which language skills are taught in school. Most such curriculum tend to avoid the use of slang and jargon, after all.

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

RTFA: the French government is only preventing the use of 'email' in official government documents.

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

[pod]

This dual language thing always interested me.

In Canada, English and French officially have the same legal status. This means, all (at least federal) law much be bilingual. What happens when the translations disagree subtly?

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

[BlackCobra43]

Possessing the Civil Code of Quebec,I can tell you that when translations aren't prefectly in accord there is usually a little note informing the reader of how to interpret the law in question.

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

[Paul Jakma]

Friesland... doh, of course :)

English and dutch are descended from the same language though, undoubtadly - along with modern day German. They are all Germanic languages. (and the germanic languages in themselves borrow much from the scandinavian languages). Modern day english and german have diverged the most, and i'd put dutch as half-way between the two. (weird, just like the geographical positions of the countries :) ).

In the Netherlands a lot of people are blindly using English words

Well, a lot of the english (and hence americans) are blindly using 'dutch' derived words - just the 'dutch' to english 'borrowing' happened 1k years ago, and the dutch borrowing back from english happens today. Language is a fluid thing, borrowing and mixing according to social, political and economic needs and events. The Friesians, Angles, Saxons and other germanic tribes dominated 1k years ago and brought their languages to Briton. The language of their descendants became established as the de-facto second language of most of the world due to the empire-building of these descendants, and the current economic and cultural supremacy of a former colony established by those descendants. 'Tis how language works.

simple because it is ... 'vet'

but that's a dutch word :) least, the english->dutch translation of "dierenarts" makes no sense. The dutch to english translation -> "fat", and indeed that might be english slang amongst kids these days too (some very weird teenage slang in use in england these days - i could imagine kids says "thats fat!" anyway.). Actually, I'd say dutch usage predates any english usage. (ie i havnt actually heard that term used in english slang, least not in Ireland/Scotland. But i've heard the term used in NL at least several years ago.)

I suggest the English/Americans should adopt the Dutch word "gezellig", because they do'n have a decent equivalent.

Daar ben ik met je mee eens :) - the closest english translation would be "nice" with a connotation of "comfortable". (but even that doesnt really capture it, does it? :) )

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

[afidel]

What's the most funny is when the French ban English words that are taken from French, like Fax, it is short for Faxcimile which derives from French, yet the French buerocrats decided to ban it from commercial speech! I think this was true of almost 1/3rd the "English" words they banned several years ago.

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

[Carewolf]

And how is this different from americans, and per say.. new yorkers?

Americans always state that it is the best country in the world to live in, and the american culture the most tolerant (dispite all the counter-evidence) How is this in anyway different from French people claiming to be more cultured?

Arrogance is arrogance. The only difference is that you happen to think you are actually right ( People often make that mistake)

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

[dcstimm]

Hamburg is a city in Western NY, that is where the term hamburger came from...

Gezz

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

[catsidhe]

The Romans had a perfectly good word for 'king': rex. This is cognate with words like rajah in Indic languages, righ/rí in Irish gaelic and the suffix '-ric' in Early German names like 'Alaric'. For political reasons, rex became disparaged after Rome became a republic. Thus, when Julius Caesar et al became effective kings of Rome, they could not call themselves that, so they used a perfectly acceptable military term: 'commander' imperator. Julius' surname later became synonymous with the position as well.

Thus in French you get Roy, derived directly from rex, which is found in England in Norman names like 'FitzRoy' (Son of the King). English imported many Latin words directly, so someone can be 'regal'. Imperator turned into Empereur (my spelling may be off, je ne parlez pas Français...) and 'Emperor', which was used as a rank of kingship over and above that of 'king'.

'Caesar' was borrowed into the Teutonic and Slavic lands, as you said, as Kaiser, Tsar (and Czar comes to mind also, but I am not sure from where. Hungary?).

'King' derives from the Germanic word which was 'cyning' in Anglo-Saxon, and is 'könig' or similar in many German and Scandinavian languages.

Mind you, that many of these terms are understandable, and even familiar, means that the chains of borrowing are extensive and convoluted.

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

[easter1916]

No different than Dubliners, New Yorkers, Londoners, etc.

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

[plalonde2]

However, every other province, excepting New Brunswick, has chosen to promote only English, over French.

Where I come from turnaround is fair play

And your analogy is actually being told that you can't go to a spanish school unless your mother tongue is spanish - an option I believe is not available to anyone in New Mexico.

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

[plalonde2]

One clarification: The french were in Quebec *long* before the English came by and conquered. There is more history of French occupation of Quebec than of English occupation of the rest of the continent. I dare say you should be telling the Anglos to go home, not the french.

Mind you, people are so much into rewriting history these days. Cultural imperialism is imperialism just as much as that done with guns.

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

[flyneye]

This is SOOO COOOOL this is the longest thread ive seen yet that morphed into so completely different a subject as to make this about canada,language barriers,politics,blah,blah,blah.
sweeney37 i salute you and sentence you to a year in juarez as a local.
To the rest of you,you sound like like like....bleating whiners....
and you...yeah you i know you got work to do and the rest of you have jobs now move along...nothing to see here.

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

[yuri benjamin]

I have spoken to Parisians who were, to form, snobby about their language, and felt that I shouldn't learn Quebec french. They thought it sounded very antiquated, like language old farmers might use.

This reminds me of the difference between dutch and afrikaans. I speak dutch, but I struggle with afrikaans. afrikaans did in fact evolve from the dutch used by farmers. boer is the dutch word for farmer.

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

[gpvillamil]

you mean "aisu karimu" and "shidi puraia" i think

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

[Seidoger]

Anglo universities don't get any of the juicy funding that the French ones do

Yeah but i don't think they need funding.. just look at McGill or Concordia and compare it to UQAM for example.. McGill has tons of cash in their coffers..

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

[konmaskisin]

When was the last time you went into a restaurant and asked for "hamburger"? How far would that get you ??

Commercial firms spend **billions** "inventing" language like "Big Mac", "Kleenex" and "WindowsXP" and you make fun of governments??

BTW it is - l'Office de langue française ...

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

[AndroidCat]

BTW it is - l'Office de langue française

I don't live there any more, so they can bite my hairy anglo ass!

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

[Mr_Silver]

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"...

Well sort of. They're enforcing the change for all government documents, publications and web sites - not the general public or businesses.

The best way a government can get a new word accepted by the public is to practise what they preach.

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

[benhaha]

Where I come from turnaround is fair play

It's not turnaround at all. Francophone Quebequois discriminating against Anglophone Quebequois is in no way a mirror image of English speaking canadians discriminating against speakers of other languages in other parts of the country. It's really simple: There are different people involved. That's like saying "some people over there are not being fair to some people who speaks the same language as me, so over here I'm not going to be fair to people who speak the same language as them". Why does that sound plausable to anyone??

To put it another way, If I punch some fellow (called Smith) on your street, and you smash the headlights of a fellow (called Jones) on my street, that's not turnaround, because Jones had nothing to do with my argument with Smith, and neither did you.

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

[Hognoxious]

When was the last time you went into a restaurant and asked for "hamburger"?

About three weeks ago.

How far would that get you ??

Nowhere at all, but then a restaurant isn't a method of transportation. However I did get some kind of flat disc of meat in a bread thing, it tasted OK so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Commercial firms spend **billions** "inventing" language like "Big Mac", "Kleenex" and "WindowsXP" and you make fun of governments??

Commercial firms do it with their money. Governments do it with *our* money. Personally, I can think of better ways for them to spend it.

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

[Hognoxious]

I don't think it's unreasonable for a country to choose an official language and use it.

When Quebec becomes a country, fucktard, come back & tell us about it, eh?

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

[Hognoxious]

Well said, mod that up someone.

It's none of the government's business if you write on your shopfront in Arabic, it's your right.

If you did, I wouldn't go there, but that's my right.

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

[Hognoxious]

To your second paragraph: same thing with healthcare. The public system offers you something. If you don't like what's offered (financed by everybody), you're free to go get a doctor which is not affiliated to the RAMQ.

Except that one segment of the population can get what they want without paying for it, and the other do have to pay for it - to get, essentially, the same thing.
Sorry pal, your analogy's broken.

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

[Hognoxious]

and eating spaghetti and meatballs (which is never seen in Italy)

Bzzt, wrong. Polpette/polpettini are often eaten with spaghetti in Sicily.

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

[Jonner]

Read the post again; I'm pretty sure dbretton meant Central America (CentroAmérica). Where in the Central US are the people "attempt[ing] to identify themselves with (South American/European) counterparts?"

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

[Hognoxious]

One clarification: The french were in Quebec *long* before the English came by and conquered.

Queue jumping French twat. Another clarification - I think you'll find some other people were there before them, too.

There is more history of French occupation of Quebec than of English occupation of the rest of the continent. I dare say you should be telling the Anglos to go home, not the french.

It's one thing to say "Anglos go home", but another to make us do it, eh?

Do you ever play pool/snooker? Ever heard the phrase "winner stays on"?

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

[Hognoxious]

The Quebec government has teams of linguists to come up with words[...] But at least they had a chance to come up with a french generic term.

Perhaps if they had teams of scientists and stuff instead, they might invent something. Then they'd get to call it whatever they want, instead of pissing in the wind.

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

[BrokenHalo]

Permit me to divert this thread from becoming an incipient flame war... :-)

History should tell us that attempts on the part of the French Government to regulate their language have always failed. Hence le camping, l'autostop and so on. They might not care for it, but that's a part of the evolution of language. Further, if a language ceases to evolve, it dies.

The English language, for instance, is now a fairly heady mixture of Anglo-Saxon with Norman and French, along with admixtures of heaps of other languages such as Chinese, Sanskrit and so on. There's nothing unhealthy about that.

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

[jenesuispasgoth]

Normally, lanaguages evolve by their speakers, not by a government based commission.

Wrong. French became the official language in France during the 16th century. Before that, several variations of low-Latin were used to communicate in the different regions that were part of France. It was a state decision to impose a certain vocabulary to people.
Just because the government decides that some words must be told in French don't mean English words aren't supposed to be used. But if French had it the way they "should" according to what I often read on this topic, they WOULD be speaking only English when it came to computer science. Every science originates from a few countries. When doing some algebra, do you intend to use Arabic words ? No, you use English words, and that's for the better.

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

[MrBlint]

In the EU we arn't allowed to call a hamburger a hamburger because it does not contain ham. Stupid people might get confused! Instead we have to call it a beef-burger. This leads on to such linguistic travesties as chicken-burger and fish-burger and lamb-burger.

By the same logic a frankfurter should be called a pork-furter because it does not contain the remains of someone called Frank.

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

[danaris]

Algorithm: From "algorism". Different spelling.

Actually, if I recall correctly from my Middle Eastern History course, it's from Al-Kwarezmi, a brilliant Arabian mathematician during the time most of Europe was struggling with the Dark Ages.

Also, I'd disagree that this is what the French are doing. We are Anglicizing various words (or hearing native speakers say them right and then completely mangling them, or just writing them down the way we think they sound) and adding them to our language. They are not making the word "email" more French, they are saying it's prohibited in certain areas, and you must use a completely different word instead (I don't think "courriel" sounds much like "email", except, perhaps, for the "l").

Dan Aris

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

[Thuktun]

"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. "

The Culture Ministry has declared "e-mail" to be a non-word, double-plus ungood.

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

[hesiod]

> I don't know what they're doing wrong, but I know I picked up Japanese better in 3 years than most japanese get english in 6

While I can't personally speak for the difficulty in learning Japanese, I've heard that English is very difficult to learn properly. Especially after being brought up on something so dissimilar as Japanese (or Chinese, for that matter). I've taken German & Spanish (total 8 years in the two) and only truly understood English after finishing those classes, despite the fact I knew little more than english for 14 years of my life.

(and just so I don't look like a complete fool, I know my sig doesn't translate properly -- it's intentional)

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

[75bhp]

If you were middle aged or had a family of your own I'd take you seriously. However, if you are, say under 25yo, then I'd be inclined to take what you say with a pinch of salt.

If I was French I would be happy that my Government was looking to keep my language alive in the spirit that is French. It's not for us to complain about what they do for their citizens. It's their culture. Likewise with yours.

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

[graikor]

" 'FitzRoy' (Son of the King)"

----
Well, yes, but "Fitz" was pretty much exclusively used to denote illegitimate sons.

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

[Omestes]

But unless I am COMPLETELY mistaken, they are in a predominately english speaking country.

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

[m_frankie_h]

Which reminds me...

There has been an initiative to rename Hamburg (the German city) to ``Veggieburg''. About as reasonable as the courriel idea.

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

[Sepper]

Actually there are lots of linguists in Quebec that works hard at defining French words for a lot of things that didn't have one.

If you want to, you can check the Quebec 'official' translation for each computer-related term. The site is in French only.

Or you could check Wikipedia.org on Quebecois French

But i can imagine that most of you just don't care :)

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

[Outland Traveller]

I've spent some time in Quebec, and noticed with a great deal of alarm to extent to which the language police operate.

When I travel, I'm used to natural language barriers. But in Quebec, the barrier is anything but natural. Blatantly legislating cultural barriers to the extent that Quebec has, is something entirely different. It's a form of active, in-your-face prejudice, as evil and as wrongheaded as racism. It's only one step away from forcing english speakers to use different busses and restrooms. Quebec was a shameful mar on my otherwise wonderful experience with Canada.

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

[jo42]

I dunno what part of Canada you live in, but around here (GTA) the official languages are Chinese, Hindi and Farsi...

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

[alexandre]

hehe that's funny cause it's my father and he's actually from France. ;-)

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

[bad_sheep]

It is true, but in the case of fax, I don't think it has been banned since some people told me :
"Pierre, faxez moi ces graphiques des ventes !"
("Hey Pierre, fax me these sales figures !" :)

My name is Pierre :)

Seriously, the French language is elvolving, and some words even changed their meaning :
ie: opportunite in French changed it's meaning for a few years (only in the commonly spoken language), since in French, the meaning is not the same as opportunity... but many people use it now with that meaning due to the english influence.

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

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, I may not be able to spell 'em, but if I go to Japan and say "ice cream(u)" or "cd player" everyone will know what I mean, which is what I'm getting at.

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

[catsidhe]

Well, yes, but "Fitz" was pretty much exclusively used to denote illegitimate sons.

That's as may be, but etymologically, 'fitz' Norm.Fr from 'fils' Early Fr from 'filius' L. = 'son'.

And of course, the legitimate son of the king was called 'prince'. :-)

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

[Noren]

Are there Spanish public schools in the southern US?

I'm not certain about the southern US, but depending on how you define "Spanish public schools" there are some in the northern US, less than 300km from Canada.

This is somewhat controversial, and is only for the first few years of schooling, but in some elementary schools some students are taught excusively in spanish for a few years. (That's what "Emerson classrooms encompass both English and Spanish instruction with many bilingual students transitioning to English in the intermediate grades." means.)

Just to be different!

[KingDaveRa]

Well, why would they want to use an English word! Oh the shame!!!!

Re:Just to be different!

[sydb]

"Anglisms" [actually...]

Try anglicism or, if you're talking about words specific to British English, briticism.

Re:Just to be different!

[Glytch]

Not everywhere. Acadian francophones (mostly around northeast and eastern New Brunswick) rank almost as high as anglophones and japanese speakers when it comes to adopting words and phrases from other languages. Much more pragmatic and sensible people than the purists.

Re:Just to be different!

[Transient0]

Actually there is a pretty common pidgin spoken in Quebec, particularly in the cities, which goes (half-jokingly) by the name Franglais. It goes way beyond the use of Anglicisms. Both French and English vocabulary mix together, but even more interestingly, the grammars seem to mix seamlessly, resulting in utterences like:

"Wanting you du biere?"

(translation: "Do you want some beer?")

Re:Just to be different!

[Trolling4Dollars]

I like your criticism. :p

Re:Just to be different!

[Daengbo]

In my home's pidgin, it would be "You like one beer or what, eh?"

Re:Just to be different!

[GnuVince]

De quossé are you talking about toé? Franglais? Ya no one in Quebec qui speak de même!

Re:Just to be different!

[DJCouchyCouch]

You should check out Acadian :)

"Worry pas!"
"je feel right pas bien"
"fuck off d'icitte, mon grous fuckin' de asshole!"

DJCC

Re:Just to be different!

[sbszine]

"Wanting you du biere?"

(translation: "Do you want some beer?")

Yes. Yes I do.

Re:Just to be different!

[light101]

I have no idea where you heard this in Quebec but that's a bit hard to believe. Maybe if you are talking about Acadians, then I would have to agree with you with a touch of scepticism. I know that the people like to mix French and English together which reminds me of what we are, a growing culture. Appropriating the surrounding and making it our own. To some its ok, to other its 'un affront', to me its just plain dumb. Either you speak french or english, not 2 at the same time. Like my mother say, dont speak with your mouth full. I dont know what that means to this but hé, she's right!

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:if the french had created e-mail...

[Anne_Nonymous]

Stupidity is equal opportunity

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Brainboy]

Except that i think that the 'freedom' movement never got mucsupport even in Capitol Hill. Now if french fries were orginally Iraqi fries, I think maybe the whole freedom thing would have caught on. After all it happened before in United states. Have you ever eaten Home Fries, remember that before the World War (1 or 2 i forget) they were called German Fries.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[guile*fr]

except the fact that socialist were ousted last year. and 35hrs were only a (costly) fiction, eg managers, independants et public officers were exempted (the laters didnt even worked that much for a start)

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[roard]

and you could add that you aren't banned to work more, 35hours is just the *legal* working hours for a week, but you could do additional hours of works -- it's just that they will then be paid with a higher ratio.
But as you say, anyway many people were "exempted", and even more, this law served many companies to calculate the working hours not on a week basis, but on the entire year ("annualisation"). So for some people, while "at 35hours" works in fact way, way more, and even with very weird schedules.
In many cases, this law screwed the employees. And for the some cases were it didn't, well, the current liberal gvt practically shunted the law.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[be-fan]

Actually, I don't think this is a bad idea. I don't know if we should be regulating it as such, but its not exactly without precedence (child labor laws). The main problem is that the American 50 hour work week (Americans take less days of in a year than the *Japanese*) is destroying the social structure. You've suddenly got a whole bunch of children who effectively grow up with part-time parents, and it really shows.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[jcirer]

You have made me laugh almost falling from the chair...

So far the best thing in this hot summer day...

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Gumshoe]

What in the world does any of that have to do with socialism?

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[puckhead]

"The main problem is that the American 50 hour work week is destroying the social structure."

That would explain why social conditionsfor the chronicly unemployed are so great.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[1u3hr]

>>"The main problem is that the American 50 hour work week is destroying the social structure."
>That would explain why social conditionsfor the chronicly unemployed are so great.

And it also explains why people remain unemployed, because companies can just get existing staff to work themselves into an early grave instead of hiring new staff, under the implied or explicit threat of losing their job completely.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Tseran]

That's just it....enough mindless sheep get mad at a country for doing something, they try and change the name of something to suit their personal dislike. Well, if that is the case, I think its time we made a few changes in other foods! I want to eat Impeachment Cheese, not American Cheese. Everyone says the French are cowards because they 'let' the Germans in during WW2....Yeah, then they all went underground and sabotaged their operations and brought information to the Allies at risk to their own lives, and fought them in the alleys. They are more courageous than most Americans will admit. Now, considering that Bush isn't exactly what we call reliable when it comes to telling us what REALLY happened, who is to say what really happened. After all, everyone has all but forgotten his father's involvement in supporting some folks back when he was with Regan. These folks back then were called the Al-Quida Freedom Fighters. Wonder what happened to them?

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[mikedaisey]

We might be calling it that, but it wouldn't be *legislated*...and therein lies the difference.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[jenesuispasgoth]

If you are caught working more than 35 hours a week you will be fined.

Well, you should maybe inform yourself before making such stupid statements. The official number of hours of work per week in France is effectively 35 hours, but you don't get fined for working more hours. At worst, your compagny gets fined, but that isn't even likely to happen, unless it is an amount of hours that is quite exagerated.

Police go to parking lots and mark tires to make sure you're not there too long.

Please do check your information before repeating hearsays.

Just another reason why socialism is bad.

The actual government is a right-winged, capitalist one. Except for 15 years from 1981 to 2002 (with some interruptions), that was almost the only time there was a left-winged party in France.

Please check your sources.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Ghorin]

Unemployment in France is now at 12%, and it's rising. Same in Germany. He, you're a bit late, that rate was good many years ago. Today our unemployement is 9.9% which is not good, I agree with that. And as for US, you're still a bit late as the US unemployement rate is now 6.4%. And our unemployement rate is rising as in most europeans and north-american countries. France is not loosing jobs because of the 35h law but because the global world economy is bad everywhere.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[xagon7]

Laugh all you want. YOU are the ignorant dumbass.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[djmurdoch]

Twenty-five years ago, the communists on campus held up Albania as a paradigm of socialist virtue. Since nobody knew anything about it, so you could make up statistics and nobody would be able to refute them.


In Iceland, children can work part-time at 8. Yes, 8. 50% of the money earned must be put aside for education. But Iceland has higher literacy and lower crime than the vast majority of Western nations, as well as excellent health and almost full employment. Certainly, you'd have to provide some pretty strong evidence to refute the Icelandic approach.


Iceland, the new Albania.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[plugger]

Could you give us the reference to the Bible book, chapter and verse on which you base that statement?

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Brainboy]

After all, everyone has all but forgotten his father's involvement in supporting some folks back when he was with Regan. These folks back then were called the Al-Quida Freedom Fighters. Wonder what happened to them?

I don't think its been forgotten, it does get mentioned from time to time. BBut I think everyone has learned the lesson of The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not Nessecerily My Friend Now repeat that to yourself 3 times. After all, that's how we ended up with Saddaim also. I could point out historical examples but they just would be relevent.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[sql*kitten]

Iceland, the new Albania.

I've never been to Albania, but I have been to Iceland. It's hardly obscure.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[djmurdoch]

The reports about the Albanian worker's paradise were based on first-hand evidence too.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Iceland, the new Albania.

Yeah, but does Albania have Bjork? Answer me that!

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[be-fan]

I've noticed this too, and its very interesting to compare it to other countries where the amount of work people do isn't nearly as much. Take, for example, where I'm from, Bangladesh. There, the middle class* has enough time to actually come home from work to eat lunch. In the evening, they have enough time to get together and talk about politics, the world, etc. Lots of people (especially older people, who are taken care of by their children) can sit around a coffee shop and yell at each other about which political party is right. Over here, after a long day at work, you just want to plop down on your ass and watch Will and Grace. I know that's what I do.

PS> Middle class means something different there than it does here. We're talking about educated people who have money, but not so much that they don't have to work for it.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[anthony_dipierro]

The idea was that if you restrict the numbers of hours people worked, the companies would be forced to hire more people. That might work in an economy where people are interchangeable - for example, unskilled or semi-skilled labourers can move freely from farm to factory. Unfortunately, it can't work in a modern economy in which workers are specialists.

Umm, maybe it's supposed to be obvious, but... Why not?

Rather than reducing unemployment, it reduced economic activity across the board.

This happened in France and Germany, so you claim. But two examples hardly allow someone to conclude that something "can't work," especially when there were millions of other factors involved in each of the examples.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[be-fan]

I have read the Bible. In the current political climate here in the US, Jesus would be labeled a communist...

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[anthony_dipierro]

Actually, I don't think this is a bad idea.

Personally I'd prefer 10 or 20 hours. But then you'd have to raise the minimum wage. $50-100 a week is not exactly something one can reasonably live off.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[sql*kitten]

Umm, maybe it's supposed to be obvious, but... Why not?

Because if you cut the hours that an employee in profession X can work, and there are no more qualified X'ers in the economy, then less of X gets done. A modern economy needs lots of people with very specialized skills. If you restrict the amount of X that gets done, it has a knock-on effect onto Y and Z too.

Now, if the French economy was based on unskilled and semiskilled labour, their idea might have worked, because there are much lower barriers to people doing whatever job needs to be done. The person-hour is a commodity. Someone working on a farm could do his 35 hours, then have his job done by an unemployed assembly-line worker. But, if you start placing artificial restrictions on high-skill jobs, then there is less flexibility - unemployed lawyers can't fill the position left by a surgeon who's done his 35 hours. If the networking engineer has done his 35 hrs, and there aren't any more to hand, then maybe the programmers can't work without the LAN.

So, the result is that a lot of extra latency is introduced into the economy, slowing everything down. This increases unemployment, because less work being done means less demand for supporting work to be done, and so on.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Lars T.]

So why do you Americans constantly invent new words instead of using the perfectly good originals? It's Pommes Frites and Bratkartoffeln. And when you're litaraly translating, don't look up the wrong words (Meerrettich is searedish, not horseradish - Meer = sea, ocean not Maehre = horse, mare - actually that's wrong too, it should be Mehrrettich, mehr = more, greater).

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Lars T.]

Google-Man to the rescue!

Child Labour in Europe

CHILD LABOUR IN ICELAND

Excerpt From the EI Barometer

CHILD LABOUR: Children under the age of 16 are prohibited from working in factories, on ships, or in other places that are hazardous or require hard labour. Children of 14 or 15 years old may be employed part-time or during school vacations in light, nonhazardous work. Their work hours must not exceed the ordinary work hours of adults in the same occupation. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration effectively enforces child labour regulations.

Worst Forms of Child Labour Data: Iceland For the year 2000, the ILO projects that there will be 0 economically active children between the ages of 10-14. (ILO, International Labour Office - Bureau of Statistics, Economically Active Population 1950-2010, STAT Working Paper, ILO 1997)

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[anthony_dipierro]

Because if you cut the hours that an employee in profession X can work, and there are no more qualified X'ers in the economy, then less of X gets done.

I thought it would just mean that more people would get qualified for profession X. OK, sure, there's going to be a transition period, but that's just an implementation detail.

If you restrict the amount of X that gets done, it has a knock-on effect onto Y and Z too.

Even if this is true, which is an arguable point, how is getting less of X, Y, and Z done equivalent to failure?

I mean, OK, I agree that a maximum work week wouldn't be a legitimate thing for a government to force upon people. But that's a lot different from saying it would be a bad thing, or that it wouldn't work. It would be a bad thing for those who want to work hard most of the time and live extravagantly the rest. It would be a good thing for those who'd rather work less and enjoy life more, though perhaps not as extravagantly.

So, the result is that a lot of extra latency is introduced into the economy, slowing everything down.

Perhaps if it's strictly enforced. But surely temporary exceptions could be made.

This increases unemployment, because less work being done means less demand for supporting work to be done, and so on.

If it increases unemployment, then you've set the maximum too high. Lower the max and spread out the people even more.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Trelane]

It's not just Pommes Frites and French Fries (och, die boese, boese Amis); it's also Chips, patates fregide, frieten, ranskalaiset perunat, etc. (see also, The Wiktionary) The boese Amis aren't the only ones to rename the dish. (Query: is Pommes Frites the name the original Belgian inventor(s) gave it? Back it up, per favore.)

So far as I know, Bratkartoffeln is not about Chips, it's about fried potatoes. Different animals. I was served Bratkartoffeln in Germany; it consisted of sliced potatoes, cooked in a pan on the stove, with onions, maybe ham (has been a while), and other stuff. Same as in Amiland. We just translated the name from the German. Or did you translate it from English? Or did it get invented elsewhere? Or at the same time? Back up your assertion that the Germans invented it and that it was named Bratkartoffeln.

Stimmt, Meerrettich is called horseradish in the USA. It sounds like "Mare radish" to the non-German speaker, and is quite possibly mistranslated. Or maybe you should call it the ancient Egyptians called it instead of "ocean radish".

We don't change every word, though. consider (as a very small taste):

• soiree
  
• rendez-vous
  
• patio
  
• rodeo
  
• zeitgeist
  
• ansatz
  

They are all English words, borrowed directly from other languages. There are tons more. Point is, it's fairly random, due to the random nature of poeple.

Nun jetzt, im Ernst. Lass' den Hass, bitte. Die Welt waere viel gemuetlicher wenn wir einander lieben und verstehen koennten.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[vegetablespork]

And he'd have been prosecuted by the FIAA (Fishing Industry Association of Armenia) for copying and sharing their intellectual property.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Kelz]

Actually the US government did not say that you cannot say french fries in government. The term "freedom fries" was probably made by a bunch of far-rightwingers who are unaware that "frenching" is a manner of cooking food, not named for the country.

The closest thing we have to the so-called culture police is the RIAA.

Re:if the french had created e-mail...

[Jonner]

You're absolutely right. It has nothing to do with the current political climate. He was a communist, though not a Marxist or Leninist (sp?) or Trotskyite (sp?). The early church was definitely a commune, one that worked. That is, it was a groups of like minded people sharing their possessions.

It seems that communism can work well in the small. It's when you try to apply it at the state or national level that it always screws things up.

Maybe the problem is really that any system on too large a scale becomes corrupt. A capalist system develops more naturally than a communist one, so it lasts longer on a large scale, but eventually, it falls apart as well.

Nice, the poster wrote courriel wrong.

[jesco]

Interesting, the submitter of this story didn't even manage to write courriel correct... despite it being displayed two lines above...

Re:Nice, the poster wrote courriel wrong.

[jesco]

>> You mean the poster didn't write it "correctly", not "correct."

Doh!

Its about time

[ThomasFlip]

France and other countries have had to suffer long enough using english vocabulary for tech related terminology.

Re:Its about time

[Guppy06]

I see it as comeuppance for all the damage William the Conquerer did to the English language. I think it's funny that they're pitching a hissy-fit about "e-mail" ater subjecting England to a long series of royalty that didn't even speak English.

But I suppose it's only funny on the giving end. :)

Re:Its about time

[jsmyth]

France and other countries have had to suffer long enough using english vocabulary for tech related terminology.

"Suffer" is probably a bit too much of a fnord to use accurately. To wit - the English language has borrowed several terms from others, like ombudman, galore, smorgasbord, and I could probably go on and on. Even from the French: (Eau de) Cologne, nonchalant, cavalier, chandelier, deja vu, chauffeur, pirouette, flambée, etc.

Many many French words are used in cooking. Does that mean anglophones should boycott those words and use our own? Languages migrate and evolve, to force them to do otherwise is unnatural.

In Irish, we have tried the same - there are words for "bicycle", "computer", "parcel" etc. which are never used in real life, and most people experience them for the last time in school, before arriving in the real world and using the words "bicycle", "computer", and "parcel" within the Irish language, albeit in a grammatically correct way.

Re:Its about time

[marcovje]

English borrowed a _lot_ of words from the French (and latin)
It's easy to spot them if you also know English either German or Dutch, or both.
Reading old-English texts also helps.

Every word that differs from the Germanic mean (e.g. as I now very unscientifically do by comparing with Dutch and German) is probably based on some french or latin borrow word.

As an example there are a lot more hidden in your post above: "accurately", "language" (lingua), "force", "natural", "experience", "school", "arriving", "correct"

And I'm in dubio about "real", "grammar", and (!) "mail" (Dutch and German use "post" for Mail)

(but it is hard to say which are french, and which
are latin borrow words)

However to get back on topic, its better to put a break on borrow words. Local pronounciation will probably make the words differ from English anyway, so there is no point in it really.

Re:Its about time

[nickos]

What's funny is that William the Conquerer was a Norman. The Normans (north men) were Danes who had invaded and settled in the north-west of france. Marrying the local women, their offspring spoke a bastardised French that was quite different to the regular French language. When Will conquered England he conquered it from regular Danes who had already influenced the local language. If you listen to English people from the north or south of the country, you will hear French influenced intonation in the south, and Scandinavian influenced intonation in the north.

Re:Its about time

[jaywee]

from webster:

Main Entry: (2)mail
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English male, from Old French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German malaha bag
Date: 13th century
1 chiefly Scottish : BAG, WALLET
2 a : something sent or carried in the postal system b : a conveyance that transports mail c : messages sent electronically to an individual (as through a computer system)
3 : a nation's postal system -- often used in plural

Re:Its about time

[marcovje]

While I don't really get the Etymology line,
(if I understand it right, it's germanic in origin,
but it came to Middle English via "Old French" (and is that French or Frankish?))

it seems that I'm wrong, and it is Germanic in origin.

The other two "in dubio's" seem to be latinisms though:

Real \Re"al\, a. [LL. realis, fr. L. res, rei, a thing: cf. F.
r['e]el. Cf. {Rebus}.]
1. Actually being or existing; not fictitious or imaginary;
as, a description of real life.

Grammar \Gram"mar\, n. [OE. gramere, OF. gramaire, F. grammaire
Prob. fr. L. gramatica Gr ?, fem. of ? skilled in grammar,
fr. ? letter. See {Gramme}, {Graphic}, and cf. {Grammatical},
{Gramarye}.]
1. The science which treats of the principles of language;
the study of forms of speech, and their relations to one
another; the art concerned with the right use aud
application of the rules of a language, in speaking or
writing.

Re:Its about time

[Guppy06]

"The French have had one significant long term victory in their existence"

What's worse: Napoleon doesn't count, either. He was a Corsican.

I got One Word for Them...

[Greyfox]

"Crossandwitch."

This is stupid

[theefer]

I speak french, and I just find this "oh-quick-translate-this-english-words" habit sickening. This word, courriel, is crap. It just sucks hard. (and you're lucky, this is not the worst!).

I help translate the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter from english to french, but I'll really find me sick if I have to write courriel instead of email. English-speaking people don't bitch about "rendez-vous", "à propos", etc. This french habit is just arrogance.

I'll keep using email, internet, web, thank you very much.

Re:This is stupid

[mlush]

English-speaking people don't bitch about "rendez-vous", "à propos", etc.

Probably something to do with English being mostly made up of foreign words

This french habit is just arrogance.

To the French arrogance is not just a habit, its a way of life

Re:This is stupid

[Dalroth]

Hah, good, this is what I like to hear.

It's not the fact that some people in France what to keep their language pure that bother's me (good for them, but good luck making it actually happen). What bothers me is when some govermnet agency decides to come in and start regulating this kind of thing (even if it isn't a law yet, it's only a matter of time if people don't fight back).

When the government is telling you how you should speak, well, you've got a lot more serious problems then what to call an Email.

Re:This is stupid

[Brainboy]

Probably something to do with English being mostly made up of foreign words

Especially, American English. British english could be considered more pure. But then again, IANAL (I Am Not A Linguist)

Re:This is stupid

[Guppy06]

"British english could be considered more pure."

Actually, I remember reading in a textbook somewhere that American English is closer to the language of Shakespear than the British variety.

Of course, I am not a linguist...

Re:This is stupid

[Lars T.]

To Americans arrogance is something they only recognize in others.

Re:This is stupid

[CatPieMan]

Reminds me of the banning of the words 'air bag' and 'walkman' from about 6-7 years ago. I also remember that a tv personality could get in trouble for using the term 'shut up'.

As far as I know, according to the transportation department (I don't know the exact title), an 'air bag' is some 4 or 5 word noun that describes it as a bag that inflates or something like that.

At least, this was true a couple of years ago when I was in High School and my french teacher showed us a movie on it. It might not be the case anymore.

-CPM

Re:This is stupid

[the_2nd_coming]

stand up for your free speech rights then!!!

use E-Mail rather than that stupid new word.

if you get arrested or something, just think of the news you will make!!!

"person arrested for exercising their right to free speech"

Re:This is stupid

[Papineau]

As has already been mentionned, it's only for government agencies and related (and hence their employees, at least in official communications, whether internal or external). I sure hope that the southern US states insist that their employees don't use the word "nigger" in those circumstances.

Insisting on the use of one word (or insisting on the non-usage of another) can be a bad idea sometimes, but there's a whole lot of times when it's a good idea.

Re:This is stupid

[eht]

We recognize it in ourselves, but our arrogance is something to be proud of, other's arrogance is something to be ashamed of.

Re:This is stupid

[mlush]

To Americans arrogance is something they only recognize in others.

Comming from a land that has spent the last few hundred years scrapping with the French, I feel simply calling them arrogant is quite restrained :-)

Re:This is stupid

[Trelane]

To Americans arrogance is something they only recognize in others.

Dein Spruch selbst war arrogant, und du hast es ja (soweit ich weiss) nicht erkannt.

Tja, fuer die Deutsche ist Arroganz etwas, was sie nur in anderen erkennen knnen. N, ich kenne zu viele nicht-arrogante Deutsche. War wohl nur einen Vorurteil, genau wie Deiner. ;)

(ps: as one of the arrogant, ignorant, stupid, fremdenfeindliche Amis, I rather like the word (courriel). Has a nice ring to it.)

Re:This is stupid

[s4ltyd0g]

Yeah, well I speak french too. I'm not french though, are you? If you ask me, a language that doesn't adapt and evolve over time is a dead language.

Now if you really spoke french, you'd know that courriel isn't a "quick-translate" of any english words. The french word for mail is courrier. The term courriel is merely the contraction of courrier electronique, which is french for electronic mail.

Re:This is stupid

[sql*kitten]

Probably something to do with English being mostly made up of foreign words

That is not a weakness of English, tho', but one of its greatest strengths - it can freely adapt to whatever use is required for it. That's why English is the universal language of commerce - the de facto lingua franca - you can just learn it and speak it and if you make something up and it's useful enough, everyone else will start using your new vocabulary too. No other language is as practical and useful in the real world as English.

Re:This is stupid

[andyf]

In my car, where the airbag warning is (on one side of the sun visor) there is an English warning: "Air Bag Warning" and in French: "Attention Sac Gonflable". I'm not saying that there isn't some phrase like Bag of Inflatable Emergency Air or something, but in practice "sac gonflable" is used, at least in North America.

Re:This is stupid

[Daimaou]

However, it is not a natural evolution of your language. Apparently "email" was the natural evolution of your language, but the French Language Police didn't like an English word creeping into their beloved French so they, artificially, created "courriel".

That, my friend, is not the evolution of your language.

What I would suggest, instead of artificially creating new French terms, is that the French government create a French only internet so French people can keep their French blinders on and keep up the facade that France is still a relevant, trend setting nation.

Re:This is stupid

[Dark Lord Seth]

You should see german tourists... My god, those people are walking concentrations of arrogance and taste for cheap beer. Then again, ALL tourists are arrogant except Japanese tourists, who are remarkably polite though a bit too curious. I wonder why tourists are arrogant anyways? Is it really that hard to go some place and NOT be an obnoxious prick?

Re:This is stupid

[mlush]

That's why English is the universal language of commerce - the de facto lingua franca

French was the de facto lingua franca when France was a Great Power

you can just learn it and speak it and if you make something up and it's useful enough, everyone else will start using your new vocabulary too.

The just learing it part is Tough Stuff

No other language is as practical and useful in the real world as English.

the fact it was the primary language of two sequential world superpowers may also have had something to do with its wide adoption

Re:This is stupid

[mlush]

I wonder why tourists are arrogant anyways? Is it really that hard to go some place and NOT be an obnoxious prick?

FUD, there off their own turf, and likely to be a bit defensive.... it could be worse they could all be patronizing

Re:This is stupid

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Global search and replace?

Hell, I'm envisioning a french language translator proxy. All it does it take the words used to describe something everywhere else (English, German, Italian, etc) and does a simple search and replace with the santioned French term.

Granted, you still have to get the grammer right, but it would at least act as a sort of "Spell" check.

Re:This is stupid

[An Onerous Coward]

"English-speaking people don't bitch about "rendez-vous", "à propos", etc. This french habit is just arrogance."

From henceforth, please refrain from using the word rendzevous. Instead, please use the more patriotic "freedom meeting." Furthermore, please avoid using accenting characters in words like apropos and resume (a short account of one's career and qualifications prepared typically by an applicant for a position) as such accents give them an inappropriate, un-American character. By doing so, you will be doing your part to fight terrorism at home and abroad.

Thank you,

The Department of Homeland Security

Re:This is stupid

[theefer]

I'm not french though, are you?
Non, je suis suisse (romand) :)

Now if you really spoke french, you'd know that courriel isn't a "quick-translate" of any english words.
What I meant was that the Academie Francaise feels obliged to find french translations to popular english words. I mean I'll be laughing at the first guy who says "courriel" to me, really :)
Not to mention "La Toile", "cédérom" and such stupid words. Let's not be ashamed to use english words. English uses "café", and it's just fine.

Re:This is stupid

[mlush]

>>French was the de facto lingua franca when France was a Great Power
>"French" is what the "franca" in lingua franca means!

French is no longer the lingua franca,

Re:This is stupid

[commodoresloat]

English-speaking people don't bitch about "rendez-vous", "à propos", etc.

That's because we don't know what they mean.

Re:This is stupid

[dcw3]

>What bothers me is when some govermnet agency decides to come in and start regulating this kind of thing (even if it isn't a law yet, it's only a matter of time if people don't fight back

Ummm, the French have had this agency for ages...they've always regulated what is "official" French, and nobody seems to have been fighting back.

Re:This is stupid

[Cryogenes]

Actually, it does work. When the Académie Francaise decides what the proper usage is, newspapers and publishers will follow. And by the time people have read the term "courriel" a thousand times in their papers they will have become used to it. They may still say "email" but it will no longer seem to be a correct word of the written language.

We observe a similar thing over here in Germany, where the government introduced a (minor) spelling reform a couple of years ago. Absolutely nobody seems to like it, but most written publications use the new spelling and it looks only half as painful now as it did five years ago.

Re:This is stupid

[beakburke]

"In other words, the French are exactly like the Americans. Overbearing, essentially insecure pain-in-the-asses."

Now wonder we get along so well then!

Re:This is stupid

[Papineau]

No, I don't think it's used only in the south. It was just because for a foreigner, it's easier to associate that word with the southern US.

The fact that the younger generation tries to get that word back, or to wash it from the older meaning, shouldn't prevent (at least for now, since the old connotation is still very much present) a government to ban it's use in its official communications.

The words "national socialism" or "SS" are dead, no matter which new meaning you try to retrofit in them. If Jews (and other persecuted peoples by the Nazis around WWII) begin to use them for something else, they'll have a hard time.

Re:This is stupid

[Overly Critical Guy]

People love to point out American arrogance all the time and yet never actually cite any real examples (other than some pro-US statements, which doesn't count since all citizens feel that way about their countries and it's normal).

Meanwhile, France is banning English words. But it's "okay."

Amusing.

Re:This is stupid

[Sparky66]

Dang, it's going to take some getting used to, calling my car a Buick "Freedom Meeting".

Re:This is stupid

[Mork29]

English-speaking people don't bitch about "rendez-vous", "à propos", etc. We're to busy complaining about the words french toast and french fries.

Re:This is stupid

[Sanction]

Try reading any statement from the current administration, that should be enough examples to keep you busy until Christmas.

Re:This is stupid

[JudgeFurious]

Of course. In ourselves it's nothing more than unbridled and limitless confidence. That probably stems from the fact that we can back it up. When we see it the French we just laugh like we've been doing for close to a hundred years.

Re:This is stupid

[s4ltyd0g]

Well I won't argue your point on the Academie. They would quickly become irrelevant if they weren't quick to translate popular terms and words. Over here in quebec we have l'Office de la langue français (same idea as the Academie).

Agreed, some translations work out better than others. We've been using courriel in quebec here for years. It sounded funny at first here too, but it caught on and it's natural.

Here's another good term that's catching on here more and more...

SPAM == pourriel (all though l'Office is recommending polluriel)

cheers!

Re:This is stupid

[Hydrogenoid]

It is not actually telling how anyone can speak, but how official documents should be worded, which has abot nothing to do with everyday life...

Re:This is stupid

[gl4ss]

*This french habit is just arrogance.*

you could have added arrogance to that list, as there is a huge list of words that have been taken from french into english(modern english is quite new, and very influenced) and i'd say it's has a good chance of being such a 'loan' word.

now, these kind of loan words do pollute languages, while some don't feel it to be so bad some do quite rightly think that one should not do that since it causes the language to change over time(english being perfect example, old texts are quite hard to understand and those are just from few hundred years ago, and already some people use slang that is too leet fo yo to be 'n biznes).

french just happens to be on the edge where this is even possible (regulate language) as it's not so widely used as english, one couldn't possibly hope to make every english speaking person refer to a cig, cigarette, smoke, joint, cigarello, fag by the same word because there is no central agency to moderate the language that is taught in schools, in smaller linguistic areas this is possible by having an agency that tells what the textbooks will include and how the school papers will be evaluated, many finnish people would like to not have the finnish language disappear after speaking it for so long under foreign languages influences, reason why finnish has so much modern loan words.

besides, they won't fine you for using the word email, and would you be shocked that in finland the 'proper' word for email is sähköposti? but if the agency is too slow or the translated word sounds really bad people will just keep using the original word(like, televisio in finnish is televisio even though it does not have any obvious _finnish_ meaning but it sounds a heck lot better than näköradio (see/eyesight-radio)). they're actually started to refer to web as 'seitti' nowadays(direct translation of spiders silk thread), and i really don't think it fits because it has lost _ALL_ meaning why 'web' is 'web'(because it just means the thread, or substance, not the actual web that it forms, which would be 'verkko' and which is already used for network), so simply put: i don't use it or push it through anywhere else, i don't really hear it much anyways.

i bet you are not hired by the french goverment so you shouldn't care jack of this.

and english speaking people don't have to use words of french origin if they don't want, but finding them all would prove to be a real chore (and english as one language nowadays is such a joke as there are dozens of dialects and even as natively english speaking people can't always understand each other because their pronouncation is so so off or they use so radically different grammar). i can't feel too bad for them for trying to protect their own grammar, BUT i do hate the fact that for long they have maken the mistake of not learning foreign languages themselfs(like italian ciao o tutti irc'ers).

Re:This is stupid

[Lars T.]

Odd, I didn't see you complain about the french being called arrogant.

Re:This is stupid

[easter1916]

An example of English borrowing words from Irish:

"go leor" -- (in abundance) "galore"

Re:This is stupid

[RyatNrrd]

To the French arrogance is not just a habit, its a way of life

I don't have a problem with the French government protecting what the French people value. If that is a culture distinct from that of the largest English-speaking powers, then I'm all for it - How is that arrogance?

And no, I'm not French. I just happen to like France the way it is.

Re:This is stupid

[mcpkaaos]

That is because I didn't feel it necessary to single out any, well, specific generalization. I think my point clearly was that any generalization is a little on the lame side. You know, generally speaking.

Re:This is stupid

[FroMan]

You're just upset we're better than you.

Re:This is stupid

[Teddeh]

There's been quite a few different spellings of the Bard's name, "Shakespeare" is only the MODERN spelling. :p

He spelt it differently himself in manuscripts. Spelling must have been a fashion statement back then. A bit like leet-speak...

Re:This is stupid

[Lars T.]

Ohh, so why did you answer to my specific post?

Re:This is stupid

[mcpkaaos]

I had sat here and typed out a fairly well thought out response until I came to the realization that I'm arguing with a person who can't let go of a one-liner stereotype.

I'm sorry Lars, but this is a pointless debate. Not only did you choose to express your views using an amusingly self-contradictory generalism, you took offense to an opposing view and immediately assumed you were being personally attacked.

At this point I think the only person you should carry on this discussion with would be Freud.

C'est la vie.

right.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news French legislation against junk e-mail has been delayed until the French can come up with a French sounding substitute for the word spam.

Re:right.

[Jafafa Hots]

paté

Re:right.

[Red Warrior]

Pate.

Re:right.

[MikeFM]

I blow my nose at you, so-called Americans, you and all your silly English.. I fart in your general direction!

Re:right.

[bjorky]

"In other news French legislation against junk e-mail has been delayed until the French can come up with a French sounding substitute for the word spam."

Curriel porc?

Re:right.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Québec, spam is called "pourriel". See this link http://www.olf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/ dictionnaires/Internet/fiches/8875226.html

Re:right.

[mathd]

Actually. It is called "Plurriel".

For Pollution and Courriel. No jokes!
I have done my bachelor degree in a french university and every computer word have a french translation (at least in our text manual). It's only a matters of time before the Office de la Langue Francaise make them official.

Re:right.

[jawtheshark]

Actually, the term I have mostly heard for SPAM would be "mail polluant". ("courriel polluant", it seems now) I think that's a very good description.

Anyways, I have heard the term "courriel" years ago. It is not a new word, it is just not widely used. As for the matter, most languages I know don't use "e-mail". Usually we refer to "e-mail" as "mail". That can be quite confusing when talking to an english person. If you say "mail me it", they often look in a confused way like "what? by snailmail"?

The only place where you will see "courriel" is in administrative documents. The general populace will stick to "mail" or "courrier éléctronique" (which *is* widely used)

I don't think you can blame the French to try to keep a national identity by adapting their language. After all, they have words for about anything in IT. Think of "télécharger" (to download), or "ordinateur" (computer), or "carte graphique" (graphics card). The funniest one for me is "octet" instead of "byte", but that is mainly because I always thought that the difference between "octet" and "byte" is the bit-alignment.

Re:right.

[eldimo]

It was already done. Spam as been translated by "pourriel", from "pourri" which is "rotten" in english. It's an even better word than spam if you ask me. Because I could always eat spam if I lost on an island. Something rotten on the other hand...

Re:right.

[okeby235]

easy

Le SPAM

Re:right.

[Down Yonda]

"Le Pig...courriel ??

Re:right.

[chgros]

Office de la Langue Francaise
I guess you mean the Académie Française (there's an Office de la langue Française in Québec but not in France)

Re:right.

[MatthewB79]

If you say "mail me it", they often look in a confused way like "what? by snailmail"?

That's interesting because after years of e-mailing (read: using snail-mail only for bills and postcards), when someone mentions "mail" I almost always assume they mean "e-mail" unless they make it very clear that they are talking about snail mail. In fact I'd say the existence of the term "snail-mail" probably proves that "mail" is more and more used to mean "e-mail" in normal speech (non-written).
On the other hand, I think in written or typed language, "mail" tends to be very specific about meaning "sending it through the mail" or "snail mail".

Re:right.

[jawtheshark]

I was only speaking out of experience. Since I usually don't think about prefixing mail with "e-", I have been in that situation. Keep in mind that the people who were confused were not in IT.
You are probably in IT, so am I. I guess that is the cause.

Oh, and in writing/typing I also use "mail" for "e-mail". For me the meaning of "mail" *is* "e-mail", but english is not my native language.

Re:right.

[ehiris]

Le Spam

Re:right.

[jalet]

Not "courriel polluant". In French, it's usually "Pourriel" which is a mix of "Pourri" (rotten), "Courriel" (email), and "Electronique" (electronic).

And "Pourriel" is really good IMHFO (In My Humble French Opinion).

At least it's better than the horrible "Tourne disque" they wanted us to use instead of "Disque dur" (which is the word-for-word correct translation of 'Hard Disk')

Re:right.

[jawtheshark]

I have seen the word "pouriel" for the first time today here on slashdot. While I like the word, I've never heard it in spoken language and I work dayly with french speaking people. The word "courriel" I have heard before. Perhaps, here (a small country north of La Lorraine) it just hasn't come through yet.

Never heard of "tourne disque" either, I though that was a LP-player. Disque dur is widely used is IMHNFO (I My Humble Non French Opinion) a good description of the actualy hardware. You don't have to translate french words for me you know ;-)

Re:right.

[Jonner]

I think the word "octet" is used universally (definitely in English) to make it abundantly clear that one is talking about a chunk of eight bits. On most machines, a "byte" is an octet, but on some, it isn't.

French for spam too

[Anonymous Coward]

And there is no such thing as Spam in french email either. It's now

jambon épicé courriel

takes all types

Re:French for spam too

[Petronius]

McDonald's ?

Re:French for spam too

[dbateman]

Beep Wrong, the french say "McDo", and pronounce it something like McDoh....

D.

Adele

[marienf]

Years ago, they suggested to ban the term "e-mail address" (adresse email), and to use "ADELE" instead (Adresse Electronique).

Pierre, c'est quoi ton adele?

Re:Adele

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! you're getting adele!

Re:Adele

[Petronius]

Putain d'Adele!

(Il fallait bien qu'un francophone la fasse...)

Re:Adele

[pv2b]

Veering slightly offtopic here...

The largest language in the world is Mandarin Chinese, mainly since there are so many chinese people in the world. (Duh.)

By your logic, that there should be only one language, and the language should be the most common in the world as to inconvenience as few people as possible, we'd all be speaking Chinese.

I can only guess that your ideas don't seem quite as compelling any more. :-)

Re:Adele

[marienf]

First of all, what do you mean "my logic"? I'm making a little fun of a habit some nations have at getting scared for their own languages.
This doesn't imply anything but the fact that I find "Adele" and "Courriel" funny. But then I think "quatre-vingt" (four-twenty) to express the number 80, and "soixante-quinze" (sixty-fifteen) to express the number 75 are just hilarious. I make it a point to use them as often as possible whenever I'm in France.

But to get back on-topic, if, as you suggest, I would be pleading for a single world-language, which I'm not, but arguendo, let's assume I am for a minute:

Mandarin Chinese would not be a logical choice at all, because it is of a language family so intertwined in a culture that it becomes necessary to seriously study that culture before being able to make much sense of the language. Now this is true for most languages, because the metaphors are culture-sensitive. But in many languages, you can carefully avoid metaphors, and still be able to carry on a reasonable conversation.

To put it boldly: Mandarin, Japanese, .. are simply too complex to be used as a common language. Imagine the resources it would take to teach these. Better to choose some more primitive language, with a simple alfabetical written version.

And then, frankly (hence the name), I find the low learning curve for basic English very appealing.. ...if I would be on favour of a common world language..

Re:Adele

[FoeNyx]

Meuh nan ! elle est morte Adele !
Heuresement.

Re:Adele

[pv2b]

First of all, I'm assuming you're the Anonymous Coward I responded to in the grandparent.

If you want to make fun of a language's bizarre counting, I suggest you take a look at how they do it in Denmark. I am biased of course, being Swedish. :-)

The French use soixante-dix, quatre-vignts, and quatre-vignts-dix, true. The Swiss have rationalized this and use septante, huitante, and nonante. Belgians are in between. They use septante, quatre-vignts, and nonante. Yes, I also think saying quatre-vignts-dix (four-twenties-and-ten) is funny. Although even funnier is the danish equivalent, halvfems (half-five ... (5 - 1/2) * 20 == 4.5 * 20 == 90). But I digress. The point is that French is open to reform on this particular ideosyncracy.

You claim that you're not pleading for a single word-language -- but you could see how your post could be misunderstood as such, I quote:

That's pretty silly. Why don't the French just speak English like everyone else? Americans, Canadians, AND the U.K. speak English. What better language to adopt as the world common language?

Next time, consider tossing in a smiley to mark that you're not being serious. :-)

I have myself not studied neither Japanese or Chinese (although I might take a gander at one of them when I get the time), so I'll take your word for it that the language is intricately tied to the culture.

Either way, English today has the potential of becoming a world language, whether we like it or not, mainly because of American domination of the world. But English is definitely not the ideal world language -- and it itself has its fair share of quirks.

Take "ough" for example. How many ways can that be pronounced?

• tough
  
• bough
  
• dough
  
• trough
  
• rough
  
• through
  
• cough
  
• thorough
  
• nought
  

English spelling and pronounciation. is less than consistent, and you can find more examples, countless more, if you care to read the dictionary some time. :-)

Now, for a consistent language in spelling and pronounciation, from what I've heard (I don't speak the language myself), is Finnish. Basically, if you read the letters out without trying to invent lots of weird rules about them, you sound finnish. I'm able to read out Finnish texts without understanding what they mean with near-perfect pronounciation.

This is not to say that Finnish is without quirks. The difficulty in Finnish lies in conjugating nouns. "Under the table", "on the table", "by the table" etc etc are all differently conjugated words with lots of exceptions.

The only hope then for a sane world language is an invented one -- but then we lose the soul of a language. The language is an integral part of the culture of a country. This is not to say that languages can't change as cultures intermix, and morph.

My point in conclusion? Probably no language in widespread use today is a worthy contender to replace all other languages, even ignoring cultural aspects. As a second-language, English has already become the 'lingua franca' (ironic, isn't it?) of the world, merely on the merit that it's spoken in the USA.

But don't count on the USA-dominance of the world to continue indefinitely. Nothing is forever, and somewhere along the line, another language will take the place of English as a world language.

But whether we like it or not, more and more languages in the world will take in new words from English, just as English in the past has taken in words from other languages. It's this mixage of cultures that has shaped the languages we have today, and if a language is to continue to flourish, it must be allowed to develop, and not stagnate like the French Academy is trying to promote.

Re:Adele

[Trelane]

Excellent post. I just wish that I could give you a +1 Insightful.

Indeed, the current world language is English, as the European language was French before it, and Latin before that.

The inconsistancies you cited in the english phonic -> symbolic translation are pretty much an artifact of importing and mixing various words adn phrases (both inside the English Isles and outside). If we had the German (and apparently French) system of officially revising the Official English Language (whatever that might be), then we could eradicate the inconsistancies. However, that would cut out a chunk of the fun and history of the language. It's a tradeoff. You might also investigate the most recent revision to German, which was very much disputed (and currently is disputed, although to a lesser extent). Some (most, I think) places still use the old Rechtschreibung, because the new spellings have lost the old spelling's beauty. (that, and people don't want to re-learn the new spelling)

But don't count on the USA-dominance of the world to continue indefinitely. Nothing is forever, and somewhere along the line, another language will take the place of English as a world language.

Very, very true. I think it's already on the way out, a symptom (and cause) of which is rising anti-Americanism (sorry; anti-USA-ism just doesn't flow right). While sad in its own way (especially for us), it's also good, since it allows the chance for another culture to have the spotlight, and allows us to grow in a different direction.

When travelling abroad in Europe, I've always felt saddened by the fact that I never had to take another language in school (aside from the 2 years of Foreign Language required of me); I felt that I am missing out on something. Luckily, I've learned German (and am working on aquiring a few others to a much more limited extent ATM), but I really wish that my schools (small-town midwestern schools) had taught me Spanish in gradeschool and middleschool like my brothers' have (we moved after I left middleschool). That age is prime time for learning a new language, and it's been lost to me, because of our (lingual) americentrism. While understandable (we aren't a small country, and we don't have a ton of small neighboring countries like Europe), it's still sad.

Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
Frenchs can say 'Email', 'Courriel' or any thing else.
If the people can say what they want what's the problem?
It's ok for the government to say what ever they want if they dont force any one to write it the same way.

Acadamie, Shadamie...

[mgcsinc]

I'm not quite sure whether it's clear to everyone here, but as much as the French may be nationalistic, their youth is hardly unaccostomed to borrowing from English, and if anyone thinks this is going to make a significant impact, they're probably mistaken, take it from someone living awefully close to France. Look even at the word download, important yet far less ubiquitous than e-mail - the term "telecharger" is used, but hardly always, and any avid French internet user will recognise "download" in a second... Had your "freedom fries" lately? What, you still call them french fries? Maybe a national lexicon isn't quite so easy to change...

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[Guppy06]

I think comparing French and American government efforts on language. This isn't the fist time the French government has tried to fight the encroachment of English into the language, but here in the Estados Unidos we can't even agree on a national language.

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[mattrix2k]

idiot congressman
Repetition is as pointless as it is lacking a point!

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[Beliskner]

I'm not quite sure whether it's clear to everyone here, but as much as the French may be nationalistic, their youth is hardly unaccostomed to borrowing from English,

Language is simply an inter-human communication protocol. English is like Ethernet, and French is like token-ring. Both have advantages, but it's better if one simply drives the other into total obsolesence according to some factor such as Capitalist market popularity, and with languages this is pervasiveness and use. I'm worried that the French will start bombing countries if their language starts slipping into obsolesence. Maintaining an unpopular language for no reason shows how powerful the entrenched establishment of some countries are. I have noticed that the average French farmer doesn't like English, and will actively try to make life difficult for such a person, like throwing him out of the store. I haven't experienced this level of racism anywhere else.

Language is like a metric of cultural Imperialism, it shows your reach of power, and for the French it's waning so they're making drastic decisions such as the ongoing attempts to seperate Quebec from Canada, which would split Canada into two seperate countries

Look everyone, this is what happens when an entire culture is threatened with collapse! Populous-wide Persecution syndrome

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[SN74S181]

Here is 'Estados Unidos' we have the same sort of fanatics who have done all the damage in Quebec trying to balkanize and divide. The Democrats are hoping to turn the Hispanics into a nice cordoned off voting block they can keep dependent on them to pander to, like the blacks.

Happily, the Hispanic community doesn't seem to buy into it all that well.

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[Scudsucker]

The Democrats are hoping to turn the Hispanics into a nice cordoned off voting block they can keep dependent on them to pander to, like the blacks.

??? Which is so much worse than the GOP, who seem to have their lips permanently stitched to the cock of the religious right.

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[Guppy06]

"Here is 'Estados Unidos' we have the same sort of fanatics who have done all the damage in Quebec trying to balkanize and divide."

Yeah, that explains all those Spanish-speaking citizens trying to get statehood for Puerto Rico...

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[Kethinov]

The French language borrows quite heavily from other languages; most noticeably Latin, seeing as how it's Latin based. Since English is also Latin based, many English words are bound to be similar.

Key:
English/French

bus/autobus
adore/adorez
meeting/réunion

All those French equivalents are very easy to understand for English speakers. There are so many English/French similarities that saying French and English never borrow from each other is quite a falsity

In fact, the new French word "courriel" for E-mail is not too much different for their word for mail, that being "courrier". They probably did this to make it easier to understand what email is.

Think of it like us changing our word "resumé" to "qualificationsbill". Now, any frenchman who knows what the word "courrier" means, will instantly know that "courriel" must be a type of mail. It's simply a matter of clarification.

Re:Acadamie, Shadamie...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The accepted societal standard doesn't follow government standard.

Metric is the government standard measuring system, but I heard the populace didn't accept it because they thought that the gas stations were ripping them off!

I really don't know if there is a US language standard for goverment communications, but legalese or ratspeak might be close enough.

Just sounds wrong

[radon28]

'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!

Of course it sounds wrong... especially since the rest of it would probably sound more like:

Hé Pierre, curriel je que ces ventes figure!

You know, since they're in France, and everything.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[theefer]

Of course it sounds wrong... especially since the rest of it would probably sound more like:

Hé Pierre, curriel je que ces ventes figure!

Er- If you are Google Translator, yes.

Otherwise, it'd be more like

Hé Pierre, courriel moi ces graphiques de ventes !

Which sounds just as stupid, I agree.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[Bananenrepublik]

One would use the verb 'envoyer', so no 'courriel' in that sentence. It's a very specific feature of English that almost any noun can be verbed, as you did.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[Phil John]

Vous êtes une baiseur de mère pedantique. ;o)

Re:Just sounds wrong

[eurostar]

wrong.

it would be:

Pierre, merci de m'envoyer les rapports de ventes par courriel.

*Hey!* is only used by US soldiers firing on civilians...

Re:Just sounds wrong

[Bazouel]

More like :

Hé Pierre, envoie-moi par courriel les derniers résultats des ventes !

But I don't mind some laughs at the babelfish/systran translation :)

Re:Just sounds wrong

[riq]

Did you use babelfish to translate that ? :-) The translation has no meaning!

But anyways this news is silly. Who cares if the french goverment wants to use courriel or e-mail or emilio, etc.

And just one correction: It is not English, nor French, nor Spanish not German the ones that are open/close to adopt other words, but the goverments.

ex: the word 'courriel' may be used by the French Goverment, but not in Senegal (for those who don't know, Senegal is an African country, and they speak French). If the Australians use a new word for 'e-mail' will the British people use that word ?

Re:Just sounds wrong

[Majik Sznak]

Haha! I can't believe the parent was modded insightful...

At any rate, the whole thing seems funny to me. I'm French, and every time I go back, it amazes me how much English is used in the language. I know the French-Canadians are touchy about using English words, but it seems odd for France to suddenly worry about something like "e-mail" which seems like a pretty universal term.

Also, it is inexplicable how the poster of the article could have gone from the correct "courriel" to the incorrect "curriel" (what is that: some kind of curry?) between the quote of the article and the comment made on it.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[ikoL]

You can in German also

Re:Just sounds wrong

[pasde]

courriel can't be used as a verb.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[rocjoe71]

It's a very specific feature of English that almost any noun can be verbed, as you did.

You gotta be shitting me... Oh wait, you're right.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[Phemur]

It sounds just as stupid because courriel is a noun, unlike email which is both a noun and a verb.

courriel is a short form of "courrier electronique" just like email is the short form of electronic mail.

A real sentence with courriel would be:

He Pierre, envoye moi ces graphiques de ventes par courriel

Phemur

Re:Just sounds wrong

[beakburke]

pedantic huh... He must be an economist.

Re:Just sounds wrong

[rabtech]

Funny enough, english and german come from the same language roots, though english is more of a mutt than german in certain respects.

Oh well

[dcw3]

Time to have some Freedom Toast, Freedom Fries, and Freedom Kiss the wife. Take that and stick it in your Freedom Horn.

Just when most of us had started to let it go, these idiots try to start another dick size war.

Re:Oh well

[Salsaman]

Time to have some Freedom Toast, Freedom Fries, and Freedom Kiss the wife.

Make sure you have some Freedom Letters ready then...

Re:Oh well

[VampireByte]

Don't forget the Freedom Tickler.

Et puis quoi?

[panurge]

Incroyable, mais la plupart du monde ne parle pas Anglais. Et, plus incroyable que ca, l'ONU n'a pas interdit l'utilisation des langues non-Anglais. L'axis du mal, on devrait ajouter ces singes qui aiment le fromage et se rend toujours. Et l'ONU, c'est un ami des terroristes qui voulait supprimer la langue de Dieu avec ces termes diaboliques. Quand on ecrit "courriel", on donne support a Osama Bin Laden

This information brought to you by the French office of the Department of Homeland Security

Re:Et puis quoi?

[Guppy06]

"Incroyable, mais la plupart du monde ne parle pas Anglais."

Ah, but it is spoken by two of the planet's three most populous countries. And Beijing is pushing English education even as we speak.

Re:Et puis quoi?

[Idarubicin]

To be fair, this is Slashdot.

Re:Et puis quoi?

[panurge]

I'm sorry, it was supposed to be written by someone from the DHS who never got past French 101, and hasn't worked out the accents yet. It was supposed to be ironic...actually I don't care whether or not the French use courriel (or baladeur, or magnétoscope), except when I have to proofread a translation of a site, but I do care that someone thought it was sufficiently important to post to Yahoo and someone else thought it sufficiently important to post to Slashdot. It suggests a very insular world view from people who don't get out of their boxes enough, and just at the moment we could do with rather less of that, thank you very much.

I would also add that, were I able to moderate myself, I'd have awarded -1 Troll. If anyone else would do the honor, I would be delighted.

Re:Et puis quoi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tu sais quoi?

Je t'encules avec tes comparaisons parafitement déplacées.

Et puis l'axe du mal a son origine à Washington plutôt que dans les pays sous-développés que l'hégémonie américaine s'applique à renvoyer à l'âge de pierre...

Oh, et puis Merde!

Re:Et puis quoi?

[Hal-9001]

Ah, but it is spoken by two of the planet's three most populous countries.

That statement is misleading. According to 2002 population statistics, China's population (1.28 billion) is almost equal to the population of India (1.04 billion) and the United States (280 million) combined. Furthermore, the population of the rest of the top 10 (Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Japan) adds up to almost a billion people, most of whom do not speak English. Thus ths statement that "Most of the world does not speak English" is more meaningful than "Two of the planet's three most populous countries speak English."

Re:Et puis quoi?

[BigBadBri]

it was intellegible, which is one up on most of the 'English' posted here....

You should listen to Greek translations...

[arcanumas]

If you this this is weird maybe you should listen to the Greek words for "browser" or "task bar" or many other computer terms. They are particularly bad because they were not made with simple translation in mind. But ,rather, they said "Hey , let's show off how vast our language is". The end result is that nobody uses the Greek terms and everyone unless it is accompanied with a great dose of humour. :)
Too bad Greek uses a different alphabet and i can't give you an example.

Apart from that. Why is this so important? The French speak french , the Chinese speak chinese and the Klingon speak Klingon. What is so newsworthy about it?

Re:You should listen to Greek translations...

[Sirch]

There's an equivalent in the Roman alphabet to every letter in the Greek alphabet, unless I am very much mistaken (although some are two letters). So, come on, give us a shot...

Re:You should listen to Greek translations...

[arcanumas]

Well, here is a try. Browser = fyllometritis (counter of pages) !
HTML = Glwssa shmansis yperkeimenou
Firewall = toixos prostasias (protection wall :)
Server = diakomistis (from "diakomizw" means transfer. So server = transferer) :)

I really doubt ,however, that it will mean anything. I suppose that it only seems funny if you are Greek.

A better example is: Calling the "server" , "the contraption that undertakes the task of servicing other parties" .. or something stupid like that.

Comment insultant!

[FunWithHeadlines]

Qui les pensent-ils sont-ils, ces Français, pour dire nous comment parler?

Re:Comment insultant!

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Wrong... The right form is:

"Pour qui se prennent-ils ces Français pour nous dire de quelle façon parler?"

LOL, could well be, I wouldn't know. I don't speak the language. I was just making a very subtle joke with the help of a translator. Guess no one got the joke -- a bit too oblique.

Re:Comment insultant!

[BigBadBri]

Ils se croyaient d'etre qui, ces Francais, que nous disent comme on parlait?

might be more true to the original sentiment.

compared to say

[digitalsushi]

English is cool. We cram every word we like into our lexicon. According to this site, English is composed of the following:

Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%

I tried to find a word count for French vs. English lexicons, but unfortunately after about 15 googlings I came to the concensus that you can't count how big a lexicon is, only the number of words in a dictionary. I remember a high school teacher telling me that there are about 100,000 words in the French lexicon, though. English is a magnitude larger, and impossible to give a straight answer- do you include technical words? medical words? colloquial words?

Re:compared to say

[The Cydonian]

I tried to find a word count for French vs. English lexicons, but unfortunately after about 15 googlings I came to the concensus that you can't count how big a lexicon is

Wrong googling strategy. Here, let me help.

According to this Google search, English wins hands down.

However, interestingly enough, that the French version shows a different result.

Typically revisionist French. ;-)

Re:compared to say

[BetterThanCaesar]

It gets worse. You are counting words, but what is a word? For example: if you put fire and man together, do you get fire man, fire-man or fireman? Which of these is a word? How about car wash, car-wash and carwash? I've seen all three variants on the same web page. Does any one of them go into the dictionary?

This is an even bigger problem in the other germanic languages (German, Swedish, Icelandic, etc.), because they always write compounds like these together. Thus, there are literally (yes!) infinite combinations. A compound like "mobile phone company meeting" is "mobiltelefonföretagsmöte" in Swedish. Does that word go into the dictionary? It's perfectly valid, even though it's never been used before.

The solution is of course to draw the line somewhere, say, at a certain degree of usability and popularity.

Re:compared to say

[delphi125]

I came to the concensus

You have just invented a new word. Consensus means 'An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole'. Presumably 'conCensus' means 'An opinion or position reached by someone opposed to taking a census of opinion'?

Re:compared to say

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precicely why we don't care. Our language is already the mutt you describe. We have nothing to protect anymore. It wasn't always is such an aweful state. English was a beautifully expressive language back in Shakesphere's day. Now we don't even have a plural for the word "you" which is why people are always saying things like "yall" "yous" "alayal" and, the worst one IMHO, "you guys"! Actually "you was the plural. But you would get arrested for using the singular, "thou".
But I digress. The French just don't want this to happen to their language.

Re:compared to say

[gilroy]

And of course, even if the poster had used the proper spelling "consensus", it would still have been wrong. You can't come to a consensus by yourself (barring multiple personality disorder, I suppose).

Re:compared to say

[digitalsushi]

i did spell the word wrong, but i meant a consensus of everyone on the net, not me. then again, they weren't a group as a whole so i'd even still be wrong. :)

Re:compared to say

[mute47]

Icelandic: Farsímafyrirtækjafundur :)

Re:compared to say

[mute47]

You also have to remember that because of all this import, english often has 2-3 names over simple terms, each one from a different source, while others have one. Cardiac(greek) - heart(germanic), aviation(latin) - flying(german).

Re:compared to say

[Alsee]

You just counted the number of occurrences of the words "english" and "french", which has absolutely nothing to do with what he was talking about. He was reffering to the number of words in each language.

-

Re:compared to say

[chgros]

However, interestingly enough, that the French version shows a different result.
It is perfectly normal that "english" is more used than "french" and "français" more than "anglais" (though, surprisingly enough, "français" and "anglais" are almost as much used)

Re:compared to say

[p3d0]

Looks like you need to try this one.

Re:compared to say

[Blaskowicz]

what about this one
français wins. in your googlefight, you entered "francais" which does not mean anything :P

Re:compared to say

[delphi125]

Thanks for taking the ribbing in good nature :) Your post had good info.

Re:compared to say

[jez9999]

his is an even bigger problem in the other germanic languages (German, Swedish, Icelandic, etc.), because they always write compounds like these together. Thus, there are literally (yes!) infinite combinations.

Actually, *takes deep breath*

Finite * finite cannot equal infinity. Infinite * finite will, as will infinite^2, but if the only numbers in the equation are finite, you cannot get an infinite answer.

Re:compared to say

[hyphz]

I think for that, though, you've got to love Japanese, which also seems to grab words from everywhere.

"Ball" in Japanese is.. well, "Ball". "Bread" in Japanese is "Pan" - that's the french "pain". A part-time job is "arubaito" - that's the German "albeit".

Possibly the funniest bit is when they grab words from other languages but got confused about what they meant. Like the Japanese for a man's business suit is "Sabiro", which is a strangulation of "Saville Row"!

Re:compared to say

[BigBadBri]

In current usage, there are around 30-50,000 words in English.

If you meet an English speaker with a vocabulary of 30,000 words, you have just met somebody with a knowledge of the tongue equal to Shakespeare.

Old French, on the other hand, had two dialects, Langue d'Oc, and Langue d'Oi (based on the words used for 'yes' in each language).

Langue d'Oc, being the preferred poetic language of the day, had a vocabulary of around 80,000 words.

The descendants of this tongue are Catalan and some of the Southern French dialects, which have lost much of the richness of the mother tongue.

It's not easy to read, but if you know some French and Spanish, and have some imagination, Occitan (the old Langue d'Oc) is a wonderful poetic tongue.

Michael Crichton fans may know that the film of TimeLine, which if they've done it properly should have some Occitan in it, is due out this autumn (fall).

There was a lot more richness in old languages than is generally seen now - the average holiday pot-boiler novel has a vocabulary of less than 5,000 words, to allow the masses to consume it.

It is estimated that in Shakespeare's time, more than half the urban population of the UK could read his plays and poems.

We have lost too much to the dumbers-down, and need to revive some of the million lost words and phrases from English.

Re:compared to say

[Carewolf]

Actually in mathematical terms the limit is infinite, since there is no upper limit on word length and thus the number of base words. Except a practical one...

Re:compared to say

[The Cydonian]

Ahhh well, KNEW someone would comment on that. :-D

Sorry, don't have a keyboard with the cedil. My bad.

Re:compared to say

[Carthag]

The Danish dictionaries only include compound words where the total meaning is not clear based on the individual meanings of the particles.

Re:compared to say

[digitalsushi]

"pan", for bread, is apparently from the "root language", a patched together half understood language that linguists have been working on figuring out. If you look, "pan" or a close cognate, is the word for bread in many different, non related languages. Just one of those words that kept making it up through.

spanish->pan
french->pain
italian->pane
japan ese,romanjii->pan
portuguese->pão

course, four of those are gimmes 'cause they're all just dialects of Latin, if you look at it that way.

ok here's one i can back up a little more:

the word "father" in a wide array:

Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic English
pita pater pater fadar father

anyways, i'm no expert, just interested-- check out ancientscripts.com for a ton more about this stuff, and then hop over to omniglot when you want some more, but a little different.

Re:compared to say

[fastdecade]

That's interesting, but Japanaese "pan" is written in Katakana, indicating it's a loan word. The other four languages are all latin-based, so not surprising that it's the same for them. Remember, bread is not traditional Japanese cuisine.

Re:compared to say

[danaris]

Actually, "thou" was only the informal singular. Similar to "tu" in French. I believe that "you" was used in formal contexts even when talking to a single person, as "vous" is in French.

This is why, when, at the Episcopal convention to revise the prayerbook in the late 1940s, someone objected to the replacement of "thou"s with "you"s, etc, as "losing our respectful distance from God," anyone who knew what they were talking about looked at him funny. The "thou" was showing our closeness with God, not our distance.

Dan Aris

Re:compared to say

[BetterThanCaesar]

With all respect, sir, your math is wrong. In fact, what you have is the infinite length product of a finite number of words.

int comb=1;
for(int n=0;n<Inf;n++) comb*=NUM_WORDS;

Whose limit of course approaches infinity for all NUM_WORDS>1. QED.

Must... Quote... Groundskeeper Willie....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bonjour, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!"

Ah, there, I went and said it. Sorry.....

Good for them

[Openadvocate]

And it's not just France, just about every non-english speaking country has the same problem and many have, to different degrees, choosen to replace the English terms with local ones. But just go ahead with the bashing(that we love so much) of the French.

Re:Good for them

[jester]

Spanish speaking countries have an Academy to control the language yet have only resisted the use of terms up to a point. The pressure from the people has an effect there. They don't use "correo electronico" and use Email instead. They have many English type words in their language, but usually adapt the spelling to fit their rules of pronunciation (mitin = meeting). Use of Spanish in Latin America is even more anglicised than in Spain.

The French take things to the largest extreme of the other languages - the others adapt.

Re:Good for them

[Uerige]

I don't see the problem with adapting words from a foreign language. I believe that it is a good thing. It helps non-english speaking people to understand english texts, despite technical terms like 'e-mail' being used.
I like languages like dutch where, for example if I listen to the radio, I can at least understand what they are talking about. If I read a spanish text, I don't understand a word. (They even have their own translation of the abbrevation 'NATO'!)

what's french for "reinventing the wheel"

[tiredwired]

It's like it's a whole different language.

Nothing special

[nnnneedles]

In Sweden a lot of people use mejl, instead of mail and sajt instead of site. They're pronounced just as the english word but the spelling is swedish. This is nothing special for the french. It's just a natural way to grow your own language that has been used for ages.

A lot of french words have been assimilated into swedish the same way. As an example, juice, which is a french word, can be spelled Jos.

And, oh, this has nothing to do with the Gulf War and freedom fries.

It's an already old story...

[tuxliner]

About 4 or 5 years ago, the "Academie Francaise" ( ie "The French Academy" a society of about 40 french writers who decide what words must be use in correct french language) stated that the most valid french translation for "E-Mail" was "Mel" (with an accent) which doesn't get pronounced exactly like the english word "mail" but, well, almost. They got heavily criticized for that and some people argued that "Courriel" which was used in Quebec was far better. (which, I think, is true). Nowadays, the french state ( which is NOT the "Academie Francaise") choses to use the word "Courriel" at last. We're just 4 years late. Our canadian cousins were true.

Re:It's an already old story...

[p3d0]

Our canadian cousins were true.

Does French use the same word for "true" and for "correct"?

Re:It's an already old story...

[lougarou]

mèl was just an abbreviation -- it never was a word.

Do you use Tel in current language? Same status.
Ok it worked for fax (which is fac-simile abbreviated), but it was an abbreviation.

sounds wrong...?

[myamid]

'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong! Well, first of all the word would not be used that way since the word "courriel" would refer the the item which is the e-mail, not the action of sending a message...

So you'd hear "Envoie-moi un courriel' (Send me an email), J'ai recu 50 courriels (I recieved 50 emails), but never that absurd example mentioned above. The word has been used for years in Quebec (as in a province of canada...) and although I don't use it all that much is does make sense. Anyways, that's just my 2 cents.

Re:sounds wrong...?

[AndyMouse GoHard]

Sorry my Francophone friend, just had to ask this:

"The word has been used for years in Quebec (as in a province of canada...)"

Shouldn't that be:

"The word has been used for years in quebec (as in a province of Canada...)"?

Yeah, I'm trolling but Quebec asks for respect yet resists giving it back.

Bill

Re:sounds wrong...?

[Bilange]

For your information, courriel isnt used as a verb, at least in Quebec. Sometimes it sounds just wrong to translate word by word from english. For example, "E-mail me" is translated "envoies-moi un courriel". And if we translate back from the french sentense, it still makes sense ("Send-me an e-mail")

Bad way to protect language

[GammaTau]

Using government regulations is a very bad way to protect a language. The Right Way is to introduce native words to a local vocabulary before it goes mainstream when the technology is still being adopted.

If they had started in 1993, they would have had a chance. In 2003, it's way too late.

Re:Bad way to protect language

[GammaTau]

The thing is, words related to concepts that are not part of the mainstream life will not be used by the mainstream user. How would you feel to be taught nanotechnology jargon just in case it catches on in a few years?

Naturally it wouldn't make sense to teach nanotechnology jargon to general public, at least for the moment. However it would make a lot of sense if the people who work with nanotechnology would find appropriate terms in the local languages. If it goes mainstream, the language would already have an existing live vocabulary.

Re:Bad way to protect language

[taxelxii]

If they had started in 1993, they would have had a chance. In 2003, it's way too late.

I'm from Quebec, and I primary talks french. Since I won't ever say "courriel" instead of email in spoken language, you can be sure that when I have to write something more important (like my c.v., or just a letter to my boss!), I will be using 'courriel'. As a matter of fact, most people are already using 'courriel' when writing formal papers. So, in a way you are right since I am pretty sure that the word usage will stay lower than 'email' in everyday language. However, even as of today (in Quebec, at least) seeing the word 'email' on a official note seems very weird.

Language evolution

[Rassleholic]

What's so bad about incorporating foriegn words into a language? That's basically how English came to exist in the first place. Those of us in the US have no problem with absorbing new words into our version of English (rodeo, internet(noun), saxamaphone, hentai, google, f*cktard, hax0r, etc...)

Re:Language evolution

[Rassleholic]

That's not a new word. That's a word combination. A poor word combination that won't see a second decade.

Re:Language evolution

[benoitg]

What's so bad about incorporating foriegn words into a language? That's basically how English came to exist in the first place.

I don't think you can really understand it when you were raised with the language of the current world dominant culture as a mother tongue. There is little need to "protect" the dominant culture, since by definition, it will probably have far more influence on any single culture trying to influence it than the other way around.

What's wrong with CmdrTaco ?

[Reez]

Is this just another wave of France bashing related to Iraq events ?
Give us a break, Canadians from Quebec are magnitudes more zealot than the French regarding to frenglish use. Furthermore, this isnt really hot news, we've got these french versions of various english words (cédérom anyone ?) for years now, following our cousins from Quebec. Most French people dont bother about using those French words, why should you ?

Re:What's wrong with CmdrTaco ?

[Brainboy]

CmdrTaco doesn't just bash the French Government. He is an equal opportunist, he bashes the American Government, and the British government. And (because I can't resist) In SOVIET RUSSIA, the government bashes him.

Etymology

[Bananenrepublik]

A word of explanation for those who don't speak French: courriel is a contraction of "courrier électronique" (which means electronic mail) and as such I think it's far from ugly.

"Mail" (pronounciation: mell) and "e-mail" (p: ee-mell) were already widely adopted in France some time ago, so it'll sure be interesting to see how fast courriel catches up. I have no doubt it will, given that French education always stresses the superiority of a 'clean' language (and yes I know what I'm talking about, I went to university there).

Re:Etymology

[saden1]

French is the dirtiest language ever...ever heard someone curse in French? They have a word for every curse word known to man. Clean language? I think not.

Sounds wrong, tastes great

[idontgno]

Hé Homer, curriel je que ces ventes figure!

Hmmm... Curry.... (drools)

OK, so the French have invented a "native" word to supplant the import. They've only been doing that since about the 17th Century.

We Anglophones on the western side of the pond have been borrowing French words practically without modification for about that long, but probably because we're lazy. I'd guess that the trend is older than that--look how many "English" words are lifted directly (or near-directly) from French. Some of these date back to the 11th Century (Norman conquest).

Maybe we do that to piss off the French? (You know, word-squatting, complete with mangling their pronounciation.)

The fish speaks

[qwertyatwork]

Incredible, but the majority of the world do not speak English. And, more incredible than Ca, UNO did not prohibit the use of the languages not-English. The axis of the evil, one should add these monkeys which like cheese and always goes. And UNO, it is a friend of the terrorists who wanted to remove the language of God with these diabolic terms. When one writes "courriel", one gives support has Osama Bin Laden

I guess it's time...

[Ibby]

...we change the term to 'freedom mail'...

Being ridiculous to the world - Take 2

[Pelops]

Oh well, i guess we will be ridiculours one more time with this! But again, i guess it won't be the first time!

It is the second time the French academy (not the french government by the way) does such a thing. A few years ago, they banned the use of e-mail for the word mél. Well, the answer to this at the time was well pretty cold, as it was ridiculous. But apparently having realized they were not ridiculous enough, they decided to take the Quebec word (a bit less ridiculous and yet). Well, i guess they will in a few years change again to e-mail.

Never fear the power of being ridiculous of the French Academy!!!!!
Pelops

freedom of speech?

[oohp]

How is the gov't able to *ban* words? Hello!?

Re:freedom of speech?

[pv2b]

They didn't ban the word per se... they only banned it from use in government texts.

I submitted this story and it got rejected, but in my writeup I pointed that very fact up.

Re:freedom of speech?

[eht]

They can also impose fines upon businesses that use forbidden words.

Re:freedom of speech?

[Submarine]

Uh?

This commission of terminology gives the official terminology for government-issued official texts. Where do businesses fit?

French government also requires...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the term "surrender monkey" be replaced by "victory primate."

wha ya sey?

[MikeFM]

Yeh no kidding.. I just hate those low communications barriers. I wouldn't want people to actually understand me.

Really. These things are stupid. Do the French replace all Latin words throughout the sciences with French versions? Do we really want to make it harder to communicate across countries and cultures? Is that really going to make the world a better place?

Re:wha ya sey?

[Taurim]

It's not the French but the French government. They already decided that everybody should use mél (for email) and cédérom (for cdrom) but bobody uses these.

Everybody uses a lot of English words in French, especially in the computer domain : mail/email, web, home page, cdrom...

They already did...

[Drakker]

It's "pourriel" which is a mix of courriel and "pourriture" (pourrie) which means "rotten".

I dont knw if the term has been officialy accepted, but it's been pending for a few years now.

Re:They already did...

[Vanieter]

I don't think the French have adopted it, but here in Québec it's been in use for a while now.

Re:They already did...

[chgros]

I think courriel also comes from Québec (I actually like this word). It is much better than the proposed "mél" (for message électronique)

Google knows best....

[sparks]

email OR e-mail site:fr 433,000 results

couriel OR couriell site:fr 730 results

"courrier electronique" site:fr 1,340 results

From the article: "The ministry's General Commission on Terminology and Neology insists Internet surfers in France are broadly using the term "courrier electronique" (electronic mail) instead of e-mail".

Interesting definition of "broadly" when it's apparently used 200 times less than "email".

Re:Google knows best....

[sparks]

Before anyone points this out for me - I mistyped "couriell" instead of "courriel" when I posted here, but the Google search itself uses the correct "courriel" so the results are accurate.

Re:Google knows best....

[Taurim]

When searching courriel with google.fr, there is 393 000 results. Not that bad... (163 millions for email and 449 000 for "courrier electronique").

ttp://www.google.fr/search?q=courriel&ie=UTF-8&o e= UTF-8&hl=fr&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta =

Re:Google knows best....

[Bilange]

couriel OR couriell site:fr 730 results

Couriell? I never saw couriel written with two L's.

Re:Google knows best....

[ixache]

Let's try and do a better search... For example, let's use google.com, not google.ca, type in real French words, and search all sites written in French, not .fr sites only; let's also take into account a very common mispelling. Which gives:

• "courrier électronique" OR "courrier electronique": 246,000 results;
• email OR e-mail: 423,000 results;
• courriel: 3,050,000 results.

What can we conclude? I don't know, except that the article I'm responding to is not very accurate.

Xavier

Re:Google knows best....

[theglassishalf]

Of course, your links don't match with what you are saying in the article. (your "Courriel" links to E-mail...)

So I suppose you are a liar?

-Daniel

Re:Google knows best....

[Beretta Vexe]

It's "courriel" and not "couriel" or "couriell". Google a recherché courriel sur le Web. 1 - 10 résultats, sur un total d'environ 465,000. Recherche effectuée en 0.07 secondes.

Re:Google knows best....

[PenguiN42]

Your numbers are not accurate -- you got them mixed up.

Here are some *real* numbers, using the same searches as you made (all french language sites):

"courriel" -- 247,000

"courrier électronique" OR "courrier electronique" -- 423,000

email OR e-mail -- 3,050,000

---
Clearly, the original poster's conclusion was accurate -- "email" is still the most widely used term on french speaking web sites by an order of magnitude.

Re:Google knows best....

[ixache]

Putain de bordel de merde !(Try and say it with a Matrix Reloaded-like French accent.) What a blunder! Oh the shame! I blame a heavy sunday meal, pear liquor, lazy sunday afternoons, cut and paste, and all of my ancestors for the poor education I received. It'll teach me to try and look smart.

Anyway, thanks for the correction.

I agree with your primary conclusion, of course; the numbers are so overwhelming! But I think that there is also a secondary conclusion which can be made, which somewhat contradicts the original poster: "courrier électronique", even though it is long, cumbersome and a bit difficult to spell correctly, is still widely used. I know that I use it as much as I can!

Xavier

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[kfg]

Don't strangle him. Just commit "hairy kairy."

KFG

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry Troll, I study Japanese... Nothing could be further from the truth.

1. The awkward spellings that you mention are Japanese translations of foreign words. written in a seperate script(katakana). It "is" the Japanese way to say the words.
2. So you want the Japanese to have to pass laws to preserve their linguistic identity when they already do it out of sure pride.
3. Why on earth would you want thousands of new words added to a langauge that have no special meaning to it. Talk about confusion. By keeping the words the same, yet Japanese, Learning betweent English and Japanese is sped up.

Before you go off and say someone doesn't do this or that... Know what you are talking about. The Japanese dedicate more time practicing and perfecting there language in such a uniformed way. It is naive and ignorant to judge the language when you know nothing about it.

Does Slashdot support Japanese? ??????

Re:Germans are sure strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, get a clue
/ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; reference
$ grep Admin /usr/share/trans/de-en
Administrator {m} :: administrator
Netzwerkadministrator means 'network administrator'. If you don't count the blank it's -1 letters. Congraturalations!

Re:Germans are sure strange

[rvega]

Come on, now: "admin" can mean a lot of different things, most of them not related to IT. If you mean "network administrator" you'll have to use, let's see, 21 characters. Don't be silly.

Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Canadians from Quebec are magnitudes more zealot than the French regarding to frenglish use"

Because they are a magnitude less relevant than the actual french in france.

They feel embattled, and they've pulled their wagons into a circle.

From Today's Beetle Bailey.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Gen Halftrack: NIX! NEIN! NON!
Miss Buxon: Here we go again. Are you still mad at the French sir?
Gen Halftrack: Yes! And I want all this french stuff removed from the schedule. Tomorrow we're going to CAMP not BIVOUAC. I want them to SCOUT the area and not do a RECONNAISSANCE. And I want wake up calls instead of REVEILLE.
Miss Buxon: Do you really want to do this sir? The French have been our friends for centuries.
Gen Halftrack: C'est La Vie

email epost?

[Dionysus]

Hmmm, how many languages have a local version of email? In Norway, we call it epost and have for some time. I'm surprised that the French took this long to come up with a French word for email.

Au revoir email more likely?

[Poro]

Are you sure the French goverment says "goodbye email", wouldn't that be against their language policy?

OTH

[puckhead]

I just had a couple of eggs over easy and #browns with my french-fried steak.

Re:OTH

[saden1]

Sharp Browns? What is that?

Can you say Cholesterol through the roof?

Im Sorry

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

...but Who the HELL cares. We are talking about one of the Living DEAD languages here...French. They have no world influence, and thier language is dying. In the end English/Chinesse/Spanish will dominate. Whoops they already do :) No put the French back in their little box.

Babelfish translation

[s20451]

Uncroyable, corn the blubber do world nay pearl pace English. And, plus uncroyable queue car, l'ONU nay pace interdate utilisation days languid non-English. Axis do male, on device agitate cells singe queue Aimster cheese and sea render always. And l'ONU, crest un-Aimster days terrorists queue voluptuous supine languid days God with cells terms diabolical. Quint on write "courriel", on dander support a Housemate Bin Laden.

why all the fuzz?

[guile*fr]

1- this is a flambait for anti-french
2- nobody cares about that but the french administration

next my pov:
couriel makes sense (courier electronique) compared to cédérom (cdrom)

Re:why all the fuzz?

[usotsuki]

I call "Disque compact - mémoire lire-seulement" (DC-MLS) - more French than "cédérom".

-uso.

So...

[NeuroManson]

When are they going to come up with an annoyingly long French varient for "Spam"?

Re:Germans are sure strange

[C_nemo]

Like 'Network Administrator'(20 chars, 2 words) vs. 'Netzwerkadministrator' (21 chars, 1 word), and if you count the white space they're equal. I dunno mabe the German abbreviation of 'Netzwerkadministrator' is 'Admin' or?

Language Confusion

[JamesP]

The argument I find most convincing about NOT transating technical words is that you have to learn several names for the same thing...

As suchm if a french begins speaking in english and he wouldn't have learned the english term then... yes it's a good moment to pee in your pants now... (because most of technical documents is in english)

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[generic-man]

E-mail is denshi me-ru. The word denshi means "electric," and me-ru is the "Japanized" form of "mail."

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:Word importing

[Cappy Red]

My source says it did come into English originally from Greek, through Latin and New Latin. I just mentioned the closest classical language to English(only now bothering to learn about New Latin from Wikipedia). For all that the word has changed from its roots, it doesn't make a big difference.("elektron", or thereabouts, being the original Greek).

Just more linguistic trading. :)


*honk*

Re:Word importing

[Tablizer]

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).

No wonder English's spelling rules seem like they have been raped and plundered.

Re:Word importing

[dk4]

England also liked borrowing words from the places that it colonized. There are many an english word borrowed from Irish, Hindi, Arabic, etc.

Re:Word importing

[jemfinch]

Electronic actually came from Greek, electron, electros, which means "amber" (you know, the amber you rub that builds up static electricity? That's the one).

Jeremy

Re:Word importing

[feder]

"Vikings spoke... something"

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, a Germanic language quite similar to the languages spoken on the Faeroe Islands and Iceland today.

Re:Word importing

[nickos]

"Vikings spoke... something. Norse variant of German is as far as I got on short notice"

Ahem. The vikings spoke a language now called Old Norse. The Icelandic still speak something very close to it, but the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages have changed due to their proximity to the rest of Europe, just as the language that is now English has changed over the last 1000 years.

Comparing Old Norse with German is not very accurate. Like English, the Scandinavians speak a germanic language, but this simply means that they were all part of the same tribe that wandered up from India many millenia ago. A German speaker could not necessarily understand a Danish, Norwegian or Swedish speaker (or an English one for that matter).

Re:Word importing

[Grizzlysmit]

Keep it up French dudes, at this rate your language should be extinct before 2100, :-) ok just kidding but with a serious point, laguages grow all the time, and the natural way they extend their vocabulary is to take/adapt words from other languages, to interfere with this proccess can only be dangerous, to the language. Just suppose for a moment that this works and the french people are dumb enough to start using this word, and then another and another, before long french becomes a weird unnatural thing an: Artificial language pretending to be a natural language, what then might not your young be justified in giving up french, for another language? dare I suggest maybe English? the current international language.

My recomendation to the French would be tell your government to grow up! a natural language with a large culture of living people, cannot die if left alone, but a language bastardised to death with Artificial, abominations put in for no really good reason, who knows??

But I'm sure the French will go on like always, and ignore this strange xenophobic government department, as I believe they always have.

Artificial languages are for programming computers in, who ever a nice chat in C++, Perl, or what ever.

Re:Word importing

[Patersmith]

I think the real real reason is more subtle than just the intermixing of languages and sharing of words. Every language's old words were taken from other earlier languages...either an earlier form of the same language or a different one altogether.

However, the largest reason according to linguists is how english treats the verb. In French, verbs mainly end in -er -ir or -re and there are solid rules for how to conjugate them into their various forms. I understand the same can be said for Latin, but I've only studied French as a second language.

English, on the other hand, can make a verb out of anything, and it is generally accepted when people do. You e-mail your mom. You plate your food. You taxi to the grocery store. And when the language changes, you don't need to take it to a committee for approval (like if you want to start a sentence with the word "and").

English has changed so much over time, even in the last hundred years. The only real rules are what are generally accepted by the majority as the de-facto standard. I guess it's a lot like open source in that way.

Not quite as bad as it seems

[JReykdal]

Firstly they are not banning the use of the word e-mail in the french language. They are setting guidelines for government websites and publications. Here in Iceland we regularly "domesticate" forreign words for daily use and often it works quite well. A few samples: Monitor = Skjar (Skjar was a word for windows (made from cow's stomachs) around 1000 years ago. Computer = Tölva (Made to match icelandic grammar and uses a form of the icelandic word for "number") E-Mail = Tölvupóstur/Rafpóstur (Computer mail/Electronig mail) Only used in "official" publications but usually not in day by day conversations. But then again...we have some fiascos as well that are never used by anyone :) But I understand and support the French in trying to keep the language somewhat clean of forreign words where it is possible.

The french word

[NorthDude]

If I'm not mistaken, I think the french word for spam is "Foie gras"... :-) Sorry to non-french speaking people over here...

Re:The french word

[Merdalors]

Bite your tongue! Foie Gras is an expensive delicacy, made from the livers of force-fed geese.

Spam is a meat product made from every salvageable bit of the hog: lips, snout, etc (use your imagination).

Re:The french word

[NorthDude]

I know what is Foie Gras, don't worry about that.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[jrockway]

Well, it does make Japanese more accessible to native speakers of English. For example, "conpuutaa" is more recognizable than "keisanki",

Then again, people need to stop translating those words back to english; it leads to questions like "Do you have an arbite*?". No, that's German.

* arubaito is the word for "part-time-job", derived from German.

Moving offtopic, an interesting word evolution is:

animation[en] -> anime[jp] -> anime[en]

We use loanwords fron English in English now :)

Just so ya know

[ajlb]

In France, email is also a kind of cheese - I think it's a thinly-sliced dryish cheese sort of like what we call Swiss in North America, but it's been a while so I could be wrong.

When I was last there (uh, 92) the University of Strasbourg had some rooms set up for people to write and send "PopMail" - which is sort of catchy and actually makes technical sense (although I guess they should have said "PopSMTPMail").

It's still sort of two English words, so the Language Police at the Academie Francaise probably wouldn't go for it.

Courriel and Pourriel

[Taurim]

Courriel sounds a little strange in french (we all use the word email for way too much time).

But there is an other excellent word found by the French Canadians : Pourriel which is a contraction of "Pourriture Electronique" (electronic rot), an excellent translation for Spam :-)

Oh great!

[Trolling4Dollars]

Bring on the jingoist attitudes of stupid Americans once again. It's called "culture". We all have differences in our cultures. Well... except for most Americans who have no culture at all. Yes, I am American, but I can't stand the non-culture anymore. The only things we export to the world are our own ignorance and our own fear. These are truly sad times.

Re:Oh great!

[cunta_cinte]

"Yes, I am American, but I can't stand the non-culture anymore. "

Then get the fuck out of here.

Fark beating Slashdot to tech news?!

[frostman]

Folks, this was posted days ago on Fark!

Maybe not stuff that matters, but certainly news for nerds. Come on people! Fight back!

I want Gimp contests on Slashdot and I want 'em NOW!

there is more damage!

[lethalwp]

The crazy french academy have made more damage to words than email/courriel

there is also:
cd-rom: cédérom (same pronuncation, but it looses its first meaning)

streamer: dévideur
shareware partagiciel
freeware gratuiciel

etc etc, i don't like this practice of trying to put french words which then loose its ethymology :(

other examples on
http://www.ac-amiens.fr/academie/pedagogie/Eco nomi e_gestion/informatique_gestion/dictionn.htm

Excuse me

[Lxy]

while I check my Freedom-mail

Re:Excuse me

[ptr2void]

Freedom fries are way more stupid than courriel. Especially since the word "courriel" seems to be the Canadian French word for email, as another poster pointed out.

Payback time!

[boltik]

French just want to revenge for "Freedom Fry" (-:

English envy

[rlp]

The French are just annoyed that English has become the 'lingua franca'. :-)

Reminds me of the a joke..

[Mindjiver]

What's the difference between the USA and yoghurt?
Even yoghurt develop its own culture after a while.

Re:Reminds me of the a joke..

[littleRedFriend]

Reminds me of another quote

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation." --Georges Clemenceau 1841-1929) French general and statesman.

Re:Reminds me of the a joke..

[Trolling4Dollars]

People complain we have no culture then complain it's invading their own and dominating the thoughts and behavior of their hollywood aspiring youth.
There is a difference between culture and crap. What we have is crap. While France has the Louvre, we have what? WWF? While Europe and the UK have great popular dance music, we have what? Britney, Eminem and Beyonce? Sorry, there is a HUGE difference in quality between what the US produces and what the rest of the world has. Their stuff is better. Some examples:

Movies:
Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders (Europe)
City of Angels (United States)
Bottom line: Wings of Desire was a better movie in every way.

Television:
Murder In Mind (UK)
Any mystery show from the US
Bottom line: The Brits do mystery better than we do in terms of quality.

Music (even pop crap):
Sophie Ellis Bextor (UK)
Disco Montego (AUS)
Towa Tei (JP)
X-tina (US)
Bottom line: All of those other countries do pop dance better than the US in terms of quality.

Sorry. The US might have what some people want to call a culture, but it's really more of a product to be bought and sold. Not art to be truly admired.

Re:Reminds me of the a joke..

[mandalayx]

right, and what he says carries weight, because French generals have been significant persons in history.

"Ordinateur" in 1955

[squashed]

The French Commissions de Terminologie has been imposing words on the information technology industry since at least 1955, the year that "ordinateur" replaced "computer".

Interestingly, the Commission gives IBM-France credit for "ordinateur".

see http://www.cfwb.be/franca/pg011.htm

>"ordinateur" a remplacé "computer" depuis 1955 à
> la demande d'IBM-France.

Re:"Ordinateur" in 1955

[usotsuki]

In Castilian Spanish the word for "computer" is "[el] ordenador". For some reason though the equivalent in American Spanish is "[la] computadora" ...

-uso.

Re:"Ordinateur" in 1955

[BigBadBri]

yep - and 'logiciels' for software, 'donnees' for data, 'base de donnees' for database, etc. etc.

So what's wrong with that?

Hell, most English speaking folks still refer to hard disk space (correctly, if you think about it) as 'memory'.

It's their language, and if you need to learn it, you will.

If not, then you can carry on drinking the six packs and eating burgers until even a Cadillac (named after a Frenchman, in case you were wondering) is too small for your fat American asses.

Re:"Ordinateur" in 1955

[hughk]

Even worse is the French for programmer: co-ordinateur. The thing is that program commes from programme which was originally French anyway.

But 'email' is already a word

[Ed Avis]

The answer is simple... the anglophone world should refer to electronic mail as 'enamel' and then there will be a simple French translation. Knuth has already hinted at this.

Re:Germans are sure strange

[the_germ]

"elektronische Post" is just the translation! It's never used in common language!
As some other poster pointed out "admin" can mean a lot of things in English - not just "network administrator"; in German we also use the word "Admin" and it always means "Netzwerkadministrator" here.

In Germany we don't have the "tradition" to invent our own words for these things. We just use English words mostly. Unlike the French who translate almost everything.

Hats off to the French

[niceandsunny]

As someone who lives in Germany, I admire the French efforts to retain their culture. Germans are replacing their language with American English at a sickening pace and have long lost the ability to coin new words in their own language. It's disgusting to watch a nation that used to be the center of science and culture being run into the ground like this.

Let the French Speak French

[reallocate]

>> 'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!" Especially if you don't actually speak french ;)....

Umm, that's English...if you spoke French, you wouldn't be saying "Hey Pierre..." in the first place.

I've always thought French language policing is a bit silly, but "e-mail" is an English concoction. Let the French speak French.

Re:Germans are sure strange

[doktor-hladnjak]

Here's how germans translat "e-mail": "elektronische post" ...

Did you know the german word for "Admin"? It's "Netzwerkadministrator" ...a word with fsckin' 21 chars :-/

Speaking as an American living in Germany, sometimes it amazes me how arbitrary the decision of using borrowed or translated computer terminology is. My favorite as of late is "worst-case Laufzeit" (worst case runtime). Worst-case is something which can be applied to many other fields, but run time is generally confined (at least as far as I know) to the time it takes for a computer to do something. Yet, they translate the individual parts of the English compound to form a new German compound, while leaving the more broadly used word in the original English.

just another example

[the_2nd_coming]

Im no french hater, but this is just one more example of why the French government knows Jack about freedom.

this is so god damn 1984....why don't they just call their language "newspeak"

Re:just another example

[Sartory]

hum, i hate to rain on your parade but i think you`ve got it all backwards, the purpose of newspeak was to destroy words.

The "Academie Française" added a word to the french language which, i think is a good thing because like Linux, its always good to have an alternative ;P

Sartory

Re:just another example

[the_2nd_coming]

yes, I know it was to destroy word meanings, but my refrence was to compair them. they are compairable in that both newspeak words and this new crap are government mandates.

and tehy call Americans Jingos.

Re:just another example

[Sartory]

You`re right about that. I don`t think i`d last long in customer support or in sales if i spoke "slang" or half english half mexican/ebonics/hebrew. I were the boss in a company, i`d would like my employees to write proper english/french (hence the all the french gov publications must be in "french"). French is french, its not french with some english in it. Courriel is a direct contraction from courrier(mail) and electronique (electronic), so it seems fair to me (unlike cédérom). I`m french canadian (quebecois) and i think i speak more french that anyone in Paris ;) Sartory

Re:just another example

[Submarine]

Who talks about freedom? This so-called "ban" is not a ban. It's an update on the guidelines governing official government-issued texts.It does not concern private entities.

I hope for your credibility that your other examples of "why the French government knows Jack about freedom" are not equally baloney. What are they?

Re:just another example

[the_2nd_coming]

it is the motivation more than anything that propels my contempt.

keeping the frech language and culture pure?

please...English picks up new words in almost every language and makes them its own.

it is the motivation behind it on the part of the french government that causes me to call them Jingos, not the concept of the word itself.

We need a new word for spam.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Hormel doesn't want their trademark for meat or whatever it is used to describe unsolicited commercial email, I propose we use the word curriel. It sounds just as descriptive as spam.

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. They're not telling how people should speak, just that courriel is to replace "e-mail" in "government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites".

Nothing wrong

[GnuVince]

I don't think there's anything wrong. The word 'courriel' has been part of the IT jargon in french-speaking Quebec for quite some time (and has been approved by the Larousse and Robert dictionaries). Other terms have been translated too:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Foire Aux Questions

Chat: Clavardage (a nice mix of 'clavier' (keyboard) and 'bavardage' (chat))

Nothing wrong with wanting french terms for french people.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[Captain Segfault]

Moving offtopic, an interesting word evolution is:

animation[en] -> anime[jp] -> anime[en]

We use loanwords fron English in English now :)


The Japanese word 'anime' was borrowed directly from the Italian word 'anime', as I understand it, not from the english 'animation'.

Re:Gotta love the French

[figleaf]

Remember they helped liberate America from the British. And Ms. Liberty is a gift to America from the french.

Honestly, I live in France and ...

[BlueTrin]

... we find these new words as stupid as the organizations who try to promote them, only some companies websites are using these words

Browser is also translated by "brouteur", which can means pussy sucker in some cases. Hey this new cunilingus (Mozilla) is pretty nice.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[Tobyb]

This March, I visited Japan for the 6th time to visit family. The one complaint my sister and I had was there is too much english on signs and in the general language. It had been 5 years since my last visit, but there has been a large increase in english and Katatana. The worst offender? "Starbucks Coffee". Come on - at least make an attempt to make it Japanese like Makanodonadono does. It was sad to see this, I hope something is done. See article below:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.p l5 ?ek20030320mn.htm

or
http://japanvisitor.com/i_mode/clinic1.html
(Same article)

Therefore, I understand this French position. How many American's are angry with Spanish storefronts and advertisements. "There 'ought to be a law!" is the cry I'm hearing from English speaking Americans about this.

Also counterproductive

[A nonymous Coward]

I worked with a component engineer whose job was to scour the world for cheaper parts. If he could save a penny on resistors for just one product, he paid his own way. He had shelves of data books, and said the absolute last resort was the French books. German, even Japanese, he could at least make a preliminary stab at understanding, because they used the common English words, even if the rest was Greek (ha ha) to him. The French ones used so many artificial bogus terms that he had too much trouble with them.

I always wondered how much business the French firms lost because their technical books were politically correct rather than useful.

Re:Also counterproductive

[jez9999]

Japanese textbooks used common English words?! What Japanese textbook was he reading; The Engrish Book Of Spare Parts?

Re:Also counterproductive

[Sven Tuerpe]

He had shelves of data books, and said the absolute last resort was the French books.

Ever tried to type anything on a French keyboard?

not so normal

[Oswald]

"Protecting the language is normal....", the nice lady says. Well, actually, no. Infantile, futile, sad, and pathetic, yes. Normal, no.

Why do the French, paragons on internationalism that they be, seek to root out invading foreign words, while the parochial Americans just absorb it all and keep on going? If French people really didn't want to use English words, it wouldn't be necessary for the government to tell them to stop. I think this demonstrates what den Beste talks about from time to time: the French have never gotten over their belief that common people are simply unable to govern themselves and must be told what to do.

Let's put it into nerd terms:

[be-fan]

English is like C++: Random features lifted wholesale from other languages, with little internal coherence.
French is like Haskell: Clean, elegant, pure as possible. Lacking in the usefulness department.

I don't personally like French much, but I think its rather noble of them to try to protect the integrity of their language. Its not like the world needs any more overly-pragmatic people.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[jrockway]

Animeishon as in "animeishon eiga" is apparently a word too, so I think "anime" is just an abbreviation of that. This site agrees:

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/search.php?MT=%A5%A2 %A 5%CB%A5%E1&kind=je

German / Denglisch / Dummdeutsch

[harmonica]

As a native speaker of German, I can only support this. While some of the French efforts are exaggerated, at least there is a general understanding that certain trends should be prevented or at least steered in the right direction. Certain words are hard (or impossible) to translate in a way that doesn't take a complete sentence. But in other cases people are just lazy or stupid. It's perfectly convenient to say "runterladen", but for some it must be "downloaden". Some people actually prefer to say "Files" instead of "Dateien". I don't quite get it. Purists may be furious about "new German" like the now ubiquitous "Sinn machen" for "Sinn ergeben" (which I think is impossible to reverse now that it has caught on), they should better come up with good expressions for words that are hard to translate in a concise manner.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[usotsuki]

Karaoke comes from the English word "orchestra".

BTW, often "arubaito" (G. "Arbeit") is shortened to "baito".

-uso.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[usotsuki]

"Dessins animé" - animated cartoons

But the Japanese appearance is a coincidence as it is short for "animeeshon".

-uso.

Only the French

[fanatic]

..would even have a Culture Ministry in this sense.

Or does the USA have something equally silly of which I'm not aware? (I live in USA).

Re:Only the French

[Little Brother]

No we're even sillier, we ban words like "French Fries" and "French Toast" by ourselves.

Re:Only the French

[cunta_cinte]

Nobody was baning anything so stop spreading this nonsense.

Re:Only the French

[fanatic]

No we're even sillier, we ban words like "French Fries" and "French Toast" by ourselves.

It might or might not have been silly, but it wasn't state-mandated.

Re:Only the French

[Sanction]

Actually, wasn't it a congressional thing? That is just as binding as the French side, the new word only applies to official matters. Now, as to the "freedom fry" thing, under what circumstances could it possibly have not been silly?

Re:Only the French

[Submarine]

The USA has the National Endowment for the Arts to fund artists.

They also have administrations dealing with how forms and other official documents are written (see that fine print at the bottom of forms... isn't it a task of OMB to ensure that all government forms are written in a certain fashion?). I suspect they also have terminology commissions.

Re:Only the French

[fanatic]

Actually, wasn't it a congressional thing?

Looking at the first few hits from googling, it was done in the Congressional cafeterias. So far as I know, no official mandate imposing this on individuals or comapnies ever came out of the US government.

Now, as to the "freedom fry" thing, under what circumstances could it possibly have not been silly?

Under the circumstances that you thought the French were a bunch of efete, ungrateful, socialist swine, who have completely forgotten or ignored the fact that a certain USA saved their butts is the only reason they have French Culture, as opposed to German culture, or Russian culture, or the culture of anyone who can fight better than France, which would be just about anyone.

Of course, I would never say or think anything like that.

what the French fail to....

[chipster]

...remember, is that if it were not for OUR US gov't, they wouldn't have *EMAIL* in the first damn place!

Revenge

[reidhoch]

They're just trying to get revenge for the whole Freedom Fries thing.

Curriel is French for

[jjohn]

"freedom fries"

Stop - Weekdned

[neoform]

Interestingly the french use english words like 'stop' and 'weekend' which are completely english words.. and there are close to no french words withe the letter w in em.

Re:Stop - Weekdned

[usotsuki]

It depends, I have heard of "fin de semaine" (// Sp.) - if you are a nitpicker.

-uso.

Re:Stop - Weekdned

[neoform]

that's a quebec invention..

Re:Stop - Weekdned

[chgros]

More interesting is that we use words that are english but don't have the same meaning as in english, e.g. "smoking" means tuxedo, "parking" means car park/parking lot, and probably others...
As for letter w, it doesn't exist in Latin, so the words containing it essentially come from german/english.

Peux tu m'envoyer un courriel sur ce c�d�rom ?

[Psykopat]

... the worst is, our french governement also decided to "translate" the term "CD-rom"... And now, Mesdames et Messieurs, please write "cédérom", and not "CD-rom" ! Within a year or two : "- Hello Jacques, what do you do ? - Just watching a dévédé on my pécé."

Pollupostage

[Inode Jones]

Sympatico (a Canadian ISP) uses "Pollupostage" to refer to spam. This term may also include UseNet postings.

this is just...

[TheShadow]

gay

Dead language, actually

[wfolta]

On the contrary, a language that has to officially resist foreign language influences is a dead language. If the language were dynamic and living, the influence of English would not be an issue.

Re: some kind of revenge...

[op51n]

Maybe they decided they had to do something to get back at the US for freedom fries!

paybacks for freedom fries?

[acidrain69]

Whatever. Both sides are stupid. Snotty americans and french.

Americans: "Damn the french for being weasels and having deals with Iraq when we are trying to go to war! Lets, lets..... rename french fries in retaliation"

French: "Stupid amer-ee-cuns! We will not call email email because it sort of reminds us of america, even though email isn't so much an american phenomena as a global one! We thumb our noses at you! Kniggits!"

Re:paybacks for freedom fries?

[thebigmacd]

In Quebec, the term courriel has been used almost exclusively since the beginning of email. In English, email is made from Electronic Mail and guess what! Courriel is made from Courrier Electronique, which literally means Electronic Mail. What I am saying is that France is lagging behind in the initiative to make "courriel" the official word. Nothing spiteful in the descision.

Re:paybacks for freedom fries?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Your mother was a hamster and your father stank of elderberries.

I fart in your general direction.

Now go away or I shall have to taunt you a second time!

Re:paybacks for freedom fries?

[Overly Critical Guy]

"has a very distinct French sound"

What is sounds like to me is a pretty goofy reason to ban another word.

Re:paybacks for freedom fries?

[jejones]

Nope...The French concern for the purity of la belle langue francaise goes back well before the "freedom fries" brouhaha. Rene Etiemble wrote Parlez-Vous Franglais? back in 1964, and according to this page, similar opinions had been voiced by Frenchmen as far back as 1757.

I hasten to add that for a long time, French was the language of philosophy, science, mathematics, belles lettres, and diplomacy...but when it comes to this whole "linguistic purity" thing, give it up. (Hey...King Canute wasn't French.)

(Note to Francophones: I tried to put the appropriate diacritical marks in, but /.'s software kept me from doing so.)

Mod Parent DOWN TROLL, FLAMEBAIT!

[Genjurosan]

I'm glad to see you have the intelligence to classify all 291 million Americans.

America is where a person on the streets can go from rags to riches with hard work.

Don't confuse confidence with arrogance. I'd rather be interpreted as arrogant than bitter like the rest of the world.

Re:Mod Parent DOWN TROLL, FLAMEBAIT!

[Obfiscator]

I'm glad to see you have the intelligence to classify all 291 million Americans. ... I'd rather be interpreted as arrogant than bitter like the rest of the world.

Whereas you just have the intelligence to classify the other 5.7 billion people in the world.

Sigh.

Re:Mod Parent DOWN TROLL, FLAMEBAIT!

[p3d0]

I'm glad to see you have the intelligence to classify all 291 million Americans.

I'm glad you understand that prejudice is incompatible with intelligence. It makes your subsequent statement just too ironic for mere words to describe:

I'd rather be interpreted as arrogant than bitter like the rest of the world.

Re:Mod Parent DOWN TROLL, FLAMEBAIT!

[bacchusrx]

America is where a person on the streets can go from rags to riches with hard work.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

bacchusrx.

Re:Mod Parent DOWN TROLL, FLAMEBAIT!

[Genjurosan]

Point taken. I was wrong and no better then the original poster that I responded to. Emotional response got the best of me and I added that last stupid statement.

I should have said that I would rather be interpreted as arrogant, rather than bitter... and ended it there.

Re:Mod Parent DOWN TROLL, FLAMEBAIT!

[Obfiscator]

I tip my hat to you, sir, for admitting you were wrong.

All your email are belong to us

[forged]

Tous vos courriel sont appartenus de nous

Re:All your email are belong to us

[benoitg]

You completely missed the joke...

What is the big deal?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

So what is the big deal here? I thought 'email' was already a real word in French anyway (with nothing to do with computers, incidentally). Why shouldn't the French come up with their own word rather than just absorb the English version? And 'email' isn't a silly word anyway, the pronounciation is not regular with the rest of the English language.

The 'ban' only applies in official Government comminications, there is no compulsion to use the new word outside that arena.

Re:What is the big deal?

[Verne]

And 'email' isn't a silly word anyway, the pronounciation is not regular with the rest of the English language.

That's because you have dropped the hyphen.

E-Mail ...

Re:English regularly reinvents existing French wor

[wfberg]

HDTV (High definition television) was invented in France under the name TVHD (i.e. télévision haute définition). Why didn't americans have to invent a new word when the french already had a perfectly good word for TVHD? Why?

Mostly to get back at the french calling NATO "OTAN", the UN "ONU", etc. etc. This bi-directional naming of organizations to keep the French happy is the reason why ISO does NOT mean "International Standards Organisation", but instead, nothing. Otherwise the French would spell it OSI, in stead of the standard spelling.


Because english has a right to choose whatever they want to for their own words. If they wanted to speak french, they'd go to France (or up north to Quebec).

Actually, AFAIK, there is only one language in the world with an official list of words, and official spelling rules, as well as the biggest dictionary ever (still a work in progress after more than a century); Dutch. The regulatory body, a joint Dutch/Belgian organization, is called "de taalunie" (the language union).


The french has just as many rights to define their language as the americans or anyone else.

Indeed, except for Dutch government orgs (and school kids) no one in the world is obliged by law to use particular words or spelling. Of course corporations and subcultures may impose certain restrictions, capitalizations and verbiage ("OMFG LOLOLOL STFU lamez0rrrr"), but that is exaclty their right ;-)


BTW, émail is already a word in french. It means enamel.

Which only points out the folly of coining a new word! "email" is in spellcheckers already, even though the accent may be a bit off ;-)

Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[WegianWarrior]

Most of the countires in northern europe speaks some branch of the germanic laungue-group (finnish and hungarian are the major exeption). The norsemen spoke - obviously as it may seem - a lingo often called norse, or old nordic. Even back then there was a noticable difference between what the swedes, the danes and we norwegians spoke. The old norweigans spoke a subvariant frequently called 'old norwegian' (yes, it is blindingly obvious), which were spread to Iceland, Greenland and the illfated colonies in Vinland (north america). In fact, the spoken language of Iceland is very close to the norse tounge.

Useless fact; the english didn't have a seperate word for dying of hunger until the vikings had been visiting for a few years.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[cunta_cinte]

Uh .. Hungary is not located in Northern Europe.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[broeman]

And then Greenland, Vinland and Iceland was forgotten, only the Icelandic survived. Iceland is supposed to be closest to norse (old-nordisk) even today, so I heard in a history lesson once. I can only speak of Danish lingo, since it interested me for a while, and clearly our language had a great impact from France and Germany, and today, as many other countries (except France who fights it), are getting more English words into their language. 'Yes' is common used by sales-people, 'Fuck' is used by the youth and all computerised products are using English words. I remember that only IBM tried to use the Danish words invented by some geeks with too much time (don't know if they still do, haven't seen an IBM computer for a decade).

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[andrewski]

I don't know it the Viking colonies were ill-fated. In Minnesota we have this Runestone, which may or may not be a hoax, and more importantly, we had a group of 'Native Americans' living up there and in Michigan, WI, and parts of Canada, who were fair-skinned and fair-haired, had blue and green eyes, and often lived in walled, barricaded villages with nicely laid out street plans and wells and houses and such. In other words, completely unlike most other indians.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[WegianWarrior]

If you read the old icelandic sagas, you'll find that all documented attemts to colonize Vinland - which most likely was the area around Newfoundland - failed. The longest semi-permanent settlement I can recall, was no more than two years before they had to withdraw; partly because of external treats (ie; the native americans), partly because of internal quarrels.

As far as the Kensintongton rune stone goes, it is widely accepted as a hoax (allthought I did find and include a link claiming the opposite). To sum up; The inscription doesnt follow the formula commonly used on runestones in scandinavia, use of a word not used in the scandinavian languages at the time, date (1362) out of whack with reality (by 1362, the old vikings had long since settled down and stopped exploring - and the tradition of putting up runestones had died out as well), the runic alphabet used to write the stone is younger than the date placed on the stone (in particulary the J-rune, which wasn't in use until around the mid 1500's).

Before anyone goes apeshit on me here; yes, runes was in common usage among norwegians and other scandinavians at the time the stone is supposed to date from; we have plenty of evidence of that from archeological digs in our old cities. But this sort of text, and so long texts, are not found in scandinavia. The vikings and their decendants were not a people of the book, allthought quite a lot of ordinary people could read and write in a fashion.

I have no explonations why you got a group of "fair-skinned" and "fair-haired" indians up in Michigan thought - but it's probaly just a coincidence of genetics. Blue eyes and blond hair are both recessive genes; meaning that if norse and native american mixed blood, those traits should be gone in a few generations anyway.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[hemanman]

The reason they were ill-fated, was because of the native americans being lactose intollerant, where as scandinavians aren't.

New studies show this to be the most obvious reason for the hostilities between the Viking settlers and the natives. The natives were offered milk as a gift, and when they later got ill, they thought that they were poisoned.

There was supposed to be a greater settlement at the site of New York, but unfortunately the evidence is long gone.

-H

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[arkanes]

Just because the colonies "failed" doesn't mean that some people didn't say and/or interbreed while they were here. Especially if there was internal squabbling.

Disclaimer: I'm far from an expert on this sort of thing, but I also have a real skepticism about the idea that it can't have happened just because nobody wrote it down.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[fizbin]

Estonia especially, since he mentioned Finnish and Hungarian, the other two European descendants of what was once Mongolian.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[andrewski]

Exactly. Why not abandon Vinland and go south? There's a good possibility that clever adventuresome folk like the Vikings wouldn't be content not knowing what lay beond their island.

Anyway, the Mandan is the tribe that I was thinking of. They lived much like their (likely? mostly?) European progenitors.

Re:Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing

[Valdrax]

Speaking of bizarre linguistic imports into pre-colonial America, I've recently come across the works of a man named James Adair who ardently believed that the Cherokees and other tribes of Northwest Georgia were a lost tribe of Israel. He makes arguements based on their monotheism to Yo He Wah (similar to YHWH), their religious rites, their creation and flood stories, and the many linguistic and idomatic similarities between local Indian languages and Hebrew that he apparently saw as a scholar. James Adair settled down with the Cherokee and married into their tribe. His other works were very instrumental to colonists attempting to understand the ways and culture of the Indian nations of the Southeast.

Look him up in Google for more info.

Re:Germans are sure strange

[GlowStars]

Yet, they translate the individual parts of the English compound to form a new German compound, while leaving the more broadly used word in the original English

Err, no... "Laufzeit" is a common german word and definitely not created through translation from the English. It's older then its use in CS.

perhaps

[RestiffBard]

if the french on occasion invented something everyone uses they wouldn't have to worry about coming up with words after the fact.

kidding.

Because Quebecois French is just as pure?

[pkhuong]

Here's what the French French thought up:
"mél" (pronounciation strikingly similar to that of "mail").

French magazines (Science&Vie comes to mind) started arguing that courriel was more interesting a few years ago. It does sound much more French...But then, French also give their clothes a 'pressing', not a "nettoyage à sec" (Quebecois version).

French French "more pure"? Subject to discussion, to say the least.

Tit for tat?

[NefariousOne]

The French view English the same way Americans view slang. Certain words and phrases maybe seep into the colloquial language, but people rally against their admittance into the official lexicons.

In my opinion, email is fairly neutral-- its basis may be English, but global usage has sanitized it of any sort of unique nationalism. Perhaps then this is just a tit for tat move to highlight the pettiness of a certain anti-Gallic linguistic maneuver made by Americans earlier this year, i.e. "freedom fries"?

In any case, the ban only refers to governmental related documents and web material. There is surely a similar provision in place in the States for federal documents.

Now I definitely have to use e-mail

[TecraMan]

To be nice, I got in the habit of saying courrier electronique, but now that the Academie has got into their heads to prescribe more artificial changes to the French language I will switch to e-mail. Courriel... What a load of rubbish!

E-mail, e-mail, e-mail, e-mail....

I feel like the guy in Life of Brian who got stoned for shouting "Jehova, Jehova, Jehova". Wonder when they're going to start stoning me!

More like UK VS US

[pkhuong]

See subject. OK, so, as Austin and his father showed, it is possible to make it impossible to understand UK English for others... if you try really hard. You know, there's no different dictionary for France and Quebec; it's the same words, pronounced grossly the same way.

It used to be "m�l"

[rsidd]

They used to have a word "mél" (for "message electronique"), which was officially encouraged in place of email, the trouble is nobody used it. Courriel however is widely used, though until now unofficial. They also have official words for "web" and (I think) "internet" but nobody uses those either. The trouble with "email" is that it (or rather, "émail") already means "enamel" in French.

Re:It used to be "m�l"

[Simonetta]

The word 'mél' seems to be a touch of sublime brilliance on the part of the language masters because it sounds exactly like the word 'mail' used by the rest of the civilized world and meets the requirement of being derived from a pure french phrase.
It's a shame that it didn't become a term of general usage. I was about to say 'it didn't catch on' but it would probably be best to avoid english idioms when posting to the slashdot community that has such a wide linguistic base.

Re:It used to be "m�l"

[d_i_r_t_y]

i'm surprised noone seems to have mentioned this already, but courriel is a nice word in french because it sounds nice when pronounced (say what you will about the french and their language, but it's quite lovely to speak and to listen to), and the word 'courriel' is the contraction of the words 'courrier electronique' (electronic mail).

voila.

if people (americans) want to criticise the french for their apparent language snobbery, recall that the forefathers of american culter deliberately went about inventing english words and misspellings (colour -> color, for eg.) in a deliberate attempt to distinguish themselves from the english. the US-specfic perversion of the english language continues to this day, eg 'already' used (incorrectly) in the present sense (as in "stopthat already"), the (incorrect) use of the word 'most' to mean 'almost' (as in "most everybody in america says this" instead of "almost everybody who speaks english says almost"). i can think of other examples...

Wish I had and could legally give you some karma

[Cappy Red]

As a novice language geek, I find that all very cool. Thanks for clearing up the "Norse" thing too. :)

*goes on another language binge at Wikipedia*

*honk*

P�t�?

[dark&stormynight]

Will SPAM now become Pâté? Also, the SPAM song won't be as funny if you sing...

Pâté, Pâté, Pâté... wonderful Pâté!

it sounds quite good to me

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother tongue is French and to me the word "courriel" sounds pretty well. I might well use it.

I guess it is a shortcut for "courrier éléctronique" (electronic mail).

Courriel is a true French word because you can make many spelling errors:
- I could write only one "r": couriel
- or add to many letters at the end: courrielle
- or o combinaision of both: courielle

Only one word, so many mistakes to make, It's really a French word!

It may also be counter-productive

[jc42]

Some years ago, I read an article by a French scientist who explained why he wrote all his papers in English rather than in his native French.

He explained that, as a scientist, one of his important tasks was helping devise good scientific terminology. The scientific community has come up with a very effective approach: If someone has good terminology for what you need, you use it rather than inventing your own. But if you can give a good reason why preceding terminology doesn't work well, you are not only allowed but expected to propose better terminology, and explain it in your paper.

He went on to explain that, if he were to publish in French, any new terminology would have to get the approval of the government's language commission. It's highly unlikely that anyone in that body will understand his area of technical expertise, so their decision will almost always be wrong (in the scientific sense).

But there is no such government angency in any English-speaking country. In English, there are no legal barriers to inventing your own terminology. So when he sees the need for a new word (or redefinition of an old word), he can just use it (and explain it) in his English paper. His colleagues in his area of research will be the judges of whether his new word (or redefinition) will be adopted.

He also commented that he was far from the only researcher who used this approach, and the same argument is often heard in German. He suggested that, as long as the English-speaking world remains so open and free about "corruption" of the English language, it will remain the World's primary scientific language.

So those who like the idea of English becoming the world's dominant language should applaud and encourage anti-English actions such as what the French are doing.

Re:It may also be counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

well, i'm French student, so forgive me if i make some mistakes.

1) In France this news had not been commented. Personnaly i read this news on 'slashdot'...

2) Governement don't want to impose one way to speak French.

3) Spoken language and written language are two things completely differents. So with official papers, they must use french language. It is not a 'nationalist' behavior but it is for respect the 'traditions'.

4) Personnaly i think in my spoken language i will use 'email' term and in written language i will use 'courriel'.

5) I think the word 'courriel' is pretty, it is a good translation.

Sébastien from Marseille (South of France), France (Old Europe), European Union.

Re:It may also be counter-productive

[Submarine]

I'm quite amazed by these allegations... See, I work for a national laboratory in France, so I know quite a bit what it is to work as a scientist, and I can tell you that I can introduce new terminology without having some kind of government approval! (hey, I do science, I don't design government forms!). I publish what I want, basically.

I publish my papers in English not because of some terminology problems but because of very simple realities: if I publish in French, I reduce my readership to French-speaking countries; furthermore, the selectivity of the journals or conferences in which I publish will be lower, thus less considered scientifically.

The problem with French terminology is when people insist on translating English words in their own way. For the same English phrase, you get several French ones, depending on who thought it was a good idea to do in this or that way. The official terminology commission would perhaps be of some help with settling on a common word if it knew anything about science.

For me, the problem arises when we write our official reports. Since these are official government reports, they must be written in French (if only because citizens must be able to read reports about government activities). We have our moments of "how the heck do we translate 'branching-time logic' into French?".

Apart from that, the point is that:
- this terminology commission acts on official government communication; private corporations or individuals may follow its advice if they feel like it;
- anyway, except for public relations and administrative services, few people in government give a damn about it; we also ignore official rules on WWW sites.

Beats the Welsh way of doing things

[SamSim]

For whatever reason, any invention that is less than a hundred years old is referred to in Welsh by the English word for that invention. Most computing terminology included. Listen to a Welsh conversation about RAM and you'll probably understand half of it regardless. So fair play to the French.

Hey, quit trolling

[infolib]

The only things we export to the world are our own ignorance and our own fear.

As a non-american I'm forever grateful for rock'n'roll and the Apollo program. Oh, and winning WWII and all that. Thanks.

chix dig French, it may get you laid

[Tablizer]

This word, courriel, is crap. It just sucks hard.

You perhaps have an unintended point here. It sounds more romantic than "email". You are more likely to get laid of you can say "courriel" with a nice sexy roll of the tongue. It will drive the chickies mad.

"Please darrrlllling, send me some......courrrriellll."

She'll be dripping

Re:chix dig French, it may get you laid

[Dahan]

You are more likely to get laid of you can say "courriel" with a nice sexy roll of the tongue.

Except French has the weirdest "r"s I've ever heard... it's pronounced way in the back of the mouth, and "rrrrr" sort of sounds like you're trying to gargle. She might do the Heimlich on you if you say "courrrriellll." :)

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What about SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

is Spam gonna be omlette du courriel, or courriel a la biftek.

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If you want more french words.

[jellomizer]

Then the French should actually make some innovation of their own so they can name it whatever they want. Your not preserving your heritage by just giving random names to every new thing that comes out.

Re:If you want more french words.

[forkboy]

Yeah, no shit! We use the French word for all the crap they invented:

Croissant, ermm...well...that's all I can think of. But we don't call it "Moon bread" or anything. Another reason we are better than France!

simpsons covered this too, sort of

[zephc]

Helen: Hmm, Pita. Well, I don't know about food from the Middle East. Isn't that whole area a little iffy?

Hostess: [laughs] Hey, I'm no geographer. You and I -- why don't we call it pocket bread, huh?

Maude: [reading the ingredients list] Umm, what's tahini?

Hostess: Flavor sauce.

Edna: And falafel?

Hostess: Crunch patties.

Helen: So, we'd be selling foreign...

Hostess: Specialty foods. Here, try a Ben Franklin.

Helen: [takes a bite] Mmm, that is good. What's in it?

Chef: [poking his head out of a window] Tabbouleh and rezmi-kabob.

Hostess: [trying to cover-up] Uh, th-that's our chef... Christopher.

Chef: [mutters, and closes the window, cursing

Forgot french ppl, plz !

[FoeNyx]

Hmm well,
despite my bad english i will try ... :

First of all : our governement took that (stupid) idea to our friends of Quebec
but I think 85% of french will still use e-mail.
Has Slashdot made an article when those neighbours have dropped that word ?

By the way email was already a word in french !
L'émail des dents : the enamel of the teeth

"...'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!"

You morron (sorry) ! Courriel has to be use in french only,
no-one will put it in an english sentence !!
It will be a non-sense else.

By the way, that french sentence with e-mail sound stupid :
Hé Pierre émaille moi ces rapports de ventes.
Hey Pierre flame that sales figures.
(litt: break the enamel around that sales figures)

"Just sounds wrong!" Especially if you don't actually speak french

Here some words which sounds stupid Especially if you don't actually speak english :

. Are you ready? - Ail ou radis? - Garlic or radish?
Thanks a lot - Saintes salopes - Holy bitches !
The bill - Débile - Idiot
More money - Mords mon nez - Bite my nose
Hold on a second - On le donne à ces connes - We give it at those stupid females
To take a train - Toute ta queue traîne - Your tail is late
Congratulations! - Qu'on gratte tous les jeunes! - Let us grate all the young people
Merry Christmas - Marie qui se masse - Marie who masses herself
We are late - Oui Arlette - Yes Arlette
Made in France - Mais dîne Franz - Franz ! it's time to eat your dinner
He speaks German - Il se pique Germaine - He pricks Germaine
Ahmed a l'goût de tripes - I made a good trip - Ahmed taste like tripe
You saved all my family - Youssef vole ma femme au lit - Youssef sleeps with my wife
Salt and pepper - Sale teint de pépère - Bad dye of dude
Sit on the chair - Six tonnes de chair - Six tons of flesh
Dinner is ready - Dix nourrices raidies - Ten stiffened nurses
Born to lose - Beaune-Toulouse - (2 french cities)
Let's sleep together - Les slips tout gais serrent - The happy underwear tighten us
Give me some money - Guy vomit sous mon nez - Guy vomits under my nose
I'm cooking - Âme coquine - a mean soul
Delicatessen - Délicate et saine - Delicate and healthy
The butcher - Deux bouts de chair - Two pieces of flesh
Where is the grocer? - Varice de grosseur - Varix of size
Sex appeal - C'est que ça pèle - I'm frosted
Make a personal call - Ma queue perd son alcool - My tail loses it's alcohol
What a fair foot - Vas te faire foutre - Fuck you !

I would add that "parking, footing, tennisman, smoking"
sound wrong in french too although they came from english

--
GW Bush : The French Don't Have A Word For 'Entrepreneur'.

Re:Forgot french ppl, plz !

[rjstanford]

Hmm. I'd have to agree that Delicatessen doesn't really match well with "Delicate and healthy." Although, you may want to rethink using "Sex Appeal :: I'm frosted" as one of your examples... Mmm...frosting...

-Richard

m�l

[dolmen.fr]

The previous official french word for e-mail was "mél". See http://www.culture.fr/culture/dglf/cogeter/2-12-97 -mel.htm.

However, nobody uses it. And most people don't even know what it means. At least, "courriel" is more obvious so it will probably have a better future.

not going to work.

[twitter]

One would use the verb 'envoyer', so no 'courriel' in that sentence. It's a very specific feature of English that almost any noun can be verbed, as you did.

For the same reason you don't just tell someone to "mail" you something in English, that won't work. Unless you have the context established, you need a specific word. Even then you need a specific word or your likely to make a second, anoying call to someone who just snail mailed you. I imagine they have a way of doing this which might just be "email le moi" to indicate pushing a button on a US made PC interpreted by M$ software, all very forgein and barbaric but usefull.

The Microsoft plauge is everywhere. It fouls up Internet Cafes in Paris, government desktops in Quebec, and all maner of private and public computing.

Re:not going to work.

[plugger]

Could you say 'envoyer au courriel' ?

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Amazon.ca is using le courriel

[Corvus]

I just placed an order at Amazon.ca and in my confirmation mail (I don't call it email either), there was this setence at the top:

"Vous trouverez la version française de ce courriel au bas de la page."

Translation: You will find the French version of this "email" at the bottom of the page.

Cool.

Borrowed words

[martingunnarsson]

Come on, all languages borrow words from other languages. It's one of several ways a language developes!

Elmay

[Johnny Mnemonic]

This is all very ironic, because, of course, the real word for email is "elmay." Fnord.

Who cares?

[member57]

Who really cares what the French do?

Re:They already did... WRONG!!!

[Drakker]

Actualy, I've seen polluriel a few times, but its very rare and most people dont even know what it is when you say it. Pourriel, although not much used, is much more know to the average people.

eh

[VanillaCoke420]

"Curriel? 'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!"

Not if you try to imagine the french people speaking french.

When I hear the word Francophone...

[andrewski]

I think of an especially crappy loudspeaker designed and built at the citroen factory.

Yeech!

In Finland we also have translated the word

[Hank Powers]

I don't regard the French decision as stupid. In Finland we have already used the term "sähköposti" for ages -- it is a direct translation of the words "electronic mail". No-one uses the word e-mail in normal Finnish sentences (well, in spoken language we may sometimes use the word "meili" for e-mail).

Romanji

[andrewski]

I know it as Romanji. You know, for ROMAN.

Re:Romanji

[bryanp]

I know it as Romanji. You know, for ROMAN.

Yes, but Romanji butts consonants together which is generally against the rules in Japanese. (there are exceptions, but not many). I've always heard it pronounced and seen it written as either romaji or romajii.

Re:Romanji

[gilgongo]

It can't be "romajii" (with two "i" s), becuase that would make the "i" sound long, which would make it a completely different word.

The length of vowel sounds are very significant, and getting it wrong - e.g. asking for a map ("chizu") and being given some cheese ("cheezu") - makes it just about the only major mistake English speakers make when pronouncing Japanese.

Re:Romanji

[onesandzeros]

It may or may not interest you to know that Japanese people have told me both (romaji and romanji). Never heard about a double i at the end, though.

Don't forget that a hiragana and katakana exists for a single 'n' sound, so maybe that makes it permissable. True putting two consonants together is kind of unusual. But all the examples I can think of are two of the same consonants, which would be written as a "little tsu" for a stop in breath (Sapporo [city's name], kippu [ticket], sekken [bar of soap?]). Having two different consonants next to each other may be a different situation.

Re:Romanji

[andrewski]

Yeah, it's romanji. Each syllable is a beat, so you get ro-man-ji or just as valid ro-ma-n-ji.

Butting consonants together happens all the time. Chinkushyo.

Re:Romanji

[bryanp]

Butting consonants together happens all the time. Chinkushyo

I knew there were words where it happens but I thought it was relatively uncommon. Well, I did say my Nihongo wasn't that good. Now you know I'm telling the truth.

Re:They *are* forcing!

[chgros]

Try using words like "hamburger" in France
What is that supposed to do ? We use it all the time (actually, not THAT often, we tend to eat other things). I'm not sure even the Académie Française (which is a body of old men no one listens to, hardly a "police") has found a replacement word.

Wait, are the french arrogant?

[protohiro1]

Or are the Americans? People seem (especially after this story) to be debate whether its the americans or are the arrogant scourge or the french. It people fail to realize that both countries are actuallty just competing for first prize. The only real difference is that America had a lot of economic and military strength and the will to use it. The french are content to just complain about everyone else. (I lived in Paris for a while, and I really love france, but man, a lot of french people respond to foriegners they way americans do...with utter contempt) Si vous pensez que je n'ai pas raison, envoyez-moi un courriel.

Re:Wait, are the french arrogant?

[btlzu2]

What Americans respond to foreigners with utter contempt? I think a lot of Americans are intrigued by foreigners and interested in learning about them. There's always a few bastards, but in general, I think Americans are fairly friendly to most people.

Slashdot : News for Uneducated Frustrated Racists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe it. First there's a big news on slashdot about the french government using a word instead of another for documents and publications. (Ok, this is a slow news day and maybe this could be interesting for people living in France.) But then, instead of people complaining this news is utterly irrelevant, there's tons of post saying how the French are arrogant, gay (?), morons... WTF? Is slashdot "News for Nerds" or "News for Uneducated Frustrated Racists"?

CmdrTaco should be moderated -1 : Off Topic!

Re:English regularly reinvents existing French wor

[andrewski]

Apple Update, July 20 2003 - Combined French Update.

To continue offering the French our products, we grepped the French localization for the word e-mail and changed it to curriel. However, we accidentally broke off that little penis that you guys sometimes dangle from your ç's.

Love, Steve Jobs.

mod parent up!

[beakburke]

man i wish i had some mod points here

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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.

Re:language=identity

[Comatose51]

I'm not sure how recent your data or information is but it runs contradictory to what I've learn just 2 years ago in my psychology class while I was still a psychology major. Languages DO NOT INFLUENCE THE WAY YOU THINK! Being a trilingual myself, I can assure you that my way of thinking have changed since becoming more fluent in English than Chinese. My values may have changed from living in the US for so long but my mental representation is still the same -- it's done almost entirely in "pictures". In fact, there have been psychological studies where the participants were asked to rotate the letter "F" in their heads. While one group was shown a picture of it and told to rotate it, another group was given a verbal description of it and told to do the same. The visual group was far more accurate and much faster at answering what the results were in the end. In other words, people don't think in terms of words. If we did, I can't imagine how deaf people can avoid being classified as mentally challenged. As for the number of words remark, that too is outdated. That idea originally came from a study of the Intuit language which supposedly had more words for snow. However, if you really think about it, we have almost as much. Words such as blizzard and sleet[sp?] are variations of snow. Suppose that we don't have a SINGLE word that can describe an object, it doesn't mean that we cannot convey the same idea. We'll just have to do it with more words. One way or another, all languages are equivalent. This move by the French government is silly and unnatural. Languages evolve and change. This rings of some silly nationalistic move to prevent Anglicizing French, even though English has a strong French heritage.

Re:language=identity

[Comatose51]

I meant to say, "my way of thinking have NOT changed"

Re:language=identity

[Hognoxious]

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.

According to Frank Zappa, the ability to see yellow is very important in such situations.

Dreamed I was an eskimo
Frozen wind began to blow
Under my boots and around my toes
The frost that bit the ground below
It was a hundred degrees below zero...

And my mama cried
And my mama cried
Nanook, a-no-no
Nanook, a-no-no
Don't be a naughty eskimo
Save your money, don't go to the show

Well I turned around and I said "oh, oh" oh
Well I turned around and I said "oh, oh" oh
Well I turned around and I said "ho, ho"
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
"watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow"
"watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow"

Thinking about it, red snow would be pretty gross too!

Damn those Frenchies...

[biffnix]

It's like they have a different word for EVERYTHING!

Joe G.

Squishy Words for Squishy People

Re:Damn those Frenchies...

[hpfx]

obviouly, it's not the same language ;) don't you know ? ;)

French Fries

[mynickwastaken]

BTW! How r called now french fries in USA? I think this is a reaction of french government to the above mentioned change ;-)

Re:French Fries

[maxun]

What is fantastic, is that what american call French Fries are NOT from France but from Belgium

Arrogance vs. Pride

[msobkow]

Confidence is knowing one has the skills and experience to accomplish a duty others consider difficult or impossible.

Pride is taking joy in one's accomplishments and skills.

Modesty is having the skills and experience, but not feeling they make one any better than others.

Arrogance is claiming to have the skills and experience, but not being able to back up the claim. Even worse are those who presume that the success of others "like them" makes them better people.

Of course the arrogant far outnumber the other groups...

Identify themselves with whom??

[CracktownHts]

They aschew [sic] their curtural ties to the US in attempt to identify themselves with (South American/European) counterparts. However, they simply end up becoming cultural bastards, belonging to neither.

So by that logic, Brazil is eschewing its cultural ties to Paraguay by refusing to speak Spanish?

Those cultural bastards. Serves them right that Paraguayans have to bend over backwards to communicate when visiting.

Re:More IT terms in french

[chgros]

Virus : Fragment infectieux de code nécessitant un programme hôte
There's actually no need to translate "virus", which is as much a French word as it is an English one.
As for the other terms, I had heard of some of them as being official, but never in actual use (though some of them are interesting, I like "épépineur", which would mean "pip remover", "pépin" being commonly used for "problem" (though for computer programs we mostly use "bug", sometimes the french version "bogue")), except for "cédérom" which is quite ugly, but often appears on publications

Bon weekend!

[furry_marmot]

I don't know if it's stupid or not, but the majority of French people (well, the one's I've talked to anyway) think it's a little much. When I was working and living in France for a while, it was common to hear "Bon weekend," on Friday afternoon. When I asked about it, they smiled and told me that they didn't really have such a sentiment until recently, when they picked it up from English. Officially, the days Saturday and Sunday should be collectively referred to as the "fin de semaine" (literally "end of week") and the sentiment should be phrased "bon fin de semaine." It is almost universally ignored.

Personally, I think there's an inherent flexibility in the language that comes from the fact that some phrasings can be quite awkward. In practice, they abbreviate everything. For example, comic books are known as B.D.'s, from "band dessin" ("comic strip", or literally "strip art") and in the south, when you go to lunch you'll be wished "bon app" instead of "bon appetit".

as heard on the AP newswire last night

[waspleg]

they *ARE* forcing every french government agency to stop using the word e-mail

i love it when the french provide ammunition for making fun of them

Re:as heard on the AP newswire last night

[hpfx]

They (french gov.) have shoosing themself one common word for an object.

tomorow, you can *force* yourself to use another word for what you want.

nobody is forced.

Ah I just love % stats that dont = 100.

[zapp]

All those added together = 95.17%

all this is perfectly legal in France

[Submarine]

Note that in France you can use signs in English or any other language at your choice - the only requirement is that if they are for commercial/advertisement purposes, you should provide a translation into French (generally a footnote). This is because of legal requirements on advertisements.

Re:all this is perfectly legal in France

[big_pianist]

However, the state of affairs in Quebec is not just a footnote or a equitable translation. It is a maditory regulation that if a sign displays a name or phrase in a language other than French, it must not only provide a french translation but that translation must be at least twice the size and bold.

Re:Germans are sure strange

[riflemann]

And just wait till you hear the Dutch. It seems that if any modern language is about to vanish, it's Dutch.

Virtually every conversation you hear the Dutch speak has words and phrases borrowed from English. There are almost no technical dutch terms - all are english. Occasionally a farewell will have a literal 'see you later' thrown in. Quotes from English language TV/movies are a favourite.

So I think french and german are quite safe for a long time - it's the minor european languages which are about to disappear.

Sounds fine to me.

[MickLinux]

But you have to put it *all* in French. He Pierre, m'curriellez ces chiffres de ventes.

email in french...

[MarvinMouse]

I speak enough french that when I read correspondence and the person used the word e-mail, I always had to laugh.

émail in french means enamel, and I don't know why I just always found my mind translating e-mail to enamel rather than e-mail. :-)

Freedom Government Bans Term 'E-Mail'

[Hoch]

Edit: Licensed2Hack writes "'Goodbye "e-mail," the Freedom government says, and hello "courriel" -- the term that linguistically sensitive Freedom Nation 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 Freedom ;)

French

[fgb]

I remember reading this a long time ago:

French is nothing more than badly mispronounced provincial Latin.

Arab translations

[Tablizer]

A small Arabic country had these following translations for most of those same words:

Firewall : Infidel technology
Shareware : Infidel technology
Plugin : Infidel technology
Freeware : Infidel technology
Hacker : Infidel technology
Browser : Infidel technology
CD-ROM : Infidel technology
Chat : Infidel technology
Chat mode : Infidel technology
Swap : Infidel technology
Polling : Infidel technology
Debugger : Infidel technology
Encapsulation : Infidel technology
HTML : Infidel technology
Smiley : Infidel technology
Emoticon: Infidel technology
Thread : Infidel technology
Virus : Infidel technology

good to remember why

[_KhlER3L]

The bad atttitudes of the Quebecois today are a reaction to the bad attitudes of their British and Canadian conquerers. It wasn't so long ago that a french speaking individual could not get a good job in Montreal. They would have to speak english, just like management, and the owners. It was not uncommon for Quebecois to feel inferior to english speaking people in their own province, on their own streets. The Quiet Revolution of the 70's turned all that around. Now french has become ascendent. But why not? Quebec is a french-speaking province. Of course business should take place in french, and give opportunities to the french speaking youth of the province. And why shouldn't signs be primarily in french? I think being the only significant foothold of the french language in North America, which operates under the most powerful language of today, renders these kinds of expectations fairly reasonable. Anyway, the Quebecois have lived the alternative. Some of the attitudes and laws have gone too far, but that is how action-reaction works. I think that everyone feels that things are becoming more balanced. The 'language police' are not as active as they used to be. As for being 'hated', I can tell you as an english speaking resident of Quebec for 4 years that I have experienced only one incident of what I would call prejudice. I have noticed that people like for you to speak in their native language, or at least try. Even english speaking people. Honestly, I have heard more prejudiced remarks about language coming from english speaking individuals who complain about their lost privilage. They used to be on top, and now they're just another minority. _khl

damned formatting

[_KhlER3L]

The bad atttitudes of the Quebecois today are a reaction to the bad attitudes of their British and Canadian conquerers. It wasn't so long ago that a french speaking individual could not get a good job in Montreal. They would have to speak english, just like management, and the owners. It was not uncommon for Quebecois to feel inferior to english speaking people in their own province, on their own streets.

The Quiet Revolution of the 70's turned all that around. Now french has become ascendent. But why not? Quebec is a french-speaking province. Of course business should take place in french, and give opportunities to the french speaking youth of the province. And why shouldn't signs be primarily in french? I think being the only significant foothold of the french language in North America, which operates under the most powerful language of today, renders these kinds of expectations fairly reasonable. Anyway, the Quebecois have lived the alternative.

Some of the attitudes and laws have gone too far, but that is how action-reaction works. I think that everyone feels that things are becoming more balanced. The 'language police' are not as active as they used to be.

As for being 'hated', I can tell you as an english speaking resident of Quebec for 4 years that I have experienced only one incident of what I would call prejudice. I have noticed that people like for you to speak in their native language, or at least try. Even english speaking people.

Honestly, I have heard more prejudiced remarks about language coming from english speaking individuals who complain about their lost privilage. They used to be on top, and now they're just another minority.

_khl

No way - not so simple.

[DeadVulcan]

While I agree that language influences the way you think, I've never agreed with the simplistic examples of "they have more words for X" or "they have a word that means Y". And I think your conclusion about linguistically caused colourblindness takes the idea way, way too far.

If, instead of colour perception, you had referred to the perception of verbal sounds, then I would have agreed more. If a sound doesn't exist in your language, the brain tends to "snap" it to the closest sound that does exist, and it's virtually impossible to hear it any other way.

But if you want to dig deeply into linguistic influences on thought, I think it's more instructive to look at things like grammar and fundamentally important language constructs.

In my native Japanese, for instance, the sentence structure places the predicate (the verb) at the end of the sentence. All your objects and completions come first, unlike English where the verb is sandwiched in between. You have to think about things in a different order when speaking Japanese.

Japanese has no future tense. You just use the present tense conjugation, and if it's not obvious from the context, you explicitly specify that it's in the future (e.g., by saying "tomorrow" or "next week").

Here's a biggie: Japanese has no direct translation for "to be." There are translations for certain specific meanings, like "to exist" or "to be [in a location]" and adjectives get conjugated like verbs if you are describing something. But Hamlet's "to be or not to be" would have to be translated into something completely different in Japanese.

IMHO, it's these sorts of things that influence thought, not some simple word-count.

Re:No way - not so simple.

[misterpies]

You're absolutely right that language colours our thinking in many ways (no pun intended), but my example of colour names was not anecdotal. Check out this newsletter for an interesting article with links into the scientific literature.

Re:No way - not so simple.

[nagora]

There are translations for certain specific meanings, like "to exist" or "to be [in a location]" and adjectives get conjugated like verbs if you are describing something. But Hamlet's "to be or not to be" would have to be translated into something completely different in Japanese.

Surely the translation meaning "to exist" would be the correct one?

TWW

Re:Germans are sure strange

[doktor-hladnjak]

Actually I studied Dutch for 2 years, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I remember on several occassions trying to use a "Dutch" word and the instructor (native speaker) saying to just use the English one, because nobody really talked like that. I can't remember specific instances of this now (it was too long ago, but maybe the word 'meeting'?), but these were really very everyday words with perfectly good Dutch equivalents.

The particularly odd part about this is that during the Enlightenment in German speaking areas, there was a huge push to purge Latin technical terms from the vocabulary. At that time apparently, Dutch had Germanic many technical words of Germanic origin and a lot of the words were simply brought into German (presumably by making simple translations of the word parts).

At the same time though my impression is that the Dutch in general don't really care that their language is englishifying or that English is becoming more common place in every day life. For example, in Germany (and I'm told France as well), if you speak to somebody in German (even if it's fairly bad), they will respond to you in German. Typically, they will not switch to English, unless you start talking in English (and even then, the chance they speak English is really not 100%). However, in the Netherlands, people immediately pick up on the accent and will all but refuse to speak to you in Dutch if they speak English (which many people, especially in bigger cities, do quite well). Ironically though, I never have really had this problem in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium for readers who may not know). There I think they've fought so long against the political dominance of French that they really value their language. Wouldn't that be ironic, if someday Dutch was only spoken Flanders!

I think not.

[Amorpheus_MMS]

"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."

Emphasis mine...

Re:I think not.

[texaport]

If the French are going to ban English phrases in public matters, then maybe the U.S. should ban French ticklers in all private matters.

French Is French Even in Montreal

[Mooncaller]

Its been my obsevation, that the French base their national identity more on language then anything else. Just like in the US, its "The American Way" (whatever that is:)). I like the French approch. It is a lot better then some other national identites, like those based on ethnicity or religion.

In Other News...

[mcp33p4n75]

The US Congress has banned the word "courriel." Instead, Congress will now be using the phrase "freedom courriel."

how to make your language obsolete in 3 easy steps

[Deadplant]

step one: Establish a bureaucracy to preside over the language.
step two: Wait while the rest of the world adds words to their languages at double or triple your rate.
step three: Learn english or mandarin or something.

The only constant languages are dead languages...

[fredistheking]

The French government can pick what they wish but the populus will get the final say.

Doesn't have the same ring

[HiggsBison]

The french equivalent to spam is "polluriel", a contraction of "pollution électronique", electronic pollution. (Like "courriel" is a contraction of "courrier électronique", perfectly legitimate neologism, IMO.) Actually, this makes way more sense than "spam".

Polluriel, polluriel, polluriel, polluriel,
Polluriel, polluriel, polluriel, polluriel,
Lovely polluriel, wonderful polluriel, ...

Shut up! SHUT UP!

(Bloody Vikings!)

No, it doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?

OT: Hepburn and Mombusho Systems

[gilgongo]

There are actually two official methods of spelling Japanese words in English: the Hepburn System and the Mombusho System.

A quick Google brings up this on the subject

The one I'm most familar with is Hepburn, which would render "beer" as "biru" with a macron over the "i" to indicate a long "i" sound.

Incidentally, "Biru" without the macron would be the Japanese word for a large or otherwise significant building (not, as is sometimes wrongly assumed, simply a "building", for which the Japanese use the native word "tatemono").

I believe just about all non-Romanised languages (Chinese, Mayan, Xosa etc.) have "official" ways of rendition in English - so there's not much point arguing about it unfortunately.

Ob Asterix reference

[yuri benjamin]

These Gauls are crazy
/me taps his head - *tap*tap*tap*

Re:Ob Asterix reference

[figleaf]

Funny!

no no no..

[hpfx]

no, no, no...

no word were invented for hotdog, hamburger...
I don't know where you get such "information" , you were joked.

I'm french.

note : we are not obliged to use this strange word "courriel", it's not dictature !
people from gov. choose to use "courriel", that's their choice. Most of people'll continue to use "email"...

regards
PS : please don't see "arogance" every where.

Re:no no no..

[AndroidCat]

*ahem*, "Quebec Office de la Langue Français". Take it up with them.

protectionism

[DrEasy]

The beauty of languages is that they evolve, and that their evolution is reflective of the world in which they are spoken. Currently, American culture is dominant and permeates other cultures, whether you like it or not. Shouldn't then other languages reflect such domination? The French don't mind using a Japanese word such as "manga" or "karate", as they do not feel threatened by Japanese culture. It is just fair to use those words as they reflect on the origin of the concept. However they feel that by not using an English word they are also resisting the american culture invasion. The point they are missing is that they will still be eating a "hotdog" or a "hamburger" no matter what they call it. Finding French words for American concepts won't make the concepts go away. Had the French invented e-mail, it would have been just fair for other countries to use "couriel" as the word representing the concept.

On the other hand, what would be truly worrisome is if people decided to use an English word where a French one existed already. That would be a real sign that the language is dying.

Tchatche?

[Stavr0]

Also the silly French translation for chat is 'Tchatche'.

Canadian translation is 'clavardage' (clavier+bavardage) ie (keyboard+chat)

Re:Tchatche?

[hpfx]

it's not silly !
first : "Tchatche" is the way to write in french the english word "chat", as a feench word "chat" already exist, it's a cat.

second, "tchatcher" that means "speak a lot" was already existing !

what do you want more ?

every thing that is not US-identified is silly for you ?

that's normal.

[hpfx]

In france, for a long time we used to teach english in a very bad way (more literal), things have changed durring last 10 years : now we give more importance to speaking/listening. things are no perfect, that true. I don't know how other language are learned (are other language are learned btw?) in english-spoken-countries. there are nothing strange in your experiance, I'm happy you where laughing. PS : about jogging rematk, remind that soccer is football in everywhere expect one country... ;)

Re:They *are* forcing!

[hpfx]

Please stop broadcast false things :
I live in france, I used the word "hanburger" every time I want a hanburger at MacDo or elsewhere

note :youngs perfer to say "MacDo" instead of Mc Donalds, this is not official :) we pronounse it as "mac"-"doh".

Some Germans are at it, too

[Ethelred Unraed]

There are some groups in Germany (like the Verein Deutscher Sprache) who also want to ban and replace Anglicisms in German, such as:

• das Internet -> das Zwischennetz
• die E-Mail -> die E-Post
• der Computer -> der Rechner (or "das EDV-Gerät")
• FAQ -> OgF ("Oft-gestellte Fragen")
• surfen -> navigieren

I do have to say that the fashion for Anglicisms in Germany has gotten a little extreme at times, replacing existing (and perfectly usable) German words...

Plenty of money- and computer-related English words have become very common in the last few years: "der Manager", "das Business", "Cash", "Airport" and so on (instead of "der Verwalter", "das Geschäft", "das Bargeld", "der Flughafen" respectively).

It's becoming more common to say "die City" instead of "die Stadt" as well. Then there is "das Weekend-Feeling", "das Weekend", "grillen" (to grill), "shoppen" (to shop) and so on. "Live" in the sense of "live broadcast" is also frequently seen on TV. "Chicken" is occasionally seen instead of "Hähnchen", and "Roastbeef" has pretty much obliterated "Rinderbraten"; sometimes the British "chips" or American "fries" are used instead of the old Francophone "Pommes frites". "Okay" is also quite common in everyday life; so is "Hi".

To go on: a cellphone is "das Handy" (go figure), the word "TV" is starting to replace "der Fernseher", the verb "fighten" is often used instead of the German verb "kämpfen" (though a German footballer actually said "wir haben gefightet und gekämpft" as if they meant different things). Deutsche Telekom also started naming their price plans in English ("GermanCall", "CityCall"), while their rival o.tel.o used the slogan "For a better understanding" (sic).

Some words have been "eingedeutscht" ("Germanized") by changing the spelling to match German spelling conventions: "tip" is now "der Tipp", for example.

Many Germans have the somewhat irritating habit of peppering their sentences with as many English words as possible (like ending them with "you know" instead of "nicht wahr").

The present invasion of English words seems to be far greater than the last invasion: in the 18th and 19th centuries German borrowed mostly from French, which was the fashionable language at the time. "Das Büffet" (buffet), "der Frisör" (hairdresser), "Portemonnaie" (wallet) and so on are all borrowings from French. (Sometimes you get hybrids like "Filetsteak" as well.) But to my knowledge, very few French words have been borrowed in recent years -- it's almost entirely English that has worked its way into the language. And the overall number of English words seems to be far greater than the number of French words as well.

Part of the reason for Germans adopting so many Anglicisms may simply be that English is, as a rule, more flexible about using words in new ways or creating new (but short) words. German speakers in my experience have a hard time with wordplay or creating new words or phrases in German (German editors tend to be especially picky about that), but they seem to feel freer to do that with English words and get away with it.

But I agree that it's overkill trying to dictate to people how they should speak beyond the basic ground rules of grammar as the French are trying to do. Thus far there hasn't been a serious effort to purge German of Anglicisms -- on balance a good thing IMO. But it is a pity that German seems to be going the way of the dodo if current trends keep going as they are.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Distinct society, hated minority?

[Shark]

You are completely right but I believe the whole separatist argument is that french quebec is a 'distinc society' with its own identity rather than a will to belong to either France or english Canada.

Though I am not separatist, I do believe that quebec culture is unique and proud of it, at least such is my opinion as a french canadian. We have our own very distinct litterature and history, among many other cultural elements.

I do not agree that laws should be modified by language and I recognize the diverse abuses made by cultural authorities here in quebec. However one should understand that because an authority has faults does not mean it should not exist at all. It'd be like saying there should be no police in L.A. because some of its members engaged in racial abuse ever since its beginings.

To remain on topic however, I should add that perhaps the reason why the Quebec born 'courriel' word was adopted by France is that quebec does have an elaborate mechanism aimed at preserving and expanding the french language. The 'Office de la Langue Francaise' may be zealous and abusive, but it does have a purpose.

Re:Distinct society, hated minority?

[leviramsey]

To remain on topic however, I should add that perhaps the reason why the Quebec born 'courriel' word was adopted by France is that quebec does have an elaborate mechanism aimed at preserving and expanding the french language.

And the French don't? Have you ever heard of l'Academie Francaise?

As George W. Bush once said...

[Shark]

The french don't have a word for 'Entrepreneur'

Re:As George W. Bush once said...

[FroMan]

idiot

Re:I am jealous

[dracocat]

Feel free to emigrate. No really, feel free. If you really are as unhappy as you say you are, then nobody would want you to have to put up with that.

I am really curious which countries you are talking about that do not have corruption, greed, or advertisements, because I would like to put those next on my list.

These are unfortunate facts of most countries, and while you may be too involved with the romantic adventure of your travels to see them, I would bet they exist right in front of your eyes, wherever you are.

The trick is to see the people and who they really are, and not to pass judgement on a people because of their government or the actions of a minority. -- Even your home country, but that is usually the most difficult.

Happy travels, and next time buy a one way ticket, you just might be glad you did, I know we will.

Re:Well,

[hpfx]

this is no a proof of anything, (are you an expert of civilisations ? , not the game, hum)
that's bullshit, in france we don't care about this "courriel".

I'm surprised it makes so much noise outside of france.
Dear "anonymous", I don't know if the fact you post as "anonymous" is a fact of anything, but what's your problem with it ? I' don't understand.

In response...

[vmxeo]

...I say we rename FreeNet to FrenchNet. That'll show 'em.

...actually, no...wait, switch that.
Err... uh, nevermind...

Re:Germans are sure strange

[Danny Rathjens]

Did you know the german word for "Admin"? It's "Netzwerkadministrator" ...a word with fsckin' 21 chars :-/

Umm, isn't the english term "system administrator" or "network administrator"; which is the same length?

Granted, many german words are longer(e.g. "basisrecheneinheit" for "butterfly") but complaining that a translated word is longer than your abbreviation of it is quite silly. That's like complaining that the german word for "FYI" is "Fur ihre informationen".

Re:Germans are sure strange

[Sven Tuerpe]

My favorite as of late is "worst-case Laufzeit" (worst case runtime).

This is probably just a matter of convenience. "Laufzeit" is short, just two syllables, so one would not gain much expressing it in English instead. But using a German term for "worst-case" would mean to say or write half a sentence: "im schlechtesten Fall". Also, this phrase cannot be used as an adjective, so one would be forced to use postfix notation: "Laufzeit im schlechtesten Fall".

It's been done before

[volpe]

English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are.

It's been done in French, too.

Several things

[Sycraft-fu]

1) Quebec is not a country, it is a provence of Canada. A provence is like a state in the US.

2) Canada, unlike the US, HAS offical languages, it has two of them: English and French.

3) In most of Canada, English is the primary language. If you go to Alberta or B.C. and so on you will find that English is what most people speak on a day to day basis, despite having taught French in school as well as English.

So you see, when you get pro-French/anti-English laws in uebec you don't have a country enforgcing its national language, you have a provence going against the will of the country. It would be like Arizona passing pro-Spanish/anti-English laws.

Re:Several things

[hesiod]

> It would be like Arizona passing pro-Spanish/anti-English laws.

That's almost correct, and would be if Spanish was considered an official American language as well. I don't think it's a good thing, but it is not something that can be equated easily with anything American.

Re:Several things

[Noren]

The USA has no official language, primarily because of the anti-English sentiment among the founding fathers (for obvious reasons.)

It's been proposed a few times over the years, but hasn't been implemented as English is de facto if not de jure the language of the US, and as it would require a constitutional amendment.

One reason...

[mausmalone]

Last I heard (which was a long time ago), the French were using the term "postage electronique" (various accents omitted). And at that time the French linguists didn't want e-mail used officially.

Of course, this was several years ago, and I heard this like 15th hand (in high school french class), so I'm not sure. But if "postage electronique" was their previous official term, it's not surprising they'd use "courriel" simply because it's that much easier to use.

Wat zeg je daar?

[theolein]

Dat wist ik niet. Maakt mij echt treurig hoor ;)

We Have "Curriels" in San Francisco

[Master of Transhuman]

They're called "bike messengers"...

Oh, wait, maybe I'm thinking "courier"...never mind...

bullshit

[Ender Ryan]

I've already explained the "Algebra" thing in a couple other posts.

And you're full of shit. The word "Algebra" was adapted into the English language; it wasn't _replaced_. It's not the same thing...

As for the "Freedom Fries" crap, nobody complains because nobody cares.

Bullshit. Every single American I have spoken to and mentioned "Freedom Fries" to, has responded by saying how ridiculous and embarrassing that is, and that they'd like to shove a bucket of "Freedom Fries" up the asses of the Congressmen who have nothing else better to do. And where the fuck have you been, it's been laughed at and derided by the press as well. Americans do care, and we are embarrassed. For now I'll ignore your flaimbait "apathetic pile of fat..." bullshit.

Frankly, I really don't care if the French choose to use a word over the English word, but this is the government doing this. And do you honestly believe they're doing it for any other reason than anti-America sentiment? Words don't need to be forced to "flow", pronunciation changes according to the language. The French government is flat out forcefully removing a word from French vocabulary(in government offices).

What is your response to the person who pointed out that French radio is only allowed to play so much American music? And we Americans get called racist, jingoist, uncultured, arrogant, etc..

Ladies and Gentlemen, smell the coffee, arrogance is par for the course when it comes to governments, and sometimes citizens living under those governments. The French people weren't demanding a new word to use, so in this case it's just the government being a bitch.

Not quite

[theolein]

google.fr search for courriel:

Google a recherché courriel dans les pages en langue français.
1 - 10 résultats, sur un total d'environ 216,000. Recherche effectuée en 0.13 secondes.

wha?

[autopr0n]

But because of close-minded aspirations of nationalism and cultural purity, generations of governements here in Quebec have managed to legislate, against the will of many Quebecers, any purely francophone couple sending their children to English school. This is discrimination against potential anglophones. One of many. Immigrants are not permitted to study in English-language schools either.

Do you mean that it's illegal to send your kids to englsh school, or it's illegal to have your kids in a public school where english is used for the lessons? What about private schools?

Re:Google knows best.... but only if you can spell

[PrimeEnd]

It helps to spell it right.
A search for "courriel" returns about 973,000 results.

Generalizations

[Loundry]

Odd, I didn't see you complain about the french being called arrogant.

As if that excused your immature and wrong-headed behavior. Calling the French arrogant is as wrong as calling the Americans arrogant or any group any kind of adjective. Gross generalizations like the one you committed build walls rather than bridges.

Re:Generalizations

[Carewolf]

Yes, but you didnt complain until it hit yourself. It is called argumentation by example or making a point ;)

I hope you get it.

Re:Generalizations

[Lars T.]

I didn't call the Americans arrogant. Maybe you should learn to read?

Re:Generalizations

[Loundry]

I didn't call the Americans arrogant.

It's a good thing I didn't accuse you of of doing so.

Maybe you should learn to read?

Maybe you should learn the art of the put-down, as yours aren't very good. But I would rather you learn the art of polite discourse. It would make you more friends and lead you to a happier life.

I notice the fact that you disputed nothing I wrote (disputing your own inference does not count), particularly that your behavior was in poor form.

Re:Generalizations

[Loundry]

Yes, but you didnt complain until it hit yourself. It is called argumentation by example or making a point ;)

I think you have confused me with someone else. My previous post was my first post in this thread.

I hope you get it.

I doubt that hope for me ranks anywhere on your list of motivations in this discussion.

Tell me: do you agree with me that it is wrong-headed to make generalizations about other nationalities, including Americans?

Re:Generalizations

[Lars T.]

Ohh, so you just babbled incoherently and not relating to anything in this thread. The fact that you are a self-proclaimed master of put-down doesn't change that. And I didn't have to dispute anything you wrote, it was undefendable from the start.

Re:Generalizations

[Loundry]

Ohh, so you just babbled incoherently and not relating to anything in this thread.

I maintain that you were in bad form to make negative generalizations about Americans, and you have done nothing to defend or excuse your unacceptable behavior.

The fact that you are a self-proclaimed master of put-down doesn't change that.

I never claimed to be a master of the put-down. I only stated that you weren't very good at it, and that's pretty sad considering that putting others down comprises the majority of what I've seen you write thus far.

And I didn't have to dispute anything you wrote, it was undefendable from the start.

I'm asking you to either disown or defend your assholish words. I suppose you don't have to dispute anything. I suppose you don't even have to respond to me, but something tells me that you will.

Freedom Fries!

[spike it]

You're right - the reason why they're called french fries is because that's how they are made...they're "frenched".
Side note: French fries are now called "freedom fries" in certain gov't buildings. Could things get any more ridiculous?

France, LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!

[OldHawk777]

Proof positive again, the Elitists of the French Government do not see themselves as cultural fascist, because they are French patriots like those that came after "Joan de Arc" literally, supported Napoleon, and legitimized Hitler's dominion over Europe. Today, France does not have a Joan (a Saint) or de Gaulle (a French National Socialist) . The French Government uses cultural puffery to present trivial concepts as globally significant. Last time I checked a map and books France's contributions to world history is a foot-note in European and US history over 200 years ago.
The Cajun French (expanding cultural influence) in the USA have a beautiful French language that would be unacceptable in France and Quebec. The French of Louisiana and New Orleans could teach much to France and the French culture on food, wine, music, art, life, humor, fun, ..., but France (a waning influence in EU) could not teach a Cajun anything about personal and public expression on the wonders of the old and/or modern world.
Whatever France decided is fine with me, because it is always passé French demagoguery. E-mail, internet, teleconferencing, ... by any other name will still allow folks to communicate; So, BFD. I am not surprised a government spends tax dollars/franks on such stupid things, France, US, and EU have so much waste in common. France and Quebec should take (a rôle) the Cajun French's lead and get a life, loosen-up, and let the good times roll, because folks should remember you well when you go, and be happy that you came to the party (of life).

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination.

Don't be insipid

[autopr0n]

American English has picked up a bunch of new words from Arabic recently, like "Jihad", "fedayeen", to go along with the hundreds we've already borrowed "algebra, sheriff, mecca, etc"

mod parent up

[martin-boundary]

He's absolutely right. Grandparent post is just bollocks.

Reply: Let the good times roll, Cajun

[OldHawk777]

I dropped another comment in here somewhere.

I think, the USA Cajun French are a shinning example of what is best about French Culture.
The Cajun French (expanding cultural influence) in the USA have a beautiful French language that would be unacceptable in France and Quebec. The French of Louisiana and New Orleans could teach much to France and the French culture on food, wine, music, art, life, humor, fun, ..., but France (a waning influence in EU) could not teach a Cajun anything about personal and public expression on the wonders of the old and/or modern world.
Whatever France decided is fine with me, because it is always passé French demagoguery. E-mail, internet, teleconferencing, ... by any other name will still allow folks to communicate; So, BFD. I am not surprised a government spends tax dollars/franks on such stupid things, France, US, and EU have so much waste in common. France and Quebec should take (a rôle) the Cajun French's lead and get a life, loosen-up, and let the good times roll, because folks should remember you well when you go, and be happy that you came to the party (of life).

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination.

I didn't know...

[benna]

french email had enough space to hold all that warez.....oh wait thats something else.

Re:Germans are sure strange

[thanjee]

e.g. "basisrecheneinheit" for "butterfly"

I always use the word Schmetterling for Butterfly - it is still longer, but not as long.

And regarding the term E-mail - my german girlfriend sends me Bambi's not emails :)

I can't remember where she got the term from - she explained it once......

In other developements the renamed...

[linuxislandsucks]

Socialist as supporting any dictator with oil reserves..

Does that Make Bush a Soicalist in French?

French Arrogance

[RyatNrrd]

OK, hands up who has been to France?

And hands up those of you who were not treated with the height of courtesy by most people when there?

I don't think I'm seeing very many hands still up. The French are no less charming a people than anyone else. And if they value having their own language, then let them have it. They are not claiming to be any better than you - just happy to be different. And I'm happy that they're different. Imagine how boring the world would be if everyone was the same.

"Ender's Game"

[Omerna]

Anybody notice how closely this parallels Orson Scott Card's future in "Ender's Game"? I'm talking about the part where the French (rough quote) "don't start teaching Standard until the French language patterns are already set". Scary... and probably an example of why Americans haven't liked the French (except for their food) for a while.

Have you all read this?

[krusadr]

Taken from www.languagefairness.org

Inequities between Quebec and the R.O.C

1. According to Census Canada, only 4 % of Canada's population outside the province of Quebec are Francophones.

2. According to the Official Languages Commissioner, the Federal government spends on average $500 million a year on Official Bilingualism; this does not include unforecasted expenses. The cost of official bilingualism is $4 billion per year.(a figure the accuracy of which our federal government has never challenged).

3. Author Scott Reid estimates that since its inception in 1969 Official Bilingualism has added $49 billion to our national debt and a permanent loss to Canadian consumers of $40 billion worth of consumption.

4. The cost of classifying military personnel by language - $50 million annually

5. Translation costs for technical documents for patrol frigate project- $45 million, for tribal class refitting- $26.7 million, for 27 other current projects over $100 million.

6. Cost of the 42 members of the official languages branch doing paperwork at National Defence Headquarters, $1.5 million annually.

7. The cost of Moncton's two-day Francophone Summit - $35 million

8. In the 1999-2000 fiscal year the federal government handed out $62,591,832 in French minority language grants outside the province of Quebec, only $3,341,000 was given in English minority language grants inside the province of Quebec even though there are more English speaking Canadians in Quebec than there are French Canadians outside of Quebec.

9. The Commissioner of Official Languages' department has a staff of 109; 79 (72.4%) are Francophones and 30 (27.5%) are Anglophones. This department is in place to ensure the rights of minority languages. Figures quoted are from 1998.

10. Every province in Canada participates in the reciprocal Medicare program except Quebec. If you visit Quebec this means that your provincial Medicare card is valid for hospital costs only, not doctors' services, for this you must pay cash and get reimbursed by your home province. When Quebec patients come to Ontario hospitals, they only pay $450/day for a bed. It costs the General Hospital $823/day (i.e. Ontario taxpayers subsidize Quebec patients to the tune of $373/day when they come to Ontario hospitals).

11. The federal government controls immigration into every province except Quebec, they have their own Ministry of Immigration.

12. An already cash strapped Canadian Olympic Association was ordered to train Olympic athletes bilingually or lose funding. This came as a result of a Quebec athlete training in Calgary who was unable to receive service in French upon entering the training centre. Former Olympian and present track and field coach Dianne Jones-Konihowski said "this would mean that we would lose even more athletes to England and Australia because funding would be taken from them and used to bilingualize training centres and hire staff".

13. Of the $6.8 million the federal government spent on Canada Day festivities in 2000, $5 million was given to Quebec; contrast this with Ontario, which received $553,900.

14. At the party's two day national council in Laval in April 2000, the Parti Quebecois unanimously voted to remove all Canadian flags from public buildings under provincial control, these include schools, hospitals and city halls.

15. Since 1968 we have had 10 federal elections, in 9 of them we have elected Quebec Francophone or Francophile prime ministers for a total of 31 out of the last 32 years.

16. In 1969 Pierre Trudeau declared Canada officially bilingual and in the process transferred 32,000 public service jobs from Ottawa to Hull, Quebec from 1970 to 1982.

17. Canada is the only nation in the world that does not have its national history museum located in its capital city. In 1989 the Federal government under Brian Mulroney relocated the National Museum of Canadian history from Ottawa to Hull, Quebec. The name was changed to

Linguistic puritanism...

[Fjodor42]

Seen from Scandinavia, this seems rather funny. I live in the southernmost country of Scandinavia, Denmark, and our language has always been thwarted with foreign words (or so we like to think). Lately, English is on the rise, as most terms in the ever more ubiqotous (English is not my native language...) computer-oriented world, are easier to express with the given name/term/identifier/handle than it would be to express the term in a meaningful way in one's native tongue.

The only example, that I am 100% sure of is Iceland. I do not write Icelandic fluently, so I will make my points via translations to Danish and then continue...

In Iceland, a computer is called a "telda". That means "A device for counting". We may snicker at that, but it applies to all sorts of words: Here in Denmark, a hairdresser is called a "frisør", which obviously is lent from French "friseur". In Iceland, it is "hårskærer", meaning "cutter of hair" :-)

Canada is wasting its oppurtunity

[swingbyte]

I had a great adventure traveling through Canada a couple of years ago. As an Australian I really felt at home in Canada (hey we got the same queen :/ -and you're almost as friendly as we are ;)). But you guys have the perfect chance to be a real duo-culture but instead you waste it. Instead of everyone learning Franch and English ( hey its not like there aren't enough speakers of bother languages to go round all the schools) you whinge. Another language is not like carrying a sac a dos des pierres. Learnt in primary school in a natural way its easy. Here in Australia we have the problem of which language to learn - move highschools and you lose all the effort of your previous language study because your new one teaches a different language! Canadians should be able to enjoy both their English and French cultural inheritance without cringe or prejudice. Stop moving on Canada day and build a bridge and get over it. hey my first post is a rant!

Re:Le Tour de France renamed...

[krusadr]

They win one thing... 1st prize for most laughed at and despised race on the planet. Hey Frenchies - when you're in a hole - STOP DIGGING!

Poutine!

[slyborg]

Oui Oui Oui!

French and foreign words

[ixache]

I'd like to clear up a few points. French words will be emphasized.

The decision referred to in the article is purely administrative: it sets a standard for use in government documents, not the for the people at large, who are still free to speak and use words as they see fit. A lot of foreign words have their official French counterparts, but quite often people do not use them. For example, when Sony coined the word "walkman", l'Académie française, which is the highest authority on the French language, coined and try and impose the word "baladeur" to take its place, but it never took off. Funnily enough, in the unlikely field of computers, a few words coined to take the place of English words did enjoy great success, such as ordinateur for "computer", logiciel for "software" (so "Free Software" is Logiciel Libre), informatique for "computer science" or "computer-related", etc.

On the other hand, French speaking people do use a lot of "foreign" words. For example, just restricting oneself to fast foods, the French eat a lot of sandwichs, some of them being hot dogs, others hamburgers (which simply means "from Hamburg" in German, but still, the word with this meaning came from English) or paninis, but most of the time they still are the traditionnal jambon-beurre (butter and ham sandwich). All these words are in my Larousse 1998 French dictionnary, except for the last. Go figure. And a lot more words were originally foreign but are now felt as perfectly integrated into the language, sometimes with a few alterations, such as budget, (same word), or paquebot (liner, comes from the English "packet-boat").

As for the word e-mail, it stands for electronic mail, the correct translation of which is of course courrier électronique, which is quite cumbersome to use. People, being lazy and bad typists, felt the need for a shorter word, just as the English has, and so, with no better idea, they used e-mail or even mail. In Quebec, they coined courriel which is a smart and evocative contraction of courrier électronique, just the kind of thing that the Quebecers would do. In France, they coined the ugly mél, which sounds about the same when read as mail (to sound exactly the same, they should have written meille, which is too cute; if you want the "e-" part, just add "i" in front the word for the sound, or "é-" for the abbreviation), but it was never widely used. So after a few years, they finally decided to go the Quebec way, since at least it seems to enjoy some kind of popularity.

A few other points: Internet is considered a proper noun, so it does not need to be translated, just to be capitalized. There are French words for "net" and "web" (réseau and toile, so Internet would be "Interéseau"), but most people would use le Net and le Web. French nouns cannot be used as verbs as-is as the English usually does. One has to add some kind of ending to make it work, which gives for example un voile, voiler for "a veil, to veil" (but note that "a sail, to sail" is une voile, naviguer).

Re:French and foreign words

[FoeNyx]

Ordinateur : En 1954, IBM voulait trouver un nom français pour ses machines, et éviter le mot " calculateur " (traduction littérale de " computer ") qui lui semblait mauvais pour son image de marque. Le linguiste Jacques Perret a proposé, dans sa lettre du 16 avril 1955, d'utiliser le terme " ordinateur ", mot dont l'usage ancien signifiait " celui qui met en ordre " ; en liturgie il désigne celui qui confère un ordre sacré.

It's IBM which wanted to franciser computer ...
Btw : informatique (information + automatique), logiciel (logique + matériel) have more meaning that the english words IMHO.

Paquebot from (packet+boat) (en) from (paquet + bateau)(fr)

French (was) invaded (by) england,
Quebec, & Louisiana was francophone
We have a lot of words take to each other.
"rendez-vous", "chic", "déjà vu", "voilà",
"joie de vivre", "je ne sais quoi"

flipper,parking,pull,smoking,speeder,shirt,weeke nd ,zapping,lifting,casting

Francisation came in 1964 "Parlez-vous franglais?", wrote by Etiemble and with laws of 1975 and 1995 (Jacques Toubon aka Mr Allgood)

Extrem francisation is sometimes stupides (fr) :

Je l'ai draguée dans un night-club.
Je l'ai draguée dans un gourdin de nuit.

Ces covers-girls sont souvent nues
Ces filles couvertes sont souvent nues

Ils habitent dans un superbe loft.
Ils habitent dans une superbe soupente.

Il a 14000 bisons dans son ranch
Il a 14000 bisons dans sa cabane

Tu me prêtes ton scooter?
Tu me prêtes ta trottinette?

Re:French and foreign words

[Hairy Dude]

As an English student of German with a fascination for linguistics in general, I hate having to use English words in foreign languages. It just doesn't sound or feel right to me to talk about what one did during le week-end. Don't they have their own word for that? And for heaven's sake, do they really go for lunch at le fast-food?

Fortunately, English is immune to such assimilation - it's a melting pot of foreign vocabulary as it is.

Blatantly offtopic:

One has to add some kind of ending to make it work, which gives for example un voile, voiler for "a veil, to veil" (but note that "a sail, to sail" is une voile, naviguer).

One of the reasons I prefer German to French is that, while you still have to add an ending to make a verb, the ending is always -en or -ln, depending on whether there is a vowel at the end (I might be wrong about this), and they conjugate the same way (notwithstanding irregulars).

language proficiency

[WormholeFiend]

As part of my job, I get to read a lot of documents written in English or French by Anglophones or Francophones. From my point of view, it seems clear that an increasingly high number of people's writing skills in either language are decreasing. Sometimes, I have to process a text with parts that don't make any sense, and very often, when I call the author to clear up the confusion, I get one of these answers: a) Ooooohh my God. I really screwed up there. Please delete that sentence. [Even if it looks like some important information is getting deleted] b) Hmmm. I don't even remember what I was trying to say! c) Don't disturb me with unimportant details. It's perfectly legible! [Denial is not just a river in Egypt]

soon

[boatboy]

This is part of a larger plan to remove words from the french language altogether. Pretty soon there will be only one word...Big Brother.

Kmail

[Bigby]

Does this mean KDE will rename Kmail to Kourriel? And on another subject, do the French (and other countries) say the words "at" and "dot" when saying email addresses?

Heh, they do this with judo also!

[Mongoose]

That's right the French replace all the move's names in judo with french names. hehehe

Instead of using the Japanese they use French for every aspect. Which I think disrepects the sport, but some French have done well in international meets... it's just my opinion that it detracts from a common, shared language in the sport.

So if you say let's pratice the most basic throw --- ( Oh Soe Toe Gah Ree ) they have no idea. =(

Damn it! Slashdot ate my kana!

[Mongoose]

What's up with that? Well here's the romanji for the curious:

osoto gari

'o so to ga ri'

Guerre des flammes consomme le monde.

[pherris]

If the French are working so hard to keep their language pure, why did they deicde to use a word a French-Speaking Canadian came up with?

Thousands of Québécois and Français are lining up to offer their two cents on your comment. Coming up next: Should Canada adopt the US dollar as the country's offical currency?

+1, Funny

Some advantage of culture preservation

[deception54]

I read most of the comments here, and I would like to show some advantages of preserving a language. I can tell I am a French-Canadian. Others are French, Germans, Americans, etc etc etc. I see a huge advantage for cultural diversity: I creates many differents points of view. It becomes harder for an Empire to spread their power when they face diversity. For french-canadian, french language is a strong protection from american economic, cultural, political invasion. I dont mean American culture is bad, not at all. I mean that I am part of another culture which helps maintain diversity. For scientific documents, and stuff like that, it is great to share one common language (English). But when you think of stuff like media coverage, I think language barrier helps keeping different points of view.

Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that

[usotsuki]

Read it and weep...

[Japanese : kara, void, empty + oke(sutora), orchestra (from English orchestra).]

YFI

-uso.

Mail originally French anyway

[kaiguy]

Anyone who feels the need is welcome to check out Dictionary.com's entry on mail, which entered Middle English from old French - who apparently got it from the Germanic peoples at one time. But even funnier is the idea of trying to prevent your language from evolving - especially when the invading language is English!! Less than one percent of the words in the English language are originally English anyway...A lot of them came from France, oddly enough. That and France doesn't seem too concerned about Latin or Greek words seeping into their culture. Where do they think 'electronique' comes from?

HA HA

[anon1888]

HAHAHAAHAHAH

The French: What do you expect?

[rice_burners_suck]

The French are arrogant, stupid people. Their language, a direct outgrowth of their intellect, or lack thereof, is a pile of crap.

Ever wonder why all French words contain about 90% silent letters? It's simple. Back in the days when most people didn't know how to read or write, you'd have a scribe write down an important message and another scribe would read it to the recipient. Most people weren't very well educated, either, so words were rarely spelled "correctly," if a standard for spelling even existed. The Spanish scribes charged per word, which is why Spanish words are spelled exactly the way they sound. The French scribes, on the other hand, charged per letter, so they tacked a bunch of extra letters onto the end of each word, in order to increase the price. What do you expect from a bunch of stupid people like that?

Just a DISCLAIMER, folks: I have French people in my family and I speak French. Or rather, I know how, but try to avoid it whenever possible. It is a meaningless language.

Re:The French: What do you expect?

[Yanster]

Your post is kind of retarted, bordering on flaming. I wonder where it comes from. Also can you explain the 90% silent letters thingy in french language ? It seems to me that would make a rather quiet language - and people.

I have French people in my family and I speak French. Or rather, I know how, but try to avoid it whenever possible. It is a meaningless language

I'm sorry to hear you have "arrogant, stupid people" in your family. Though I find it amusing that one of your blog entries is titled "Ah. C'est la vie". Do you often schedule time to humiliate yourself like this ?

Re:Except people actually *use* those words

[konmaskisin]

Well everyone in Canada already and has for years used the term "courriel" along with "logiciel" (software), and "didacticiel" (learnware/educational software) and other variants.

Francophone Residents of Quebec are free to move

[konmaskisin]

... to another province if they wish their children to be assimilated - err I mean learn English. You are free to leave Quebec as well.

Or they can send them to a private school.

If I demand of the government to establish and fund Chinese language schools (there's many important languages spokend in China) they would likely reply: "please attend a private Chinese school, or move to China, or attend school board meetings and plead you case to have Chinese added to the curriculum".

Which is a rational response. The majority of Quebec residents are French speaking, have access to English curricula in schools and are free to move. WHY should the government pay to send them to English schools?

What is happening is the Anglos, who are used to getting things their way on language policy are having to accept that they are a minority. That won't stop them from agitating in favour of the "rights of Francophones to be educated in English" etc. etc.

Freedom fries...

[Comatose51]

Then again, we were also dumb enough to rename "French fries" to "Freedom fries" (Thank God, we have a Senate to put a lid on the stupidity that might otherwise come out of the House). Not to mention how infantile that was, but it was also handing the French a victory on a silver platter. I'm sure before then the misnomer was a thorn in the side. Now, it's one of those things they point and laugh at us about.

The term "Canadian" was a french word

[konmaskisin]

The real "canadiens" were french speaking until about 150 years ago.

The English residents of Canada considered themselves "British Colonial" subjects or English. - even until quite recently (witness the flag debate in the 1960s - very very heated and vitriolic exchanges). "Canadian" was a term almost exclusively synonymous with "french Canadian".

Once French was crushed and destroyed as a viable language outside of Quebec and English Dominion Subjects began to refer to themselves as Canadian - French Canadians in Quebec (in conjunction with the "Quiet Revolution" and growing nationalism) were driven to culturally disociated themselves from the term adopting instead the term "Québecois".

Vive le Québec.

Abgebooted?

[hughk]

or even just upgebooted for "booted up" is my favourite.

Thank you + tip

[Reinout]

Well, thank you! (I'm Dutch :-)

On another note: sometimes something simple can go a long way in making the 'locals' happy when you're a tourist. For example, in France, when you visit a restaurant for your meal: first order a 'pastise' (the 'i' sounds like 'bEEp'). It's a drink made of anice seeds. You'll immediately rank higher than 'average tourist'. I've noticed waiters looking pleasantly surprised on more than one occasion!

And in Greece you'll have to order an Ouzo. (Also anice-based).

Probably a lot of countries have such local customs that foreigners normally don't know of. On the other hand, I can't think of such a custom in the Netherlands... :-)

Reinout van Rees

Mixed feelings from France

[christophe]

I'm French, and I understand both sides:
- Too many foreign words in a language make its internal logic weaker, and messes up the sounds (that should be written 'i-mail' in French). A few words from all over the world make a language healthier, a massive amount from one single source (US) is cultural assimilation.
- This is still far less dangerous than attacking grammar, acronyms madness or putting all ads on French TV in English (yeah, even for Fiat or Alcatel).
- 'Courriel' comes from Canada, where they are much better than French to find 'good' replacement words. A bit too zealous sometimes but this is an everyday battle, like against MS.
- Anyway, finding a translation of word should be done rather early, not 7 years after everybody starts using it!
- In this particular case, I don't mind telling 'email'. In fact, it very often becomes 'mail', which fits perfectly in French (writing, pronunciation, and etymology). And it implies automatically that it goes through the Internet (they didn't try to change this last word BTW).

Re:Mixed feelings from France

[Hognoxious]

- Too many foreign words in a language make its internal logic weaker, and messes up the sounds (that should be written 'i-mail' in French).

Monkey spunk. The e stands for 'electronic'. The French word is not 'ilectronique', is it? So it should, even in French, still be 'e-mail' (with an acute on the e). But it would be pronounced a-mail.

Re:Mixed feelings from France

[christophe]

>So it should, even in French, still be 'e-mail'
>(with an acute on the e).

No, because foreign words are usually imported with their pronunciation. So the 'e' is spoken the English way like a French 'i', and it blows up the (already shaky) logic between sounds and letters in French. To recover this logic without changing the way it is said would require to write 'i-mail'. (France Telecom tried this with its 'i-Minitel').

Re:Mixed feelings from France

[Hognoxious]

No, because foreign words are usually imported with their pronunciation.

Well, in England (where it originated) we don't watch a 'Taylayvizhion'. The French spelling of 'radio' is the same as English, but to get our sound you would need to spell it 'raidio' or 'raydio'. An example moving in the other direction - in England we don't write 'cwassons' on a breakfast menu.

In modern times, when most people are literate, it seems that the written form gets tranferred, then pronounced in the local manner. 200 years ago, it may well have been the other way round.

As a french guy,

[nsebban]

I can't wait to know what word they invented for "spam"...well we soon should know :)

From the d'uh-i'm-american department

[DrWhoIsWhoIAm]

From the d'uh-I'm-an-obese-american-don't-you- speak-english-you-moron department The word is > (FYI). And this news is about 3 years old. Slashdot is right on the ball as usual? Another word chosen by the academy is >. Crazy people those french, you know they don't say "bread" for bread either. They use >. And worst of all all the sites in france don't have giant signs on them for the american tourists. How inconsiderate. D'uh. Never mind. Just have another donut, dude. You have already occupied most of the world and we will all be speaking US english soon (at the point of a gun maybe but who cares, right). (Oh shit, a black van with tinted windows just pulled up. Men in black suits and dark shardes are pouring out and heading towards the front door. Looks like I am going to Guantanamo bay for my rude comments). Looks like will be illegally detained as well. :-)

My Suggestion:

[rat7307]

Oui-Mail..

I think that'll work niceley.

Re : Honestly, I live in France and ... it's false

[FoeNyx]

Come on, Brouteur is never used !
Navigateur is tremendously more common !

Navigateur( 967 000 results) versus Brouteur ( 1 950 results)

"brouteur oueb" is often used as derision instead of "Navigator Web"

--
Misinformation sux !

Re:They don't like Email because it's "american"?

[FoeNyx]

"French Fries" are from Belgium ... -- What a fair foot !

It's your point that missed

[GCP]

The French government is banning yet another English word, not pronouncing it in a more French-sounding way.

You say Americans are just the same and wouldn't stand for the adoption of a new concept word from another language, yet the term "jihad" has rather recently been adopted into common usage and hasn't been banned from government publications in the US.

Americans, like all English speakers, adopt new concept words from other languages frequently. Perhaps you could show us a list of commonly used "foreign" words that have been banned by the US government and the English terms designed by the government to replace them.

m�l or courriel ?

[Xad]

Another possibility offered by the Académie française is to use "mél". This word sounds like the English word "mail" and comes from "message électronique". So what do you prefer ? French people use "e-mail" and don't care...

loan words are very useful

[rp]

It's very useful to borrow words from other languages. You create specialized terms that won't be confused with existing words or concepts. Even the language you borrow them from doesn't have them!

For example, in Dutch we have the English loan word "mail" for e-mail. It only means electronic mail, so it can't be confused with any other form of mail, for which we already had a completely different word ("post"). Every translation into "real Dutch" would require effort and produce a term that would have to be articifially forced into this specialized meaning, while the loan word "mail" comes for free, at least to those of us who speak English (which is about 90% of the users of e-mail).

A "real" translation for words doesn't make sense from a practical point of view, unless the users will have problems with the borrowed word. The use of English loan words in French increases with the fluency in English of the francophones. Trying to find "real French" translations can be useful, but insisting on them only serves purism, which is a fun game for intellectuals and politicians, but not very useful otherwise.

email

[Hognoxious]

I also use ze email. It eez a veree tough kind of, ow you say - paint, eet stops my metall plattes and things from getting ze roust on zem.

Re:Re : Honestly, I live in France and ... it's fa

[BlueTrin]

I was pointing out the fact that organizations which are responsible for finding new words, often make words that are never used and that are often ridiculous.

In a similar vein

[Hognoxious]

Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles
Un petit d'un petit
Ah! desgrés te fallent
Indolent qui ne sorte cesse
Indolent qui ne se mène
Qu'importe un petit d'un petit
Tout Gai de Reguennes.

quiproquo

[FoeNyx]

On that point i agree with you.
Was just to say it's a non representative exemple cause it's rather rarely used IMHO.

-->[]

--
misunderstanding sux

Re:Except people actually *use* those words

[hesiod]

> Well everyone in Canada already and has for years used the term "courriel"

I think you need to look up the word "everyone." I've spoken to quite a few canadians and never heard that term before a few days ago.

Re:email

[hesiod]

> I also use ze email. It eez a veree tough kind of, ow you say - paint,

Please excuse my utter lack of understanding that joke. Were you implying the word "enamel?"

(I can ruin ANY joke with ignorance!)

Indo-European

[danaris]

There is no one "root language" that underlies all languages (at least, no vestige of one remains); however, there is a language underlying all European and Indic languages: it's called Indo-European, and it's the ancestor of languages spoken in India (whose names I'm not familiar with), as well as Latin and all the old Germanic languages. It is in no way related to Japanese; however, interestingly enough, Hungarian is in the same language family as Japanese: a relic of the time when the Huns invaded all the way to there, then stopped.

Dan Aris

Cheese Mail

[dtabraha]

This just in:
All primary worldwide DNS servers modify France's domain from .fr to .cesm

(SARCASM ref: Matt Groening)

Twisted Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a French Canadian living in Montreal and some posts here got me totally disgusted. Some posts sound like the decision of the French government is part of some conspiracy to remove rights to english speaking citizens in Quebec. These posts are severely biased against the French Canadian. It is important to restore the facts.

"In QC, Anglophones are a hated minority."

This is a total overstatement. If it wasn't of the ignorance of it's author I'd accuse him of plainly lying and giving a perfect demonstration of bad faith. Do you have any idea what's hate? There are more racial and hate crimes in Toronto than in Montreal. You would know that if you would be documented at all.

Maybe you meant that french and english are not living in total harmony? Oh my. Big deal. Is that situation unique to Quebec and unique to French Canadians and English Canadians? Put your personal resentment aside for a second and admit Quebec is an incredibly peaceful place. Or maybe you don't live in Quebec at all? In that case, how the hell you know what you are talking about? A friend of a friend maybe? Me too I have a lot of these!

Anglo-Quebecers often pose as victims, but the reality is they are better treated than the French ever was in Canada.

For years french-only speaking workers were paid significantly less than english-only speaking workers for an equal education.

About 30 years ago, french people couldn't be served in french in stores, even by french speaking employees. Everything had to be done in English. Remember Eaton anybody?

These days, the federal government is offering services in french and english in Quebec but does not offer the same level of service in other provinces.

In Quebec we have english hospitals, english universities, english schools. Very recently, Ontario's government did all it could to close the only french academic hospital in Ontario. Thank god they failed, but that was at the cost of a lenghty battle.

In the 1890, the government of Manitoba stopped funding french schools. New Brunswick did the same before in 1870. For some time it's been illegal to speak french in some provinces. Of course this has been made unconstitutional, but it has been made so after the harm was done.

And the list goes on. English being victims of evil French people really is a pathetic statement.

"the Quebec Office de la Langue Francais' attempts to get people to stop using hotdog and hamburger"

This example is a complete caricature. The person writing this really has no idea what the role of this bureau is. This bureau is promoting the use of good french. It is promoting the use of french in the workplace. It is promoting the use of french in the public space.

Quebec is a French province god dammit. What's so surprising about it's people trying to keep this identity? French Canadians compare less than English Canadians to Americans but yet English Canadians persist putting barriers to Americans entering the canadian market (all tv ads on canadian tv are canadian, even for american shows). I kind of feel like English Canadians want to integrate Quebec completely to their (english speaking) universe, but they wouldn't let themselves be fully integrated in the American (cultural) universe. Either nationalism isn't acceptable for anybody, or it is acceptable for everybody. Otherwise you got a double standard.

I read once that some German papers depicted this bureau of some gestapo arresting people for speaking english. This simply is insane. Guess where this paper was taking it's information from? English press!

Maybe it's just designed to eliminate confusion!

[unDees]

Maybe the French government just doesn't want people confusing e-mail with enamel. :)

Re:Germans are sure strange

[undoman]

That's like complaining that the german word for "FYI" is "Fur ihre informationen".

The correct translation of "FYI" should be "Zu Ihrer Information".

Get people to stop eating hotdogs? Nice idea

[Vitus Wagner]

If Quebec Office would be able to persuade people
do not eat fastfood and use French restraunts instead, it would greatly increase health of people.

But I doubt that it is possible with current lifestyle.