France Says 'Au Revoir' to the Word 'Smartphone' (smithsonianmag.com)

Hoping to prevent English tech vocabulary from entering the French language, officials have suggested 'mobile multifunction' as an alternative. An anonymous reader shares a report: The official journal of the French Republic, the Journal officiel, has suggested "internet clandestin" instead of dark net. It's dubbed a casual gamer "joueur occasionnel" for messieurs and "joueuse occasionnelle" for mesdames. To replace hashtag, it's selected "mot-diese." Now, as the Local reports, the latest word to get the official boot in France is smartphone. It's time to say bonjour to the "le mobile multifonction." The recommendation was put forth by the Commission d'enrichissement de la langue francaise, which works in conjunction with the Academie Francaise to preserve the French language. This isn't the first time that the commission has tried to encourage French citizens to switch over to a Franco-friendly word for "smartphone." Previous suggestions included "ordiphone" (from "ordinateur," the French word for computer) and "terminal de poche" (or pocket terminal). These, it seems, did not quite stick.

Comments

wordy

[Moblaster]

i don't speak French but even I can figure out that's a big mealy mouthful... hard for six or seven syllables to come up with two... couldn't they even compromise with a more streamlined "multifonc" ?

Re:wordy

[TWX]

This isn't the first time they've had this sort of problem. What is funny though, is that we're almost to the point where there's no reason to use "smartphone" anymore since nearly all mobile phones are this type. It's like there's no need to refer to your new TV as a flatscreen TV, because all new TVs are flatscreen TVs. If they'd made this ruling about a decade ago it would make sense, but now, not so much.

Also in the news

[Opportunist]

French IT specialist complained about not being able to find jobs abroad. International companies we asked cited "a lack of knowledge of fundamental IT terms they even know in third world countries" as a reason.

Re:All french everywhere

[ChunderDownunder]

septante, huitante (octante), nonante - sounds perfectly logical.

Re:It's hard to feel sorry for the French language

[chmod a x mojo]

Close, very close.

The short answer is: trade.

The slightly longer answer: Trade, due to the fact that there has been large amounts of English speakers since the spread that happened shortly after modern English first was a pidgin language ( again because of trade ). Trade - and wealth in general - drives the cultural and military conquests 95% of the time.

Imagine two countries separated by a decent amount of traveling time. They want to trade, but don't speak the others language. It's likely, especially these days, that both have people trained in speaking English for trade with English speaking countries. Boom, instant trade language between the two countries. Now they can trade as much as they want without having to hire yet another translator / learn another new language.

Re:It's hard to feel sorry for the French language

[Anonymous Coward]

The grammar was simplified by repeated invasions and waves of migration. It still has its problems and overly complex features as any natural language does, but a lot of them have been pounded away already.

I don't think it's necessarily one of the easiest languages, but it is the one with the best combination of

• Easy "enough" writing system (near enough to phonetic, unlike some East Asian languages)
• Pretty close to languages that a lot of people speak (other PIE languages; it's a soup of Germanic and Romance, at least as far as vocab goes)
• Simple "enough" grammar
• Super high intelligibility even if you screw up the more complex grammatical rules