I have to comment this message, because it shows that its author knows nothing about French language and its protection
Most French citizens love their language and completely agree with its protection. Many other countries do the same. BUT everyone agrees that a language is the fact of the speakers, not a government's. In a democracy, there is no way a government can change the language without the agreement of the people. Some years ago, the government wanted to simplify the orthograph, for instance deprecating the circumflex accent.
People REFUSED that modification... Why ? For a reason that only French speaking people can understand : circumflex accent is nice to see, it is a specificity of the language.
Just for the record : French stupidity, so many times quoted in this thread, is so important that we have the results of our presidential elections 01 second after the closing of polling places, we never have to count/recount/uncount/sue because our ballots are well designed, our counting machines are not 90 years old, or discover voting ballots sent to a Danish family or a ballot box in a Church, like in a Banana Republic.
Smart Cards have been invented in France, by Roland Moreno. We have been having chips in
Visa Cards for almost 13 years now.
When US got into the standardization of Smart Cards, we required a slight move of the chip on the card, only some millimeters, but that was enough to be really annoying for french industry
Again, be civilized : there is nothing in this domain that the United States are not already mastering.
Slashdot Mirror
Somalia ? The 3rd world country where US forces had a very bad time in front of poorly armed and badly structured guerilleros ?
BTW, California already has the majority of its population speaking spanish, but there is still no n-tilda or diacritics on keyboards.
I have to comment this message, because it shows that its author knows nothing about French language and its protection
Most French citizens love their language and completely agree with its protection. Many other countries do the same. BUT everyone agrees that a language is the fact of the speakers, not a government's. In a democracy, there is no way a government can change the language without the agreement of the people. Some years ago, the government wanted to simplify the orthograph, for instance deprecating the circumflex accent.
People REFUSED that modification... Why ? For a reason that only French speaking people can understand : circumflex accent is nice to see, it is a specificity of the language.
Just for the record : French stupidity, so many times quoted in this thread, is so important that we have the results of our presidential elections 01 second after the closing of polling places, we never have to count/recount/uncount/sue because our ballots are well designed, our counting machines are not 90 years old, or discover voting ballots sent to a Danish family or a ballot box in a Church, like in a Banana Republic.
Daniel
Smart Cards have been invented in France, by Roland Moreno. We have been having chips in Visa Cards for almost 13 years now.
When US got into the standardization of Smart Cards, we required a slight move of the chip on the card, only some millimeters, but that was enough to be really annoying for french industry
Again, be civilized : there is nothing in this domain that the United States are not already mastering.
You're just expressing xenophobia.
Daniel