French Government Bans Term 'E-Mail' 1094
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 ;)
can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:4, Informative)
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 [canoe.ca]. 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? (Score:4, Informative)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The term "Canadian" was a french word (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:3, Interesting)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:3, Informative)
As George W. Bush once said... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Wait, are the french arrogant? (Score:3)
Word importing (Score:5, Insightful)
This story is just goofy, though. "Mail [yourdictionary.com]" comes into English from French. "Courrier [yourdictionary.com]" 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 [yourdictionary.com] on borrowed words in English. French and Norse invasions mentioned a few paragraphs from the bottom of the page.)
*honk*
Just clearing up a bit / Re:Word importing (Score:5, Informative)
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:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
"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? (Score:3, Informative)
"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? (Score:3, Informative)
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 i
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:3, Interesting)
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'
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:3, Interesting)
So any time you receive a courriel just point at it, laugh, and say "Was ist das?"
It used to be "mél" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:can't you tell by my ridiculous accent? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Just to be different! (Score:2)
Re:Just to be different! (Score:2)
Try anglicism [reference.com] or, if you're talking about words specific to British English, briticism [reference.com].
Re:Just to be different! (Score:5, Informative)
"Wanting you du biere?"
(translation: "Do you want some beer?")
if the french had created e-mail... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:if the french had created e-mail... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:if the french had created e-mail... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:if the french had created e-mail... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:if the french had created e-mail... (Score:3, Informative)
Child Labour in Europe [globalmarch.org]
Nice, the poster wrote courriel wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
I got One Word for Them... (Score:5, Funny)
This is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
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 Engl
Re:This is stupid (Score:5, Funny)
That's because we don't know what they mean.
Re:This is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Also counterproductive (Score:5, Interesting)
I always wondered how much business the French firms lost because their technical books were politically correct rather than useful.
Re:This is stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you,
The Department of Homeland Security
It may also be counter-productive (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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-spea
right. (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
They already did... (Score:5, Informative)
I dont knw if the term has been officialy accepted, but it's been pending for a few years now.
Re:right. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Acadamie, Shadamie... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Acadamie, Shadamie... (Score:2)
Just sounds wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just sounds wrong (Score:5, Funny)
You gotta be shitting me... Oh wait, you're right.
Et puis quoi? (Score:2, Funny)
This information brought to you by the French office of the Department of Homeland Security
The fish speaks (Score:2, Informative)
You should listen to Greek translations... (Score:2)
Too bad Greek uses a different alphabet and i can't give you an example.
Apart from that. Why is this so
Comment insultant! (Score:2)
compared to say (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
Wrong googling strategy. Here, let me help.
According to this Google search [googlefight.com], English wins hands down.
However, interestingly enough, that the French version [googlefight.com] shows a different result.
Typically revisionist French. ;-)
Re:compared to say (Score:3, Informative)
"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"!
Good for them (Score:2)
It's an already old story... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad way to protect language (Score:2)
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.
Sounds wrong, tastes great (Score:2)
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 the
freedom of speech? (Score:2)
Google knows best.... (Score:3, Informative)
couriel OR couriell site:fr 730 results [google.ca]
"courrier electronique" site:fr 1,340 results [google.ca]
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.... (Score:3, Informative)
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:
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.... (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some *real* numbers, using the same searches as you made (all french language sites):
"courriel" -- 247,000 [google.com]
"courrier électronique" OR "courrier electronique" -- 423,000 [google.com]
email OR e-mail -- 3,050,000 [google.com]
---
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.
Pâté? (Score:4, Funny)
Pâté, Pâté, Pâté... wonderful Pâté!
language=identity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No way - not so simple. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Sounds fine to me. (Score:3)
In response... (Score:3, Funny)
Err... uh, nevermind...
We Have "Curriels" in San Francisco (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, wait, maybe I'm thinking "courier"...never mind...
French and foreign words (Score:3, Informative)
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:Its about time (Score:2)
But I suppose it's only funny on the giving end.
Re:Its about time (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its about time (Score:3, Interesting)
"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 anglophon
Re:Its about time (Score:2)
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", "c
wha ya sey? (Score:2)
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:Adele (Score:3, Funny)
(Il fallait bien qu'un francophone la fasse...)
Re:French for spam too (Score:4, Funny)
Re:French for spam too (Score:3, Informative)
D.
Re:I wish the Japanese were a bit more like that (Score:3, Funny)
KFG
Reminds me of the a joke.. (Score:5, Funny)
Even yoghurt develop its own culture after a while.
Re:Reminds me of the a joke.. (Score:3, Funny)
"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:Germans are sure strange (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Germans are sure strange (Score:3, Insightful)
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:paybacks for freedom fries? (Score:4, Informative)