France Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

"Gooneybird" wrote:


"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 20:31:57 +0300, bsh wrote in
Message-Id: :

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 action of the French Culture Ministry would seem a bit moot given
the fact that English is now the official language of the European
Union.

I don't know how moot it is, but it sure looks childish and petty to me. I
seriously doubt that very many Frenchmen really care that the five letter
acronym (email) is rooted in the English language rather than the French. It's
shorter than the Gallic substitute for it, and therefore more convenient even
for French users of the Internet.

Next thing we know, some brain-dead idealogue will be insisting that we remove
"a la carte" from all of our English language menus. Hopefully, we won't sink
to that level.

George Z.


I'm especially sensitive to this kind of crap, living as I do in
Canada and needing to travel through the foreign country of
Quebec. I've taken of late to electing to travel through the US
so as to avoid Quebec entirely. Can you imagine the effrontery of
them passing a LAW which forbids showing the English Language on
public signs right here in Canada?!?. Disgusting altogether.
--

-Gord.

Larry Dighera wrote:

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 20:31:57 +0300, bsh wrote in
Message-Id: :

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 action of the French Culture Ministry would seem a bit moot given
the fact that English is now the official language of the European
Union.

Shouldn't that be, "a bit meut"?

On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 00:15:14 GMT, "Gord Beaman" )
wrote in Message-Id: :

I'm especially sensitive to this kind of crap, living as I do in
Canada and needing to travel through the foreign country of
Quebec. I've taken of late to electing to travel through the US
so as to avoid Quebec entirely. Can you imagine the effrontery of
them passing a LAW which forbids showing the English Language on
public signs right here in Canada?!?. Disgusting altogether.
--


What's the alternative, another Northern Irelandesque jihad for Grate
Britain?

On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 02:40:25 GMT, David Windhorst
wrote in Message-Id:
:



Larry Dighera wrote:

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 20:31:57 +0300, bsh wrote in
Message-Id: :

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 action of the French Culture Ministry would seem a bit moot given
the fact that English is now the official language of the European
Union.

Shouldn't that be, "a bit meut"?


But, of course mon ami! Merci.

I was skiing at Chamonix years ago, when I met a French-Canadian in
the parking lot. He was horribly depressed at the state of the French
language in the home country. The parking lot was dubbed PARKING
instead of stationment, but even worse in his opinion was LE WEEKEND.

On the other hand, even longer ago I met a Frenchman from Normandy in
the Paris youth hostel. He'd just driven a hitchhiking American girl
to the hostel, where of course she had dumped him, so he was
comforting himself with a bottle of wine at the commons table. He too
was hideously depressed (perhaps it goes with the language?) at the
state of spoken French in Normandy. The worst thing he could say about
it was that it sounded very similar to French as spoken in Quebec.

(Both these conversations, I might point out, were held in English.
Though the French regard it as a predator language, they are pretty
handy with it.)

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at http://www.danford.net/index.htm
Vietnam | Flying Tigers | Pacific War | Brewster Buffalo | Piper Cub

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...

I was skiing at Chamonix years ago, when I met a French-Canadian in
the parking lot. He was horribly depressed at the state of the French
language in the home country. The parking lot was dubbed PARKING
instead of stationment, but even worse in his opinion was LE WEEKEND.

On the other hand, even longer ago I met a Frenchman from Normandy in
the Paris youth hostel. He'd just driven a hitchhiking American girl
to the hostel, where of course she had dumped him, so he was
comforting himself with a bottle of wine at the commons table. He too
was hideously depressed (perhaps it goes with the language?) at the
state of spoken French in Normandy. The worst thing he could say about
it was that it sounded very similar to French as spoken in Quebec.

(Both these conversations, I might point out, were held in English.
Though the French regard it as a predator language, they are pretty
handy with it.)

On reflection, one never hears Frenchmen complaining about French words and
phrases adopted into the English language, does one. A bit of "le standard a
deux", n'est ce pas? (^-^)))

George Z.

Gooneybird wrote:

: On reflection, one never hears Frenchmen complaining about French words and
: phrases adopted into the English language, does one. A bit of "le standard
: a deux", n'est ce pas? (^-^)))

Well, thanks to William the Conqueror, English is a mixture
of French with the original Germanic Old English, anyway.
It is only natural for the French to make further intrusions.
While 'Franglais' is really very, very ugly.

Emmanuel

And the French wonder why a lot of the world find them irritating!?

Myc


"bsh" wrote in message
...
PARIS - 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.

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 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 — a claim some
industry experts dispute. "Courriel" is a fusion of the two words.

"Evocative, with a very French sound, the word 'courriel' is broadly
used in the press and competes advantageously with the borrowed 'mail'
in English," the commission has ruled.

The move to ban "e-mail" was announced last week after the decision was
published in the official government register on June 20. Courriel is a
term that has often been used in French-speaking Quebec, the commission
said.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ith__e_mail__1

"Mycroft" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
And the French wonder why a lot of the world find them irritating!?


No we don't, we don't give a rat's ass.

--
_________________________________________
Pierre-Henri BARAS

Co-webmaster de French Fleet Air Arm
http://www.ffaa.net
Encyclopédie de l'Aviation sur le web
http://www.aviation-fr.info

On 19 Jul 2003 16:52:22 GMT, "Emmanuel.Gustin"
wrote in Message-Id:
:

Larry Dighera wrote:

: The action of the French Culture Ministry would seem a bit moot given
: the fact that English is now the official language of the European
: Union.

There is no single official language of the EU. When it
comes to official publications, all EU languages are equal.
(Just imagine how people would react, with justification,
if official documents were only available in a language
many of them do not understand.) For everyday administrative
work, there are a number of preferred languages (five IIRC)
of which English is one, but French another.

Emmanuel



Indeed it appears that there are 11 official EU languages:

http://www.ibeurope.com/Issues/LAN.htm
There are currently eleven official languages of the European
Union - Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek,
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Following enlargement it
is likely that a further eight official languages may be added :
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian
and Slovene.

Official EU documents are made available in all official languages
of the European Union. Internally the Commission works in three
procedural languages, English, French and German, and material
generated inside the Commission for internal use only is drafted
in one or more of these and translated only between those three if
needed. ...




http://www.delchn.cec.eu.int/en/eu_g...tm#eulanguages
What are the official languages of the European Union?

What are the official languages of the European Union? The very
first Regulation enacted by the Council of what is now the
European Union, was concerned with language. On 15 April 1958. The
Council laid down that the official languages of the Member States
should be both the official languages of the Community and the
working languages of the Community institution.

Every Member State's official language is an official language of
the EU. As several Member States share the same official language
this means there are 11 official languages. They are (in
alphabetical order): Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French,
German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish.


On the other hand:


http://www.absolutelyjokes.com/ethni...-language.html
European Union Decision On Official Language

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
English will be the official language of the EU rather than German
which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her
Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room
for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would
be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this
will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be
dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and
keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik
enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be
replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20%
shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are
possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters,
which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil
agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is
disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze
unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar
changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil
be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to
understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen ve vil
tak over ze vorld!