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.