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Sun 20 Jul, 2003 08:21 am
France bans 'e-mail' from vocabulary
Friday, July 18, 2003 Posted: 12:35 PM EDT (1635 GMT)
PARIS, France (AP) -- 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.
Calling it artificial
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.
The 7-year-old commission has links to the Academie Francaise, the prestigious institution that has been one of the top opponents of allowing English terms to seep into French.
Some Internet industry experts say the decision is artificial and doesn't reflect reality.
"The word 'courriel' is not at all actively used," Marie-Christine Levet, president of French Internet service provider Club Internet, said Friday. "E-mail has sunk in to our values."
She said Club Internet wasn't changing the words it uses.
"Protecting the language is normal, but e-mail's so assimilated now that no one thinks of it as American," she said. "Courriel would just be a new word to launch."
What do you think is this a typical of the attitude of the French?
I saw a similar article yesterday. The instructive difference for me, is that we just had a popular movement to strike "French" from some of our terms--I remember asking my manicurist for a Freedom Manicure, with a smile, thinking I had been novel--and they'd already changed the signage to Freedom Manicure--
But, France has made it
illegal for govt employees to use the term 'e-mail'. Isn't it France, where criticism of the President is also
illegal? I am a little concerned for them. How will they use Windows, and all the other non-French technology? What is the French word for Windows....? I guess if you can't invent anything, the next best thing is to force your country by law to use language inferring you did....
Oh yeah. Suck it, Frenchy.
In the best quarter-century I've worked for Canadian, American and German companies, and the provincial government here. Every one of them has had words that were/are not allowed in 'official' documents. They've all provided preferred spellings/usages etc.
This goes back hundreds of years - Irish/English, German/French ...
Whether it's 'corporate culture' or language protection or whatever, there really is nothing new under the sun.
ehBeth
I don't doubt you. However are they restricting the use of words that define new inventions or concepts such as this?
Au - all you have to think about is the companies that don't allow the term 'fax' to be used. The companies that don't accept faxes as originals. The idiots that still want you to put cc on letters instead of c. No one sends carbon copies anymore. They send copies - indistinguishable from the original.
I'm not trying to be difficult-- (a disclaimer)
I've never heard of a company that wouldn't allow the term fax to be used, or insisted on a fax being called by a different name. They may not allow a fax to be considered as an original, but I think that's a seperate issue.
This is like going to work, and finding out it is against the law to call a fax by any name other than a doodlepuss. Or, a memo must now be called a mimique...
"Envoyer l'adresse de cette page par mél" is one of the French sentences used on official websites since several months now.
Actually, why not use the the one's native language, if there is a vocabulray? Even when Americans used to say "French Frieds", they didn't say "Frites franĉaises", n'est-ce pas?
ehBeth
Quote:
Au - all you have to think about is the companies that don't allow the term 'fax' to be used. The companies that don't accept faxes as originals. The idiots that still want you to put cc on letters instead of c. No one sends carbon copies anymore. They send copies - indistinguishable from the original.
Those are company rules not government restrictions.
BTW: this is a law since August 8, 1994:
http://www.culture.fr/culture/infos-pratiques/droit-culture/index.htm
That law is to be found as pdf-data at "Langue française".
sofia - just think of the lovely facsimile. When I worked for a major American corp (i left less than a year ago) we were required to refer to facsimiles in our correspondence. Not faxes - head office in Boston didn't approve the use of that terminology. Not correct use of English
au - I'd be mighty surprised if the U.S. government doesn't have a manual of language usage. It's pretty standard practice. If you'll look at your own original quote here - what the French government is doing is trying to prevent the use of "e-mail" in their own correspondence/documents. I understand what their larger goal is - it is the same as me using colour instead of color (sheesh, took me three cracks to type it without the u). Language purity. None of us will be successful with it, but I think it's a good thing. I know that I don't want to end up speaking Esperanto.
sheesh
duplicate removal
i think i've got them all now
Oy!
deleting the duplicate.
Walter
I don't understand the language but I get the picture.
France wants to protect it's language. IMO the French are still smarting because French which had been the language of diplomacy has been supplanted by English. The French are very bad losers, Why I do not know they should be used to it.
ehBeth
I understand making the word more in line with the language it is done in all languages. However, completely changing it?
Au - this isn't specific to France. Just think of how Americans reacted when it seemed that to keep up, American business people would all have to learn to speak Japanese. There was a lot of American outrage at that time.
It seems we all get our turn to be outraged about the damage being done to 'our' language.
Ebeth
Our language. English in particular American English adopts words from foreign languages constantly. English again American English has become the universal language.
au1929 wrote: English again American English has become the universal language.
But you really can't force other nationalities just because of this to escape their mothertongue ... and national language!
Walter--
Just to clarify--I'm pretty sure no one wants to force anyone to stop using their mother tongue.
It's just odd to me that a govt would force their citizens to change a word in their language. No biggie, from my view. But, funny.
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