E-mail is not French

Pure French? Not in my France, where (particularly along les plages at this time of the year) you can spend le weekend looking for le parking. You all need a little dose of Quebec if you want to experience language lockdown!! The open-minded might enjoy my town in Texas where we have restaurants (Fr) with seriously good cuisine (Fr) and places to eat local steak cut in filets (Fr) -- cheek by jowl with local old-timers whose English is so heavily accented by German (thanks, M. Meusebach, for settling this county) that it's almost impossible to understand them. Welcome to zee beeg world.

Are some of us perhaps developing a little kneejerk desire to make fun of the French forgetting that we share the same genes, many of the same habits, and enjoyment of each others' cultures?

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See all them damn French words? :wink:
Yes, mea culpa (latin).
I thought the article was funny, and I am always searching for an excuse to say, "Suck it, Frenchy."(American Cool

...developing a knee-jerk...
No. My enjoyment of teasing the French is already well-developed. Laughing

They'll be OK. They give as good as they get.

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Sofia wrote:

I am always searching for an excuse to say, "Suck it, Frenchy."(American)

hehe

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"Think of how riled up some people get about Spanish 'taking over' America."

Exactly, sozobe.

The French have nothing on Americans. There have been various attempts at every level of government in the U.S. of A. to circumscribe or to outlaw outrightly entire languages, not just words, other than English for official government use. The most recent cases being Utah's Initiative A, "English as the Official Language of Utah," and Arizona's Article 28, also known as Proposition 106, the "English only" amendment to the Arizona state constitution.

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InfraBlue Aren't you mixing apples and oranges. There is much difference between speaking Spanish in everyday activity in what is an English speaking country and letting a few English words into the vocabulary.
Now that the subject has been brought up why shouldn't English be made the official language of the US?

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Au1929 wrote:

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.

Is this the asymmetrical French response to "Freedom Fries"?

Quote:

What is the French word for Windows....?

Les Fenetres, I guess.

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au1929, the point I was making is that it's not just a few. If there were literally a few, whatever. But there are more, and more, and more...

steissd, my link about Germans changing English words to French ones was explicitly political, protesting the war and American cultural imperialism.

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InfraBlue - you're spot on with that.

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Yep. And welcome, InfraBlue -- don't believe I've met you before.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Faksimile is a German word since 17th century noted in German encyclopedias.

But the roots of this word are actually Latin. Fac simile means "do it in the way similar to something" (for example, to someone's personal signature, the first fac similes were supposed to substitute).

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Sozobe wrote:

protesting the war and American cultural imperialism.

I am sorry, but are you American? If you are, you should feel pride of more and more people using words of your language in the specific American spelling instead of their own.
This shows superiority of the American version of English over all the other languages that require governmental protection for not to become dead languages.

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Sofia
I to love to tweak the French every chance I get. It stems from the time I used to travel on business to Montreal. It was at the time when French Canada was hot to break away from the rest of Canada. On my first trip to Montreal I got lost. Every time stopped and asked someone for assistance it seemed no one understood English which of course they did. But that is the French for you a very warm and hospitable people who think their $hit don't stink. I should note the more I visited Montreal the more I learned to dislike the French Canadians. In addition Parisians were no better. They liked your money but made very little secret about how they felt about Americans.

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steissd wrote:

But the roots of this word are actually Latin. Fac simile means "do it in the way similar to something" (for example, to someone's personal signature, the first fac similes were supposed to substitute).

I know. And to be correct, it is:
Facsimile, n. Abbr. fac., facsim.
= an exact copy or reproduction, as of a document.
From fac simile = make a likeness> fac, imperative of facere,
to make or do + simile, neuter of similis, similar

However, this doesn't make it more American English, does it?

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steissd wrote:

Sozobe wrote:
protesting the war and American cultural imperialism.
I am sorry, but are you American? If you are, you should feel pride of more and more people using words of your language in the specific American spelling instead of their own.
This shows superiority of the American version of English over all the other languages that require governmental protection for not to become dead languages.

steissd, where was my editorial comment? You wondered if it was payback for "Freedom Fries", I said (supporting your thought) that politics was explicitly part of the article I posted.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

However, this doesn't make it more American English, does it?

Well, this is an international word, used in all the languages, even in Hebrew. There are many words of Greek and Latin origin that were borrowed by almost all the existing European languages (I cannot deny the European (supposedly, British) roots of the American English either...).

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steissd wrote:

(I cannot deny the European (supposedly, British) roots of the American English either...).

English, you certainly wanted to say.

Fac simile is not international but Latin.

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I think telling someone how they "should" feel or should believe is a no-no.

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To Sozobe: sorry, a bit of misunderstanding from my side.

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steissd - if you'd read back, you'd notice that the American government also feels the need to protect how language is used. Apparently, it's not that confident of its superiority to other English.

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I can sense Setanta scratching his head. It's his avowed belief that I am hmmmmm biased against the Quebecois, and things French.

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E-mail is not French

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