Hi everyone,
I must admit I'm one of those, and living in France at the time !!!
french base is latin with many others contributions ( greek, arabic, german galeic, indian, english, portuguese, turkish... as well as "patois" )
French "orthographe" (ortho = rules in latin) cames early in the XIII° century, to recognise different worlds sounding alike ( cinq saints ceints... saut sots sceaux seau ). The french is a very moving language, since I can read sheakspear in his words, ( purpose to answer what thou canst object" (HVI, III,I.)) and it's quite difficult sometime to get Moliere in original text, not to speack about Nostradamus :-)
and it's still a moving language, that's why we keep a bunch of old men occuppied every wednesday to make the " dictionnaire de l'academie francaise", which is not the only french dictionnary btw. Many words are apearing some others diseapearing, and they like to argue about including words that are spoken in the street, but all this activity turns to a dictionnary, not into law.
Till about the fifties, we can hear times to times , one saying we should avoid parking, hotdog, weekend...
Knowing from where came one word and/or another is a great adventure, and should not be a battle, as almost all the european languages came from indoeuropean... parking, came from parquer (fr) came from parricus (latin)adn prelatin parra (pole) ... camping from camper (fr) from campo (latin).... so many words did do the same, words life is an amazing one, slightly changing with time.
About "email": for french it should be pronounce "aymye" and means enamel. Canadians ( quebecois, the "making french words champs") are using "courriel" . As french, we are using mostly "email", and sometimes "mel" or "courriel". I'm really found of "courriel", not in response to an Iraqui-Brest-Yalta-Lafayette-Plantagenet-Hadrian-Neanderthal teapot conversation, but because " it's so pretty !!!"
I'm found of the quebecois "pourriel" too, that I use to qualifie that exclusively american litterature about viagra- how to extend-Debts consolidation- obtain a diploma... but I'm not so found about "machouillons" so I keep "chewing gum" and still use "shopping" for "magasinage"...
As for the "law": There is a lot of new words in the place, like cdrom, dvd, internet, modem, adsl, .... that are accepted as it, without discussion ( cdrom is "officially" cederom, for pronounciation purpose)
As it is confusing for french to use the written word "email", it has been first decided to write "mel" in official texts, heard this in 1998. When our big heads heard about quebecois "courriel" they decided to change the official "mel" for a new official "courriel". Will it be really accepted ( by the people), I don't know ("mel" wasn't really effective), but I do think nobody will be sued for using the word "email".
for the "Aus" french bad experience, I'm used to frenchs and to travel... but I really think it's another topic :-)
Thanks for your attention, and sorry for my english .
** If you see the difference beetwen a friend and a poodle, let's be friend !**
Welcome joelT - that was a very interesting and informative first post. A great start!
and of course we can be friends. Here's a poodle to be friends with
I've read on some French site that 'mel' is similar to 'tel' an abbriviation, like in <<"j'ai reçu un coup de tél">>, you just say <<j'ai reçu un mél>>.
Welcome to A2K, joel, and your English is a lot above the average of this site!
joelT wrote:and it's still a moving language, that's why we keep a bunch of old men occuppied every wednesday to make the " dictionnaire de l'academie francaise", which is not the only french dictionnary btw.
:-D
Welcome, indeed. Looking forward to more from you.
Thanks for your welcomes and appreciations :-)
You're right Walter... in fact nothing is really fixed, and we have a french word ("mêlé" = confused) wich describe this.
In the casual oral language, the most used is "mail" used either for the electronic adress and the electronic message. ("tu m'donnes ton mail ?")
the ortographic transcription of the phonetic prononciation of french "mail" is a problem : in french, if you write mail, you should pronounce [my] and it's already a french word ( mail (till 1080) =hammer(mallet), a croquet game( pall-mall), the alley to play that game (mall))or "maille"(stitch,link,mesh...).
to try avoid the confusion, it can be written mel, mél or mèl, but this doesn't lap the exact french pronounciation, and is very close to "mêler"(mingle, mix, blend, confuse :-) ) ...
To have an idea of the meli-melo, and how the very official lawmakers are 'handling' this, the best should be to go to the french parliament site
http://www.parlement.fr/ wich leads to
www.assemblee-nationale.fr and
www.senat.fr :
www.senat.fr(in french, as you can have it in english deutsch espanol) gives me for emails terms 2 "mél", 2 "courrier électronique", 2 "Mails", 1 "adresse électronique".
www.assemblee-nationale.fr gives 3 "adresse électronique", 2 "mèl" (with è), 2 "messages électronique" ...
for french speaking, here is a little memo.
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf/terminologie/courriel.htm
I took the time to search about the genuine official text.
The original text (J.O.20 juin 2003, p 10403) doesn't give it as a law, but as an "advice" from the "terminology commission",
http://admi.net/jo/2003/10403.html
joelT - i can hardly wait to follow all of that up. I love this kind of information.
Pourriel, that cracked me up . . . far superior to "spam."
Ma boîte de courrier électronique souffre d'un fardeau de pourriel.
heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .
okseeyahbye
