Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: rc51 on July 18, 2003, 12:51:38 PM
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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.
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."
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This is almost as retarded as calling them Freedom Fries.
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or a Freedom Kiss..
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I'll still park my car in a "parking" and I'll still stop at the "stop" sign when about to do my "shopping" ...
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that's kinda gay :P
OTOH I've never actually heard anybody calling french fries freedom fries. lol sounds really silly.
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Isn't Curiel some sort of whackof,, errr hand lotion?
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pathetic ! I won't use the word "Courriel" without a gun to my head!! they can't make me ! I'm free ! I'm free!
where's my tin foil hat ?
geez ! these Academy geezers have way too much time on their hands !
this is even more stupid than the freedom fries **** : at least it was a P.R move, it was intended as media fodder (and while journalists discussed the pros and cons of renaming French dressing to freedom dressing, they were not discussing the motives of war...)
Our Academy guys just think it's an intelligent, culturally sound move to rename"email" as a French sounding word !
you guys were right : some of us are a bunch of arrogant snobs !
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Even more language anality comes out of Quebec (sorry Puggg). We need to make sure that anything sold to the province not only has a French translation on all labels, stickers warnings etc. but the French language version is specified by law to be at least as big a font as the English.
This even applies to banners set up for trade shows.
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Looking at the ethymology of "mail" make this more funny :p
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...In other news, the English, not wanting to be left behind, have banned the word 'Aluminum" for the more english, correctly spelled, 'Aluminium'.
Microsoft has filed a claim against the British Ministry of Culture stating that the word 'Aluminium' would not be included in the 'American English' option of its operating systems.
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Those wacky Freedomians...
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Originally posted by udet
OTOH I've never actually heard anybody calling french fries freedom fries. lol sounds really silly.
I saw it at a Fuddruckers, funny thing tho.. Fuddrucker's calls their fries "Fudd Fries", and yet they went through the labor of putting "Freedom Fries" on a piece of black paper and glued it over "Fudd Fries".
Not sure how long it lasted, but a few weeks later when I went back - I saw that they realised their stupidity and took down their paper.
Stupidity knows no nationality.
-SW
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i fart in the general direction of the General Commission on Terminology and Neology.
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...In other news, the English, not wanting to be left behind, have banned the word 'Aluminum" for the more english, correctly spelled, 'Aluminium'.
Microsoft has filed a claim against the British Ministry of Culture stating that the word 'Aluminium' would not be included in the 'American English' option of its operating systems.
Who invented the ****ing language?
Bill Gates can shove his claim up his arse sideways.
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Originally posted by midnight Target
Even more language anality comes out of Quebec (sorry Puggg). We need to make sure that anything sold to the province not only has a French translation on all labels, stickers warnings etc. but the French language version is specified by law to be at least as big a font as the English.
This even applies to banners set up for trade shows.
That's not all they actually have officials that call businesses and if they don't initially answer in French, it's a fine.
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Originally posted by Torque
That's not all they actually have officials that call businesses and if they don't initially answer in French, it's a fine.
Talk about a police state.... :D
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Cool... the French gave us a word and now we can stop using this shrecking abreviation/acronym thang.