[LINK] There's something strange about the French

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Le Register

Posted 06/03/2000 4:25pm
by Linda Harrison

French ban email

The French have unveiled plans to stop the tainting of their tongue by
banning email. 

Politicians who once tried to make phrases like le weekend and le sandwich
as unsavoury as frogs legs are at it again. This time they want to force
the French civil service to stop using cyber-Anglicisms. 

Email will be replaced for bureaucrats by courrier electronique (electronic
letter), while a start-up will be known officially as a jeune pousse (young
plant). Other English language terms deemed too dangerous are stock option,
which will become une option sur titre, and media magnet, un aimant des
medias. 

But the changes, which follow similar attempts by the government to curtail
the use of English in modern French speak, seem doomed by the government's
own admission, today's Times reported. 

"The State can't impose terms on other people," admitted Jean Saint-Geours,
head of the ministry of finance's terminology committee. 

"But it is desirable that the whole country should talk the same language." 

It seemed to slip his mind that the whole world should be speaking the same
Oueb language

-- 
The French people are incapable of regicide.
--  King Louis XVI of France, c. 1789

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd@dynamite.com.au