Some time ago, Pave was amused by France adopting the Québécois mush word "courriel" (courrier + éléctronique) to replace "e-mail" in all official communications.

FRENCH CIVIL SERVICE OUTLAWS 'E-MAIL' *

PARIS July 10, 2003 (AFP) - The French government, in a bid to turn back the tide of English words in the field of technology, has banned its civil service from using the term "e-mail" instead of its approved French equivalent... The move...will put the French administration out of step with the majority of the French public, who still prefer to use "e-mail" to communicate between computer accounts.

But "courriel" is the least of it.

Pursuant to the Toubon law (LOI no 94-665), on July 3, 1996 la Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie (the "Commission") was created by decree (Décret no 96-602). Charged with the quixotic mission to replace foreign borrowings with French equivalents, the Commission has since promulgated some 8,000 switcheroos through the Journal officiel de la République française.

Now some of these are simply straightforward translations or phonetic tidy-ups, with little violence to the underlying concepts, e.g.: modérateur, -trice = moderator and dégazage = degassing; ozonosphère = ozonosphere and téléconsultation = teleconsultation. And occasionally the Commission has reached down and elevated a popular usage, e.g.: papillon [butterfly] = post-it note.

Then there are the tortured and profuse equivalents that, like courriel, jar with practical French.

Wi-Fi [WIreless FIdelity] = ASFI or accès sans fil à internet [access without wire to the Internet] or internet sans fil

hotspot = zone d’accès sans fil or zone ASFI

spammer = arroseur, -euse [sprinkler] French common usage remains le spammeur.

downloading = téléchargement à partir d'un autre ordinateur [remote loading starting from another computer]
uploading = téléchargement vers un autre ordinateur [remote loading to another computer]

And this odd renaming of the English "at" ("@") with a French retooling (arrobe) of the Arabic ar-roub. We are not clear what this contributes à l’enrichissement de la langue française.

In word-welcoming English, the life of a word or expression is predicated on one or more of five things: origination, innovation, dominance, fashion, ownership. Linguistically straitened French looks to circumvent the first four and simply assert the the fifth.

* "E-mail had actually already been tossed by the promulgation of message électronique on December 2, 1997.

PFFT (What is this?): L’enrichissement 5 | Rayonnement français 0

You know all the rankings on blogs, especially conservative blogs? Have you seen the blogs that get nominated and garner awards, etc. Why your blog is not on the top of that list, I'll never know. I fell out of my chair when I hit your site. Flippin unbelievably funny. Your site gets a Prime Spot in my blog list. GD I hate the French. How many Forgs does it take to defend Paris? None. It's never been done. [We have here deleted an imprudent joke that patd 95, in a more sober mood, would surely regret. The Management] Galic Breathe, Cheese Eating Tossers - that came from some movie where a Football Hooligan was driving a bus on theo wrong side of the road in France and spouting off while driving! Rule Brittania

Congratulations, patd95!

I can't help but notice there hasn't been much competition lately, but you've just been awarded the " Stereotype Idiot" Grand Prize of the month!

Sincerely,

Zoomerx

"How many Forgs does it take to defend Paris? None. It's never been done."

I'm tired to read this sort of comments again and again in the US blogs while people in my own family died defending their country.

Do you think it helps the USA to insult other people's deads ? Do you ask yourself sometimes why so much people abroad hates the USA ?

And now a little history lesson, something you will never see on Foxnews or the New York post or anywhere in the Murdoch owned press :

1,380,000 French soldiers died defending their country in WWI. Some of them in my family. At the end of the war, 60% of the french males between the ages of 18 and 28 had been either killed , amputated or permanently wounded.
And thanks to their sacrifice Paris didn't fell.

Subsequently, France was much weakened when Hitler, who had been able to reconstitute the German army despite the provision in the Versailles treaty prohibiting it (in part because the US did not wish to enforce it). Yet, 92,000 more Frenchmen died in 1940 trying to stop the Germans. I did not get to know them but I am sure of one thing: they did not die with their hands up. They also did not have the luxury of an ocean between them and the Nazis, or the luxury of declaring themselves neutral as the US did when the war began. Anyone visiting France would see monuments to the dead of both World Wars in every town and villages, usually dozens of them.

M. Fred,

We are not fans of tired French jokes either. When we make fun of French history we do so to underscore some complaint with contemporary France, such complaints having to do with the duplicity of your government and anti-American attitudes so ingrained hardly a French person recognizes them.

We do not believe war dead should be objects of fun. But patd95's little joke does not ridicule the dead unless you force that meaning.

We have a little history. Enough to know that the punitive provisions of the Versailles treaty were written in at France's insistence, that it was incumbent on France -- not America -- to safeguard her own interests. In 1923 Poincaré did as much and marched the French army into the Ruhr to force Germany to resume reparation payments. France had the largest, and considered by many the best, land army in the world at the time of the invasion of Poland. Yet all she managed was the timid and empty Saar offensive, then sat back and hoped Germany would quiet down.

France may not have declared herself neutral, but having passively allowed the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, having sacrificed Czechoslovakia, and then sitting on her hands during la drôle de guerre, well, France had wished herself neutral in everything but name.

In 1940, even given the surprise of the Sichelschnitt offensive, had the French army been competently generaled it could have shut down the Germans at Sedan.

Here is not the place to retell the rout and defeat of the French. Suffice it to say that France made her own troubles, she handled them badly, and she's herself to blame. Not a neutral America luxuriating on the far side of an ocean.

As to "why so much people abroad hates the USA ?", well, we don't lose much sleep over the French or Al Qaeda folk hating us, to give two examples.

Regards,
DGB

"How many Forgs does it take to defend Paris? None. It's never been done."

Actually it has, the last time at the dawn of WW1 (Gallieni struck the German offence to Paris in the first Battle of the Marne). 300,000 French soldiers died I think, but who's counting, right Mr. patd95?

Historical facts and context are a severe nuisance among french-bashing yahoos, you see.

Fred, just a little point: the Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany to reconstruct its army.
You forget the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, starting a long time collaboration between USSR and Germany, ending in 1943 as national-socialists attacked their ally. This treaty enabled the German army, through secret agreements, to produce and perfect in the USSR weapons forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.