You've Got Courriel
he French government recently decided to ban the
use of the term "e-mail" in all of its ministries and official documents because
it does not have a French origin. Instead, it will now use the word "courriel,"
a hybrid of the French words for electronic mail. It's the latest chapter in the
long war to keep the French language pure, but we suspect this skirmish is going
to be as hard to win as the attempt last year to get the French to call the "@"
character "arrobe."
Americans, who are generally happy if they can just get the younger generation to put their sentences in something approaching correct grammatical order, tend to be in awe of the idea that the French have had the Acad駑ie Fran軋ise fighting the perceived deterioration of the language since 1635. The Acad駑ie is aided and abetted by the General Commission on Terminology and Neology, the government body responsible for creating new words, and the group we have to thank for the "courriel" movement.
Obviously, every language grows and enriches itself by borrowing from others, but the Internet-propelled English-language influx has tipped the scales in one direction. During the late, unlamented French fries war earlier this year in the United States, patriots attempting to purge things French from the American culture must have noticed that the pickings were pretty scarce in the non-oenophile sections of the country.
France has clashed over its language policies with other nations as well. Last year the European Union made Paris abandon a law requiring that food product descriptions and advertising, including those from foreign countries, be written in French.
The government still makes supermarkets provide a translation on the shelf, though. It's persistence like that that makes us confident la belle langue will always be with us ・recognizable, if a little less pristine.