Bulletin Board of Bad Behavior

Wow. I find this kinda funny. Perhaps it's mainly symbolic?? --

(AP) Goodbye “e-mail,â€? the French government says, and hello “courrielâ€? — 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 electroniqueâ€? (electronic mail) instead of e-mail — a claim some industry experts dispute. “Courrielâ€? 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.�

I'm not sure but I know the Bombay Co. uses it in French Canadia.

anything is better than technospeak and i say there is nothing about "email" that couldn't be improved on. (hell, people can't even make up their minds whether to write it 'e-mail' or 'email' or 'E-mail').

i think it is totally legit to create new expressions to counter the tide of anglophony; the welsh, basque and icelandic administrations do it all the time.

funny thing about the french though is their thoughtless way of adhering to anglicisms after they have been adopted by the establishment. once speaking with a french teacher i dared to use the quebecois "fin de semaine" but she corrected me, saying fiercely that only "le week-end" was correct.