Pierre Jarillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > I'm a native french speaker and I've never heard anyone saying the
> > word "courriel". All french people I know use the word "e-mail",
> > even teachers. So I guess it's ok to keep "e-mail".
>
> I often use "Courriel" which come from "Courrier Electronique".
> Some people also try "mél" without a great success.
> Our cousins of Quebec who take care of french langage better than
> us, use "courriel".
i don't see systematical translation of foreign words as "caring more
about our language"
french language has historically merged quite a lot of words from
foreign languages (continental celtic, britton, german, jewish (bible
surnames), ...)
english has done the same, especially with french because of the
english/normand dynasty after 1066 (so depending of your social class,
you eat pork or pig :-))
let do not wast time trying to revert social/linguistic evolution.
languages always evolve through creating/adopting new words.
you cannot alter people behaviour once a word or an idiomatic form has
been massively used.
and especially don't blindly adopt stupid propositions from senile
academician...
it's stupit to replace a word that is at least somewhat meaningful in
another language by another one that sound more french but where you
lost the initial sense (eg: cédérom vs CD-ROM, courriel[1] vs e-mail,
...)
[1] this is an insane non-sense since nobody will think that the el
suffix references electronics since french languages rules would
never have used another word the abbreviation as a suffix but use
compound words.
this is replacing a meaningful word (in another language) by a
meaningless french word constructed on a somewhat altered english
grammatical rules, which is totally dumb.
since we use sometimes mail instead of e-mail, courrier is at
least more sane than courriel
