By Marjorie Meyer
So, here I am, writing a post for Johnson King’s blog… Oh, but pardon my French! From now on, we French are meant to erase the popular and well established word “blog” and swap it for “bloc-note”. However, I’m sure this term is never ever going to be used by any French person over here!
This article on Silicon.fr made me gently smile. In 2005, the same journalist reported the following: we should say “arroseur” (arroseur means waterer) instead of spammer and ASFI instead of Wi-Fi. Well, I have never read this anywhere nor heard someone say that and we are now in 2007!
But do we really have to fear that Shakespeare’s language will crush Molière’s langue? It reminds me of a conversation I had with a journalist who was pretending not to understand me when I said “set-top-box”. “Could you please speak French” was the answer I was given. I thought this was a joke given that she was a journalist supposed to be specialised in new technologies – but no. So, next time I call her, I promise to say “décodeur numérique” to be sure she lends me an ear.
Isn’t it a bit ridiculous to turn English words into French when they have been used in the everyday language for a while? We use loads of English terms, especially in the IT sector, and it is probably because most of them are easier to say, shorter and less pompous than they would be in French...
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