France Bans “E-mail” From Vocabulary

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to hear this, especially after France named the “@” symbol “arrobase” last year, but this is still kind of stupid. CNN reports that “linguistically sensitive” France is now using the term “courriel” to refer to electronic mail in official documents, banning the more common, colloquial use of the word “e-mail.” More than likely, this will just be a lip service change, according to some people in France:

Marie-Christine Levet, president of French Internet service provider Club Internet, said Friday. “E-mail has sunk in to our values… 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.”

Aha, so that’s it! It’s all a conspiracy of dictionary makers… 😛

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