Quote:
Originally posted by JcL
Reminds me of how France has declared the word E-Mail to be "too American" and its now illegal to use in government documents or something.
|
Are you comparing the two actions? Because the reasoning (as I understand it) behind the changes are different:
"French" -> "Freedom" was because of disagreement with the official French opinion.
"E-mail" -> some french counterpart was mostly because of the ever morphing language. The french language (as most other languages) has severe influences from the English language. Many words just creep in like :World Wide Web, Byte (which the french call octet for another reason entirely), hosting, you name it.
This is a problem for a lot of people because they love their language and want to keep it 'pure'. Banning the world e-mail from official documents is a case where that overall feeling is visible. But other countries have the same feelings (just not official 'rules' about them).
Note: even though I still assume at least some 'sneer' is directed at the U.S. with this action. But it is not nearly as evident as it was with "freedom"
Btw: I don't think many germans would notice if americans stopped using the word Kindergarten.