Ban le Pod

Don't say 'podcasting', say la ballado-diffusion. The ruling has come down from France's official language guardians and must be obeyed at least by journalists on France television and Radio France channels. Before everyone laughs, the state's rear-guard action against the American language has notched up a few successes over the past couple of decades. L'informatique, which was coined in the 1970s to cover computing and information technology has worked well. It has even been catching on in the USA lately as informatics, a more elegant and comprehensive way of saying Information Technology.  And in French le logiciel still sounds better than le software though le materiel is not as vivid as le hardware.       

The word ordinateur , invented to block le computeur in the 1950s, has done its job fine. Young French talk about their ordi while most other Europeans use variants of computer. Le balladeur (wanderer), which was decreed as official French for Walkman in the early 1990s, has long ago been adopted -- hence ballado-diffusion, i.e. "Walkman-broadcasting".

Unlike Quebec, where the police enforce Gallic purity, France gives in when popular usage prevails. Thus, courriels are sent only by civil servants and linguistic fundamentalists like le Monde,  while most of the rest of France sends un mail. More elegant types talk about courrier electronique. La toile has never caught on for what is now known as le net. But internaute is widely used for people who spend their time surfant sur le web whether on langdline haut-débit (broadband) or le wi-fi (pronounced wee fee). 

The French forget that term-borrowing is not all one-way. Back in the early 1900s when France led the world pioneering aviation, les Anglo-Saxons happily adopted le fuselage, l'aileron, la nacelle, le dirigable, l'empennage and of course l'aeroplane itself. The British kept the spelling while the Americans converted it to airplane. They did keep another clever French coinage: l'automobile.

Comments

[Sarah]

I can see it becoming 'la ball-diff' as the long version is rather a mouthful, but I prefer podcast. However, I've always liked the term 'cybernaute' and use it freely in French and English.

[Robert Marchenoir]

I beg to differ. I have never heard, read or used the word "cybernaute" other than marginally.

People speak of "internautes".

[Peter Carrington]

“Rear-guard action” is the right term. French is a minority language albeit with a wonderful heritage – celebrated, for example, by the reality that fully 25% or English words are, or are derived from, French – and the state’s futile attempts to ‘protect’ or ‘preserve’ it by banning words that are simply an expression of how language is a dynamic, live, entity are doomed…It is the users who will decide and that is the way it should be!

[Sarah]

Robert, 'cybernaute' is much more evocative than 'internaute' which could refer to anything. In my opinion, anyway.

[rex carpenter]

I am already nostalgic about French. I listen to Yves Montand with a real sense of loss. But when a Chinese Ph.D. electronical engineer speaks with his Indian counterpart, they use English. English is the McDonald's hamburger of communication. It can be much more, of course, but technical pidgin english, born in graduate engineering programs around the world, is the H5N1 of the world's languages. (BTW, Mr. Bremner, your weblog is great. I'm a regular reader)

[Jan]

Well, like Maurice Druon of the Academie Francaise once said: "English is the easiest language to speak badly"... The French wouldn't tolerate their language to be "pidgined" the way international English is, so I don't think they are really jealous...

[RIchard Black]

...France gives in ? Only very reluctantly !
Whilst "des mails" are indeed gaining ground, official sites rather ridiculously insist on spelling the word "un mél" (sic) !

These linguistic questions are a perfect illustration of fundamental differences between the English and French character. The English language is totally pragmatic, happy to adopt words from anywhere as long as the fit a gap or "do the job" better. The French naturally resent anything they haven't invented themselves, and when forced try then to pretend that it is in fact, (cf le mél). Vanities are always very amusing. It always struck me as ironic that the legislation introduced in 1992 proscribing the use of foreign words from official texts, contracts etc was piloted by a government minister called Jacques Toutbon. In fact, he had everything "tout faux" in trying to resist inevitable change.

[Dan]

Podcasting is an ambiguous term. Most people associate the iPod and the extraction of a digital music file from the internet to a mobile device with podcasting, but really, it is the delivery method of the file that defines a podcast. The delivery of a series of files by RSS derfines a podcast, not the device used to consume the file.
Is the term "RSS" (known in the UK as Really Simple Syndication) in danger of being given another name in France?