A 16:18 2002-01-23 -0800, Yves Arrouye a écrit : > > >>Obviously (I advocate in French changing the spelling of common foreign > > >>words so that there would be more consistency). > > > > > >Le ouiquende? > > > > That would be pronounced "wikãd"... To respect the English pronunciation > > you would have to write it "ouiquennde", which would still be a very odd > > spelling in French... The "end" sound is really not French in itself... > >France's Académie française is good at that: they recently invented cédérom >(CD-ROM; gets used because it's quite okay), and mèl (mail, for e-mail; >nobody uses it except to make fun of it).
[Alain] Mel is a horrible and hypocritical abbreviation of "Messagerie électronique" recommended in the French government. It is recommended not to use it as a noun. However some people in France used to say "email" and now say "mel" in spite of the recommendation not to pronounce the abbreviation. Québec invented the (French-sounding) word "courriel" (for "courrier électronique")... It is more and more used in France too. For one, I must also confess that I personally write the word "cédérom" (the sounds no not shock a French speaker and the spelling either -- wile email pronounced "ee-mail" [iméle or imèle] in French, is horribly schizophrenic) although the word will probably disappear over time [regardless of its spelling], as well as the word "microsillon" (33 RPM records)... Using generic names (such as "disque" for CD-ROM, relatively technology-independent), was a good evolution in languages (we use one word for all "tables", it distracts to change words just because the shape changes, if the intent is to describe a function). It seems that nowadays we put more and more accent on technology, on how things are made, rather than on their destination (functionality). It is perhaps a sociological fact that I find interesting to notice. Alain LaBonté Québec
