On Monday, July 21, 2003 2:01 AM, Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 19:56 -0400 2003-07-20, Patrick Andries wrote:
>
> > Yahoo's title is obviously overblown ("sexed up" like the BBC says).
>
> And isn't *that* the meme of the moment. One idiot said it and it
> spread like a virus. Ick.
>
> > Obviously, the AP has found someone to say it is artificial.
>
> Of course, all language is artificial.
What was really artificial (and what Yahoo reported confusingly) was the preiously
adopted term "m�l", which was opted by an official terminology group, without even
asking at the French Academy for its extremely "bizarre" orthograph:
- this was the single term using an accute accent before a vocalized ending
consonnant, and its prononciation was really unique, in an attempt to create a
specific orthograph from a slightly derived pronunciation of "mail", which would have
just been written "mel" without any accent using the normal French orthograph
- I will certainly not complain that the official terminology "m�l" was abandonned:
everybody approves it in France, as it was really stupid. This is exactly the
artificial creation of "m�l" which justified a reaction from native speakers to use
the beautiful French Canadian term "courriel". In fact the bad term "m�l" which looked
like very uneducated, greatly contributed to help spread the Canadian term, which I
use systematically since more than 5 years without any perceived confusion.
This one decision of the official terminology group is not stupid: it adopts a term
that is now spread among French and Canadian natives, uncluding journalists, speakers,
publishers, ... So the real new decision is not to ban "e-mail" but the term "m�l"
that this terminology group created artificially years ago and was never accepted.
Apparently Yahoo (or its A.P. journalist) was really badly informed when writing its
paper, and exposed false arguments/reasons justifying the new decision...
--
Philippe.
Spams non tol�r�s: tout message non sollicit� sera
rapport� � vos fournisseurs de services Internet.
