Quote:
Originally Posted by sabredog
This is a similar protective mechanism, employed by the French government, that periodically purges out foreign (aka non French) words from the French language.
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That's a whole 'nother story. Yes, there is that august guardian of the French language, the
Académie Française. And yes, they routinely publish lists of words that they'd like to see replaced by "proper" French words. Any you know what? People routinely ignore them. They still say le week-end, le chewing gum and what not. There is no way to
force people to use these words.
We have the same problem in German as well (although there is no official government body to watch over the "purity" of the language), if it is a problem. I personally draw the line at pseudo-anglicisms, i.e. people using made-up words, just because they sound or look English. There's a whole bunch of words in German now that a native speaker of English would find impossible to understand (in the German sense at least), such as handy (cell phone), dressman (male model) or smoking (tuxedo).
Some of these words are quite old, and it's not a new problem by any means. Of course it
might be that the French are a tad more protectionist than the rest of us. Who knows.
