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
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