Priscilla just sent a revealing article about how French is continuing to distort English to seem cool:
‘In French, if that is what it can be called, the advertisement reads: “Pokez, taggez, likez”. As all self-respecting French teenagers know, this refers to the English-language Facebook actions: poke, tag or like.’
Pamela nous envoie cet article sur les problèmes sociologiques impliqués dans ce scandale français de la Coupe Mondiale.
France is burning again! The entire news program tonight was about the French soccer disaster. Are any of you following this in English? I’m not and am having trouble figuring out how the players are so arrogant (other than that they’re loaded) and why the ‘sélectionneur,’ Domenech, is so reviled. Click here for the best article my friend Eric has sent me.
Mon ami, Eric, écrit en avoir “marre des censeurs et bidouilleurs de l’histoire.” Quelle folie d’utiliser l’icône de Churchill par dessus le marché! (‘Bidouilleur’ < ‘bidouiller’ = to tamper or fiddle with.) Si vous voulez voir un exemple de ce bidouillage, cliquez sur cette distortion de l’histoire.
Un ami, Eric, m’a demandé:
Je me disais : si j’avais des amis américains qui venaient à Paris et qui me demandaient l’adresse de 3 restaurants “sympa-typique-parisiens” qui laissent un bon souvenir, je ne saurais pas quoi leur indiquer ! ! !
Où est ce que TOI – si tu étais américaine (!) – tu aimerais passer trois soirées dans trois restos sympas ?
Si tu peux réfléchir – ou poster la question sur ton blog pour voir ce que tes lecteurs (qui forcément connaissent Paris) – diraient, ça ‘intéresse.
C’est “l’attirance pour le charme de Paris” que j’aimerais cibler. Pourquoi ces restaurants sont-ils un “must”? Pas forcément chers (au contraire).
Aurions-nous jamais imaginé les Champs Élysées comme ça? C’est pourtant une vraie image de l’avenue transformée en forêt dimanche dernier. Regardez le link du Figaro.. Évidence que les Français devancent les Amérains!
‘Unfriend,’ ‘Twitter’ and ‘podcast’ are the top new words of 2009 according to the New Oxford American Dictionary and Global Language Monitor respectively. And guess what: the French Dictionary, Le Petit Larousse added those same three words!
It published the top 150 new words it adopted in 2009 in alphabetical order. The first 5 are an interesting sample because Americans would understand all of them: ‘adulescent,’ ‘bioclimatique,’ ‘biopic,’ ‘blacklister,’ and ‘burn-out.’ (You can check out the rest here.) The first two seem like natural contractions but the last three come directly from English, which is marked in the text. Why can’t they invent French words for the same things?
Many new English words were born in 2009. Were the same born in French? If so, are the phenomena – environmental, political, social, technological – similar in both countries? They seem to be.
The strange thing is that, out of the top 40 of Petit Larousse’s new French words, more than half come from English.
Why couldn’t the French come up with their own words for ‘to unfriend,’ ‘to google,’ ‘geek,’ and ‘burn-out’ (whereas they do have the perfectly good word ‘saturation’ for that!)?
Cultural observers have often noted that France is more tolerant of adultery than prudish America. It thought our big deal over Monica-Gate was ridiculous when their President Mitterrand had a wife, an official mistress, and an illegitimate daughter. How childish of us! So here’s an imaginary Tiger Woods asking for sexual exile in France.
What does this French cartoon about Purchasing Power say about the French economy? Beaucoup!
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