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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MNI who wrote (13354)	7/7/1999 6:29:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

A side wink for Gustave: Why doesn't French include words from other languages as easily as German takes up English words, and English has taken up from a number of languages? The French power elite is reluctant to adopt foreign cognates because they deeply suffer from an inferiority complex as regards the Anglo-American empire. While France is the last European power that still enjoys an imperial status --it's a UNSC Permanent Member and she still controls overseas dominion such as Guyana in South America, and New Caledonia in the Pacific, e.g., the French geopolitical clout is increasingly challenged inside and outside Europe. So, basically, the French language is, and will likely remain, the only attribute of power the French bourgeoisie can successfully defend against any ''hostile (alien) invasion''.... Contrary to the Anglo-American pragmatism, the French see their language as a legacy, that is pretty much as an old piece of real estate (a castle or a manor) which deserves its landlord's greatest care. Hence, a careless usage of foreign words would seem to culturally-correct Frenchmen as improper as installing an elevator in a centuries-old castle! Yet, as most of the new technologies and even most of the emerging global politics, is fostered and developed in the Anglo-American cultural sphere of influence, French scholars stuffily had to turn to some ''stopgap measure'': the Frenchification of ever more and more English words. At random: e-mèle (email), cédérom (CD-ROM), débugger (to debug), surfer (to surf [over the web]), globalisation (globalization), une star de Hollywood (a Hollywood star), etc. Such a cultural divergence between Anglo-American and French speakers is easily understandable: the former are self-confident, almost self-mocking, about their culture's ability to smoothly absorb hundreds of foreign words because they realize that it's merely a side-effect of the worldwide ubiquity of the English language --ironically, the world's actual lingua franca. It's because ever more people around the world use English as their second language (in business, academic exchanges,....) that more and more foreign cognates pervade the English language. Just as the Romans allow the conquered people in the Mediterranean and beyond to keep their traditional deities. For that matter, not only did the Romans grant their dominion freedom of worship but they themselves wholeheartedly welcomed foreign deities into their own pantheon (actually the whole Roman pantheon is essentially a rehash of the Greek's). Besides, I seem to remember that last year, a similar debate unfolded in Germany: several German academic top guys petitioned to preserve the purity of the German language --especially with regard to loan words from English... Gustave.