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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2019/aug/05/love-v-lamour-is-english-destroying-the-worlds-sexiest-language

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Love v l’amour: is English destroying the world’s sexiest language? Love v l’amour: is English destroying the world’s sexiest language?
(about 1 hour later)
Le français is the language of l’amour. But there, it appears, lies le rub. Instead of tweeting about l’amour, the French have seemingly taken to calling it “love”. They are also posting about ghosting, orbiting, zombieing, gatsbying, marleying, haunting, stashing and a host of other dating pitfalls that, you would be forgiven for thinking, can only happen in English. Not so, cried the French government. Ça suffit.Le français is the language of l’amour. But there, it appears, lies le rub. Instead of tweeting about l’amour, the French have seemingly taken to calling it “love”. They are also posting about ghosting, orbiting, zombieing, gatsbying, marleying, haunting, stashing and a host of other dating pitfalls that, you would be forgiven for thinking, can only happen in English. Not so, cried the French government. Ça suffit.
Franck Riester, Emmanuel Macron’s minister of culture, has this week announced his intention to enforce, or strengthen, on digital platforms the decades-old Toubon law which compels advertisers to make sure they say things in French. Something they really haven’t been doing. From Air France telling flyers that “France is in the air” to the 2024 Paris Olympics commission’s promising sports fans the world over that the games are “Made for Sharing”, advertising in French is increasingly overrun with global online English, the flattened lingo of social media and the media that follow it. Franck Riester, Emmanuel Macron’s minister of culture, has this week announced his intention to enforce, or strengthen, on digital platforms the decades-old Toubon law, which compels advertisers to make sure they say things in French. Something they really haven’t been doing. From Air France telling flyers that “France is in the air” to the 2024 Paris Olympics commission promising sports fans the world over that the games are “Made for Sharing”, advertising in French is increasingly overrun with global online English, the flattened lingo of social media and the media that follow it.
Of course, every time a government talks about the purity of the language, heckles are raised. For kids in the 1990s, being told to call their Walkman a baladeur just felt daft. It was a Walkman, it said so right there on the plastic lid. Love, though. Is the trend to forgo the perfectly adequate French term an indication that love, too, in modern life, is something so new the kids need a special way of talking about it? Of course, every time a government talks about the purity of the language, hackles are raised. For kids in the 1990s, being told to call their Walkman a baladeur just felt daft. It was a Walkman, it said so right there on the plastic lid. Love, though. Is the trend to forgo the perfectly adequate French term an indication that love, too, in modern life, is something so new the kids need a special way of talking about it?
Refreshingly, though, Riester – along with the RTL journalist speaking to him – isn’t talking about what the kids are doing to French. They squarely took aim at politicians and journalists, their jist being that a spoken language is a living thing, it evolves and adapts to whatever new reality it encounters – it just doesn’t have to do so in English They also highlighted the neologism, “infox”, which has quite successfully been adopted as a thoroughly French translation of fake news: an elegant mashup – or “mot-valise” – of information and intoxication. Refreshingly, though, Riester – along with the RTL journalist speaking to him – isn’t talking about what the kids are doing to French. They squarely took aim at politicians and journalists, their gist being that a spoken language is a living thing, it evolves and adapts to whatever new reality it encounters – it just doesn’t have to do so in English. They also highlighted the neologism, “infox”, which has quite successfully been adopted as a thoroughly French translation of fake news: an elegant mashup – or “mot-valise” – of information and intoxication.
Doesn’t the very term mot-valise succinctly prove the point? “Word-suitcase” is the literal translation, and it just isn’t the way we would go about things in English. The French term instantly takes you places, much like “quatre-vingt-dix-neuf” (you know that one from school, surely, but “four-twenty-ten-nine” AKA 99) and “presqu’île” (a peninsula, or, literally, an almost-island) do. French has always been a way to travel worlds, real and imaginary. And bodies, as Roland Barthes put it: “Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”Doesn’t the very term mot-valise succinctly prove the point? “Word-suitcase” is the literal translation, and it just isn’t the way we would go about things in English. The French term instantly takes you places, much like “quatre-vingt-dix-neuf” (you know that one from school, surely, but “four-twenty-ten-nine” AKA 99) and “presqu’île” (a peninsula, or, literally, an almost-island) do. French has always been a way to travel worlds, real and imaginary. And bodies, as Roland Barthes put it: “Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”
You really only want to hear that in French, though, right?You really only want to hear that in French, though, right?
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