"Of course, ``email'' has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different reason." - what he is on about there?
Email is the French / German / Dutch word for enamel.
Of course the pronounciation is very different.
Thanks. The French linguistic equivalent is the shortening of "courrier électronique" to "courriel".
which is not used in France but rather in Quebec.
They missed a chance to abbreviate "poste électronique" to "postel", which would also commemorate the creator of SMTP.
I am German and I did not know this, was only aware of the alternative form Emaille.
Is that really it? Thought it might go deeper than that and I'm missing on some "cultural background" :)
For French, he's probably referring to the word "émail", which means "enamel". To my knowledge, the word "email" without an accent does not exist in French.
email is the word used in french for electronic mail. I rarely see people writing e-mail, and more often see people writing mail or email.