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Comment by emilecantin | Hacker News Reader

I think the Académie Française is doing a very poor job. In Québec we have the Office Québécois de la Langue Française, which is much better at finding French equivalents to modern technology terms. A few examples:

- Cloud Computing -> Infonuagique

- E-Mail -> Courriel (vs. France's mél... how the hell do you pronounce that)

- Hashtag -> Mot-clic (it is indeed a keyword, "mot-clé" that you can click)

And a whole lot more...

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According to their current explanation, the Académie française proposes "Mél." (with period) only as an abbreviation for use on e.g. business cards, coined by analogy to the abbreviation "Tél." for telephone numbers. For usage in sentences they suggest either the full message électronique, or borrowing courriel from Québec, which they officially approved in 2003. http://www.academie-francaise.fr/la-langue-francaise/questio...

Mot-clic is humorous; I had not seen that before.

Sometimes they are even counter-productive. People are not using the English word anyway and they want to replace the French word people are using with another one. Example: instead of 'offline', the academy recommends '(mode) autonome' but people are already using 'déconnecté' or 'hors-ligne' instead, so it does not make sense at all.

Don't forget the wonderful "pourriel" mixing "poubelle" (trash can) and e-mail to designate spam, If only it would have crossed the ocean.

I always thought pourriel was from "pourri" (rotten/lousy) + "courriel".

Both convey a correct meaning for spam!

>Mot-clic

This one strikes me a quite terrible, to be honest.

Readers should note that the OQLF also has an enforcement branch, which is used primarily to harass and extort minorities, allegedly for linguistic infractions.

But does anybody use them?

Yes.

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