4 ms·
My favourite “french” word on the list is “cédérom”, literally just the phonetic writing of French pronounciation of CD ROM. Beautiful language it is, I never
by rich_sasha 6y ago
My favourite “french” word on the list is “cédérom”, literally just the phonetic writing of French pronounciation of CD ROM.
Beautiful language it is, I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, Ordinateur, and now I have found a new depth of this...
- _n_b_ 6y agoBut then, half of the time the English words end up being used anyway, despite what the Académie Française might think. Outside of government forms, you basically never see 'courriel,' and you hear 'PC' way more than 'ordinateur' I do love the word 'internaut' though.
- doukdouk 6y agoOrdinateur is a very common word though.
- _n_b_ 6y agoSure, agreed, but PC seems to be about twice as common: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=FR&q=ordinateur,PC https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=FR&q=ordinateur...
- programLyrique 6y agoIn spoken French, I think people usually say ordinateur or (ordinateur) portable (for laptop) though.
- maeln 6y agoWell, for NATO and AIDS it kind of make sense as they are direct translation of the acronym.
- rich_sasha 6y agoWell, I think most of the world calls them NATO and AIDS. For a counter example, lots of sports federations have French-based acronym names, and no one translates them. Like Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) or FIFA (federation internationale de football association). For the latter, an extra twist is calling it ‘football’, not ‘ballon de pied’ or sth...
- doukdouk 6y agoFor NATO/OTAN, its official languages are French and English. OTAN is not a translation - it is one of the two official names of the organization. Would be weird to specifically choose the English one.
- doukdouk 6y agoHow often do English speakers use non-English-based acronyms? I see USSR much more often CCCP, HIV more often than VIH...
- widforss 6y agoThe best acronym must be UTC. Let's make no one happy.
- jcranmer 6y agoAlso ISO, which is short for International Organization for Standards.
- doukdouk 6y agoIt is not: > ISO gives this explanation of the name: "Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French), our founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek isos, meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of our name is always ISO."[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for...
- bloak 6y ago> How often do English speakers use non-English-based acronyms? Not every often, but LSD is a notable example: the S is for "Säure", German for "acid". Also names of foreign political parties: the full names of political parties aren't usually very informative, so expanding the acronym, translating it into English, and then making a new acronym would be ... unhelpful. Edit: Of course it's not CCCP; it's СССР, or SSSR!
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Beautiful language it is, I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, French is one of two co-equal official languages of the North Atlantic Treaty, and OTAN is just as much the official acronym of the organization as NATO is.
- rich_sasha 6y agoYes, fair enough, but no one else seems to feel the need to translate these acronyms. There are probably (?) more German-speaking NATO citizens than French-speaking ones, and France isn’t even a regular member.
- doukdouk 6y agoIt is though [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Strasbourg%E2%80%93Kehl_summit#France's_reintegration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Strasbourg%E2%80%93Kehl_s...
- rich_sasha 6y agoAh interesting, I missed this nugget, thanks
- OJFord 6y agoAnd perhaps more pertinently, we (outside France) use French ones in other cases: SI, UTC. (Well, outside of CS, GMT is much more common than UTC here in the UK. But I'd put that more down to self-centricism and not having a different term for our own non-Summer time than translating the acronym (which of course it isn't, and came first).)
- dragonwriter 6y ago> And perhaps more pertinently, we (outside France) use French ones in other cases: SI, UTC. UTC isn't French. It's also not English. It's a deliberate compromise between the obvious acronym for the English phrase (CUT) and that for the corresponding French (TUC). Though to me it reads more as English, and specifically American and military, because “Universal Time, Coordinated” follows a common pattern in US military naming, when what would normally be the first leading adjective instead becomes a trailing modifier.
- lm28469 6y ago> I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. It's a weird thing that started a long time ago, they want to keep french "french". It works to some extent and it's nice to be able to use "native" words rather than anglicism. See this for example: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2010/03/30/tout-un-ramdam-pour-abandonner-le-mot-buzz_1326510_3224.html https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2010/03/30/tout-un-ra...
- mytailorisrich 6y ago'cédérom' is a shining example of committees trying to justify their existence. CD came out and they were just called 'CD' in France (pronounced 'cédé') or, if using the actual words "disque compact". Then CDROM came out, and they were just and only called 'CDROM' in France, but obviously pronounced in French so that it is pronounced 'cédérom'. The Académie Francaise then woke up and decided that 'CDROM' was an outrageous English acronym and that a proper French word should be used. And they came up with... cédérom. You could not make this up even in a Monty Python skit. > I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, Ordinateur, These are not recreated. These are just acronyms and words in another language than English...
- outadoc 6y agoWhy would you not translate acronyms like OTAN and SIDA? They're just as legitimate as the English variant, especially when they cross international borders. French people will say ONU, OTAN or URSS because they're not tied to any English-speaking country, but they'll still use FBI or CIA, for example.