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The French insisted on doing it all in French while the language of the Internet is English. They isolated themselves and could never have been the center of th

The French insisted on doing it all in French while the language of the Internet is English. They isolated themselves and could never have been the center of the web.

anthk 6y ago
Back in the day, not so far from the Minitel days, French was the lingua franca of diplomacy, and spoken all over the world. English was the language of commerce and technology, but French being the language of diplomacy and intercommunication it would be a game changer on teleco. But Minitel was a bit like an enclosed shell, like Gopher. Now Gopher is the opposite, nobody needs a license to host a server.
- pmontra 6y ago
  The switch was somewhere in the 70s. For every two English words I hear on TV now there was one in French and one in my language (Italian). Anyway the exposition to foreign languages was much lower because there was no Internet. English got an advantage that French never had in the 20th century. And Hollywood, UK/USA music, etc. All of them larger than their French counterparts.
  - anthk 6y ago
    That's why I said "pretty close" to Minitel.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    The use of French in diplomacy was primarily an outgrowth of it having been the court language of continental Europe. You also had dominant languages for other purposes--for certain fields of science, you sort of needed to know German. But as the world increasingly globalized, there were a lot of forces to have a fairly universal language. And between the once huge British Empire and the industrial dominance of the US post-WWII, that language naturally became English.
    - masswerk 6y ago
      Before WWII French was certainly considered the most important foreign language in continental Europe and English eventually became prevalent only after. (I vividly remember my grandma being somewhat disappointed that we were taught English as the first foreign language in school, instead of French.) It may not be that far fetched to imagine a 1930s internet ("The League of Thoughts") coming somewhat naturally in French.
      - artificial 6y ago
        That's an excellent name! I think about William Gibson's novels about Babbage's machine being hooked up to a telegraph resulting in an earlier "internet" revolution.
        masswerk 6y ago
        My "ligue des pensées" (LDP), AKA "Gedankenbund", AKA "League of Thoughts" (LoT) is certainly based on storing analog signals on refreshing electrostatic drums and projecting the image (images!) on CRTs. There's a nice railway print of the futuristic main hub of the British part of the LoT at New Castle, exposing the stylized cylindrical shape of the storage drums in its main tower (nicely lit in electric blue by high the voltage discharge of the drums inside). A delicate chapter in the history of the LDP is the niche of the "valses roses", which inevitably evolved into a major business. In many countries some opposition of mostly moral objection arose, especially in Germany, where a rising NSDAP feared for the health of the populus and for the sanity of German men who were exposed to the finer details of the anatomy of foreign women, which in turn lead to its smashing defeat in the 1933 election… :-) ---- Edit, on the technology of the LoT: This was some of a joint European effort. A crucial part was the storage of the analogue image signal on a continuously refreshed electrostatic drum, invented by Dr Ludwig Chevenmüller in the early 1920s. A major breakthrough was then the contribution of a young Tommy Flowers, who came up with a way to combine discrete signals suitable for relay-based automatic dialling with the analog signals that provided the content. In a somewhat parallel strain Thierry du Pont du Lac invented his "lecteur discret", which did much the same for character based signals in Baudot code, which was eventually combined in the vertical blank of the analog image signal and stored on the terminal side on a second drum, to be superimposed by a tiny typesetting machine and an array of electrostatic lenses onto the analog Chevenmüller image. (Alternatively, the combined image could be redirected onto a third drum, from which it could be printed using a technique similar to stencils. Seasoned users of the LoT may remember the typical smell quite well.) But the LoT only really took of, when BASF came up with a way to compress the Chevenmüller signal into rapid bursts, which enabled the rather astounding speed of the network.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > not so far from the Minitel days, French was the lingua franca of diplomacy, and spoken all over the world. What a ridiculous claim. The language spoken for Diplomacy is spoken by diplomats and has virtually nothing to do with what the population speaks. Just like Latin was the language of Religion and Science in Middle-Ages, but certainly not spoken by everyone else.
  - anthk 6y ago
    Not ridiculous. In the late 70's, everyone's second language in Spain (except OFC the ones speaking Iberian latin dialects or Basque having Spanish itself as a second one) for example wasn't English, but French. If you wanted a better future (lots of people headed to France to work), you would learn French to make a good chunk of money and cheap goods, period.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      > In the late 70's, everyone's second language in Spain (except OFC the ones speaking Iberian latin dialects or Basque having Spanish itself as a second one) for example wasn't English, but French. 1- Spain is a neighbor to France, so it's hardly surprising that French is used a lot in the first place. 2- Spain represents less than 1% of the World population, so it's hardly a proof that French was used all over the world in the 70s.
      - anthk 6y ago
        Spain and the rest of the French colonies all over the world. And as I said, French was seen as a language from people in high positions.
      - jen20 6y ago
        French is used across the world _today_, so it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that it was also used across the world in the 1970s. By the Wikipedia numbers [1], French is the fifth most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers, yet only fifteenth by native speakers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...
athriren 6y ago
english was not the language of the internet prior to the internet existing, which is the period of time this article is primarily concerned with.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  The period prior to the internet existing (before the 60s) ends far before the period before Minitel existing (before the 80s). While you can have discussions about when it became ‘the internet’ ARPAnet was already an international network far before minitel launched and of course the language was English.
  - frank2 6y ago
    Sure, but the internet did not become a consumer phenomenon till 1993. There were very few rules on the internet of 1992, but one of those rules was that commerce was not allowed. So for example there was in 1992 a newsgroup named ba.jobs which functioned very much like HN's monthly 'who is hiring?' and 'who wants to be hired?' comment sections, but there was no analog to HN's monthly 'Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?' because although it was considered OK to seek W-2 work (i.e., seek to become a proper employee), seeking 1099 work (i.e., seeking a contract to do some programming work) was considered too much like commerce and consequently not allowed on the internet (or more precisely not allowed on the US internet backbone -- and it would've been impractical to run a newsgroup while avoiding the US backbone). In 1992 visiting a friend's apartment in San Francisco, I had to explain to someone what the Internet was, whereas my friend who was on Compuserv didn't have to explain what Compuserv was. Note that this thread has evolved / mutated so much that it no longer has any bearing on the question of whether "The French insisted on doing it all in French while the language of the Internet is English. They isolated themselves and could never have been the center of the web" (a question I have no interest in). The point is that France was ahead of the US in conferring the benefits of computer-mediated communication and computer-mediated commerce to the average consumer.

The French insisted on doing it all in French while the language of the Internet is English. They isolated themselves and could never have been the center of the web.

anthk 6y ago

Back in the day, not so far from the Minitel days, French was the lingua franca of diplomacy, and spoken all over the world. English was the language of commerce and technology, but French being the language of diplomacy and intercommunication it would be a game changer on teleco. But Minitel was a bit like an enclosed shell, like Gopher. Now Gopher is the opposite, nobody needs a license to host a server.

pmontra 6y ago
The switch was somewhere in the 70s. For every two English words I hear on TV now there was one in French and one in my language (Italian). Anyway the exposition to foreign languages was much lower because there was no Internet. English got an advantage that French never had in the 20th century. And Hollywood, UK/USA music, etc. All of them larger than their French counterparts.
- anthk 6y ago
  That's why I said "pretty close" to Minitel.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The use of French in diplomacy was primarily an outgrowth of it having been the court language of continental Europe. You also had dominant languages for other purposes--for certain fields of science, you sort of needed to know German. But as the world increasingly globalized, there were a lot of forces to have a fairly universal language. And between the once huge British Empire and the industrial dominance of the US post-WWII, that language naturally became English.
  - masswerk 6y ago
    Before WWII French was certainly considered the most important foreign language in continental Europe and English eventually became prevalent only after. (I vividly remember my grandma being somewhat disappointed that we were taught English as the first foreign language in school, instead of French.) It may not be that far fetched to imagine a 1930s internet ("The League of Thoughts") coming somewhat naturally in French.
    - artificial 6y ago
      That's an excellent name! I think about William Gibson's novels about Babbage's machine being hooked up to a telegraph resulting in an earlier "internet" revolution.
      - masswerk 6y ago
        My "ligue des pensées" (LDP), AKA "Gedankenbund", AKA "League of Thoughts" (LoT) is certainly based on storing analog signals on refreshing electrostatic drums and projecting the image (images!) on CRTs. There's a nice railway print of the futuristic main hub of the British part of the LoT at New Castle, exposing the stylized cylindrical shape of the storage drums in its main tower (nicely lit in electric blue by high the voltage discharge of the drums inside). A delicate chapter in the history of the LDP is the niche of the "valses roses", which inevitably evolved into a major business. In many countries some opposition of mostly moral objection arose, especially in Germany, where a rising NSDAP feared for the health of the populus and for the sanity of German men who were exposed to the finer details of the anatomy of foreign women, which in turn lead to its smashing defeat in the 1933 election… :-) ---- Edit, on the technology of the LoT: This was some of a joint European effort. A crucial part was the storage of the analogue image signal on a continuously refreshed electrostatic drum, invented by Dr Ludwig Chevenmüller in the early 1920s. A major breakthrough was then the contribution of a young Tommy Flowers, who came up with a way to combine discrete signals suitable for relay-based automatic dialling with the analog signals that provided the content. In a somewhat parallel strain Thierry du Pont du Lac invented his "lecteur discret", which did much the same for character based signals in Baudot code, which was eventually combined in the vertical blank of the analog image signal and stored on the terminal side on a second drum, to be superimposed by a tiny typesetting machine and an array of electrostatic lenses onto the analog Chevenmüller image. (Alternatively, the combined image could be redirected onto a third drum, from which it could be printed using a technique similar to stencils. Seasoned users of the LoT may remember the typical smell quite well.) But the LoT only really took of, when BASF came up with a way to compress the Chevenmüller signal into rapid bursts, which enabled the rather astounding speed of the network.
ekianjo 6y ago
> not so far from the Minitel days, French was the lingua franca of diplomacy, and spoken all over the world. What a ridiculous claim. The language spoken for Diplomacy is spoken by diplomats and has virtually nothing to do with what the population speaks. Just like Latin was the language of Religion and Science in Middle-Ages, but certainly not spoken by everyone else.
- anthk 6y ago
  Not ridiculous. In the late 70's, everyone's second language in Spain (except OFC the ones speaking Iberian latin dialects or Basque having Spanish itself as a second one) for example wasn't English, but French. If you wanted a better future (lots of people headed to France to work), you would learn French to make a good chunk of money and cheap goods, period.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > In the late 70's, everyone's second language in Spain (except OFC the ones speaking Iberian latin dialects or Basque having Spanish itself as a second one) for example wasn't English, but French. 1- Spain is a neighbor to France, so it's hardly surprising that French is used a lot in the first place. 2- Spain represents less than 1% of the World population, so it's hardly a proof that French was used all over the world in the 70s.
    - anthk 6y ago
      Spain and the rest of the French colonies all over the world. And as I said, French was seen as a language from people in high positions.
    - jen20 6y ago
      French is used across the world _today_, so it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that it was also used across the world in the 1970s. By the Wikipedia numbers [1], French is the fifth most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers, yet only fifteenth by native speakers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...

athriren 6y ago

english was not the language of the internet prior to the internet existing, which is the period of time this article is primarily concerned with.

tinus_hn 6y ago
The period prior to the internet existing (before the 60s) ends far before the period before Minitel existing (before the 80s). While you can have discussions about when it became ‘the internet’ ARPAnet was already an international network far before minitel launched and of course the language was English.
- frank2 6y ago
  Sure, but the internet did not become a consumer phenomenon till 1993. There were very few rules on the internet of 1992, but one of those rules was that commerce was not allowed. So for example there was in 1992 a newsgroup named ba.jobs which functioned very much like HN's monthly 'who is hiring?' and 'who wants to be hired?' comment sections, but there was no analog to HN's monthly 'Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?' because although it was considered OK to seek W-2 work (i.e., seek to become a proper employee), seeking 1099 work (i.e., seeking a contract to do some programming work) was considered too much like commerce and consequently not allowed on the internet (or more precisely not allowed on the US internet backbone -- and it would've been impractical to run a newsgroup while avoiding the US backbone). In 1992 visiting a friend's apartment in San Francisco, I had to explain to someone what the Internet was, whereas my friend who was on Compuserv didn't have to explain what Compuserv was. Note that this thread has evolved / mutated so much that it no longer has any bearing on the question of whether "The French insisted on doing it all in French while the language of the Internet is English. They isolated themselves and could never have been the center of the web" (a question I have no interest in). The point is that France was ahead of the US in conferring the benefits of computer-mediated communication and computer-mediated commerce to the average consumer.