{"id":144,"date":"2013-08-14T12:47:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T11:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=144"},"modified":"2013-08-14T12:47:28","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T11:47:28","slug":"nous-twitterons-the-french-language-is-getting-battered-by-social-media-the-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Nous twitterons:  The French language is getting battered by social media. (The Economist)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><time>Aug 10th 2013\u00a0<\/time>|\u00a0PARIS\u00a0|<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>AURELIE FILIPPETTI, the French minister for culture, had to retract a tweet this week after making a glaring spelling mistake. As she is the official guardian of the French language, this was more than a bit embarrassing. Twitter\u2019s spontaneity invites carelessness; and the minister duly blamed a sloppy aide. But for linguistic purists the incident touched on a far broader issue, concerning social media\u2019s mangling of French and the accelerating invasion of franglais.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The French have long used rules to defend their language from the creeping advance of English, particularly in advertising. By law, any brand\u2019s English slogan, such as Nespresso\u2019s \u201cWhat else?\u201d, must be translated with a subtitle (<em>Quoi d\u2019autre?<\/em>). This produces comical results. Quick, a fast-food chain popular across France, introduced\u00a0<em>le French burger<\/em>\u00a0to its menu, helpfully translating it as\u00a0<em>le burger \u00e0 la fran\u00e7aise<\/em>. Advertisers merrily twist the rules, using a tiny font for the translation, or inventing logos in indigestible franglais.<em>Very irr\u00e9sistible<\/em>\u00a0is a perfume by Givenchy, a French luxury brand. Fashion magazines liberally sprinkle their texts with references to\u00a0<em>le must<\/em>,\u00a0<em>le look<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>le street style<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The spread of social media is battering French anew. As French is more prolix than English, Twitter\u2019s limit of 140 characters per tweet creates an extra squeeze. French tweets, like mobile text messages, are filled with abbreviations:\u00a0<em>koi\u00a0<\/em>for\u00a0<em>quoi<\/em>\u00a0(what) or C for\u00a0<em>c\u2019est<\/em>\u00a0(it is). Neologisms abound. Somebody who tweets can be\u00a0<em>follow\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0by others. A French mobile-telephone operator has launched a service called \u201cSosh\u201d, short for \u201csocial media\u201d.\u00a0<em>Twitter<\/em>\u00a0has itself been transmuted from an English noun into a French verb. One official tweeted recently that \u201c<em>nous live-twitterons<\/em>\u201d a minister\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n<p>An official French body tries to fend off anglicisms with French alternatives. For cloud computing, it recommends\u00a0<em>informatique en nuage<\/em>. A hashtag, used on Twitter with the symbol #, should be\u00a0<em>mot-di\u00e8se<\/em>. In reality such gimmicks rarely catch on. Hooked on Twitter, but aghast at the mangling of French, Bernard Pivot, a 78-year-old literary critic and unofficial guardian of the language, has published a book of his own perfectly crafted tweets, all of which respect the language of Moli\u00e8re. Twitter need not corrupt the language, he argues; instead it imposes valuable reflection and concision. Indeed, as Mr Pivot points out, the first article of the 1789 Declaration of Human and Civic Rights contains 136 characters\u2014the perfect length for a tweet.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aug 10th 2013\u00a0|\u00a0PARIS\u00a0| AURELIE FILIPPETTI, the French minister for culture, had to retract a tweet this week after making a glaring spelling mistake. As she is the official guardian of the French language, this was more than a bit embarrassing. Twitter\u2019s spontaneity invites carelessness; and the minister duly blamed a sloppy aide. But for linguistic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,57],"tags":[59,173,60],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}