France: Striking a Blow for the Mother Tongue

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/europe/france-striking-a-blow-for-the-mother-tongue.html

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In its determined if quixotic mission to keep the French language French — that is, to keep out the English language, which creeps in more each day — France has decreed that Twitter-using citizens should refrain from using the word “hashtag” in favor of the newly coined French term “mot-dièse.” The new term, which effectively means “hashtag-word,” was developed by a government committee on vocabulary and published this week in the Journal Officiel, where laws and government rules are recorded. Linguistic purists have noted that “dièse” is, in fact, a musical term meaning “sharp symbol” and that the word “croisillon,” which means “hash symbol,” might have been a better choice. In any case, for the moment French Twitter users still “tweet” — “tweeter” in French (pronounced “twee-tay”) — when they post messages to the service. Many have been posting snarky notes about the new word under the hashtag “#motdièse.”