[Sigia-l] Terms & the rest of us: Findability (was: Vive laFrance! Vive Napoleon!!)

[Listera]

"Dr. Marios Pittas" wrote:

> French don't use the English word "Hello",

But they use "OK" for example.

> so why MUST they use the English word "e-mail"?

What's the percentage of French speakers who today would have no problems
understanding the word "email"? I suspect >95%.

What's the percentage of French speakers who today would have no problems
understanding the word "courriel "? I suspect <5%.

So what's so "French" about "courriel"?
 
>> Can you be a good Italian IA without being able to read in English?
> 
> Huh? Even if she/he can read English fluently, why should she/he have to
> force such a skill to the rest of those who will read/visit her work
> especially if the target group is foreign to that language..

What's the percentage of Italian IAs (or those who read fairly esoteric IA
literature) who don't also read English? I suspect it's way under 50%.
 
> Not that banning a word is the right thing to do..

Well, start from there. Otherwise all that American junk would have long
disappeared from France. :-)

One thing is certain: the ability of (the current) lingua franca to generate
new terminology (especially in technology) on a daily basis far exceeds any
one particular language's ability to cope with it.

So what do you do? Hope/wait for the Academy to issue neologisms for you to
learn and hope/wait for others to adopt them and double the number of
words/expressions you need to know (one native, the other in the lingua
franca)?

I speak a few languages and the answer isn't so clear-cut to me.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba