Le mel français du jour

Today, lets talk about the decision by the French government to ban the use of the word "e-mail".

Here's the deal. Like Quebec has been doing with all English words for a long time, the French have a history of inventing their own neologisms, but mostly for technology-related words. Since we're not known for being a tech-savvy nation, we figured we might as well come up with our own name for other people's inventions so we could pretend we had something to do with it:
(un) ordinateur = a computer
(un) octet = a byte
(un) télécopieur = a fax machine

And it worked, these words now being widely used. In 97-98, when the Internet started to gain momentum (yes, we have Internet in France...it came just a few years after we first got electricity and automobiles), the Académie Française fought back and started introducing more and more new words to instantly replace their English counterparts:
(un) mel = an e-mail
(un) butineur = a browser
and many more, all very funny if you ask me. Even Internet was translated into "la toile" (the web).
But this time, the new generation didn't adopt these stupid new words and kept on using the much sexier 'mail' or 'e-mail'.. So actually, this ban is not really new, it's just a second shot at getting rid of 'e-mail', since 'mel' failed miserably. Bottom line: nothing to be worried about :-)