Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!julian!uwovax!gerard
From: gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca (Gerard Stafleu)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Canada -- One or two cultures
Message-ID: <3521@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 11 Aug 89 12:22:37 GMT
References: <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <28168@watmath.waterloo.edu> 
Distribution: can
Organization: University of Western Ontario, London, Ont., Canada
Lines: 21

In article , kim@watsup.waterloo.edu 
(T. Kim Nguyen) writes:
> Just look at the French in France.  You don't see them worrying overly
> much about the "intrusion" of English terms into their language.  

If  you believe that, I have some nices bridges accross the Seine for 
sale...

In the late sixties the French government had ALGOL-60 officially 
translated into French (meaning that keywords like BEGIN, END, PROCEDURE 
and so on got translated to French equivalents).  Then there was a 
strong drive to use the French version in schools, universities and so 
on.  I'm not sure how successful this exercise was in the end, or 
whether they repeated it with other languages.

This is just one example, but it is representative.  Not only do (many 
of) the French think that their culture (and language) is just great
(they may have a point here), they often also think it is far superior 
to the feeble attempts of the rest of humanity (and they are definitely 
getting carried away there).  In France, after all, culture is not just 
culture, c'est culture.