May 15, 2000– Newsletter #80

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

Did you hear …

The movie “Quantum” has just been released. It’s the first
film specifically made for – and distributed by – the World
Wide Web. It has some pretty big stars: John Cleese, Stephen
Dorff, and Fay Masterson. The movie can be downloaded for
$3.95 at a couple of sites: www.SightSound.com or
www.quantumprojectthemovie.com. You provide the popcorn.

eBay had to remove a few bogus Elian Gonzalez auctions from
their site. One claimed to be selling the “boat” Elian
arrived on, and another claimed to be selling a toothbrush
“like Elian would use.” Someone else wanted to sell a jar
containing scents from Little Havana in Miami, and there was
one offer to actually sell Elian himself. Users pretty much
knew the auctions were fake and complained. One upset bidder
decided to raise the hopes of the fakers by bidding $10 million.
He (or she) later retracted the bid.

Remember when businesses picked a company name first, and
then got a dot-com? Not anymore. It seems a good many
start-up companies are beginning to pick their company name
by what is available on the Web. USA Today reported the tale
of a Pittsburgh company that wanted to call itself Digital
Triangle, but the domain name had already been taken. When
the owner wouldn’t sell, they dropped the name rather than
try to find a different form of the name for their URL.

Now on to today’s topic …

OK, class. It’s time for our foreign language lessons. Let’s
all say “home page,” shall we?

In Spanish: El Homepage

In French: La Homepage

In German: Das Homepage

In Latin: Carpe Homepage

Obviously, this is paraphrasing a bit, but it’s just this
kind of “English as the Web language” thing that has the
language purists in France concerned.

Since 1635, when a man named Richelieu founded the Academie
Francaise, French officials have done their best to keep the
French language pure. We English-speaking people aren’t quite
as concerned. We basically let any and all languages into our
dialect. The French, on the other hand, don’t want that, and
the Web is beginning to cause problems.

The Academie Francaise has done its best over the years to
come up with a French equivalent to any foreign word (usually
English ones) entering the language. Some famous examples
include “typewriter” becoming “machine a ecrire” and “airplane”
becoming “l’avion”.

Well, the guillotine has dropped once again. While the French
Web-heads eat cake, they do something they term “surfez le Web,”
looking for “les start-ups” and referring to them as “tres cool”.

Oh, that can’t be good.

Officials have been quick to point out that those phrases
don’t mean anything in the French language. There is no “Web”
in French. The French word for “cool” doesn’t mean the same
thing as the English-slang equivalent.

Last month the French Ministry came out with their list of
acceptable French words for cyber-elements. Here’s the deal:

“Le start-up” will now be “une jeune pousse” (translation: a
sapling or sprout).

“E-mail” will now be “message electronique.” The acceptable
shortened form, “mel,” sounds like “mail,” but we won’t get
picky.

“Le Web” will now be “la toile” (translation: literally “web”).

“Cool” tripped them up. The word ” frais” means not quite cold,
but colder than warm, but the
slang meaning would be completely lost if they used it. I guess
“la Web generation” will simply have to start using whatever
French equivalent there is to “neat-o.”

Where someone stands on this issue usually depends on how
close they are to the Web itself. While some laugh at the
concept of calling a new Web business a sapling, others
embrace it.

Officials don’t care, though. In a statement, they proclaimed
that French will remain an uncontaminated language. As time
and technology march on, officials will continue to provide
French equals for English terms.

Oh well. As Henry Higgins sings in the early scenes of “My
Fair Lady”:

“In France every Frenchman knows his language from ‘A’ to
Zed. The French don’t care what they do, actually, as long
as they pronounce it properly.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. Thanks for reading. I appreciate your taking
the time.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: Baseball season is underway and my my Indians
are not doing too well. I thought a baseball fact would be
good right about now. The pitcher who finished a game
throwing the least number of pitches is Red Barret of what
was then Boston Braves. He faced 27 batters, and threw only
58 pitches. That’s an average of just over 2 pitches per man
at bat. This guy must have been easy to hit. Luckily he had
a good field behind him.