Pater Familias

Theories, observations, and articles, by Philip Schaefer · All posts · Categories

WHAT’S THE FRENCH WORD FOR HASHTAG?

February 7, 2013 · Uncategorized

WHAT’S THE FRENCH WORD FOR HASHTAG? I posted here about the bureaucratic process for approving a new French word to replace the English phrase “cloud computing”. Approvals are needed from a large number of government committees, the Academie Francaise and the French finance minister. Erin McKean in the Wall Street Journal (February 2-3) reported here that what is known in English as a “hashtag” will now be known as “mot-diese”. As I noted here “World Wide Web” is now “toile d’ araignee mondiale”—”global spider web.” And “courriel” was officially approved and has successfully replaced “e mail.”