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.