I like the word clavardage because it sounds like it could be French for cleavage.

Throat warbler mangrove.

Why not just say "hashtag" even when speaking French and not worry about it?

Pronounced 'ashtag. Swallow the h and it's properly foreign.

According to the Government of Canada's linguistic database, Termium^(TM), the French translation of hash-tag is mot-clic. In Spanish, it is etiqueta numeral.

It took me longer to find the headline again after my search than it took to find the answer.

Now, you might wonder why the Government of Canada has a giant database for translating things into Spanish as well as the two official languages of Canada, English and French.

That's for us to know and you to find out.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I'll just drop a leetle hint: when Canada and Mexico take over the United States, we'll be ready for trilingual Corn Flakes^(TM) boxes, UN-invasion-ready road sign,s and communicating with citizens of the Estados Unidos Norteo Americanos (EUNA) in their choice of official languages--English., French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Cree.

Keep that under your sombreros, amigos. We don't want those conspiracy theorist nutters who believe in the Amero and the great Mexico-City-Dallas-Winnipeg-Churchill Falls super-highway to catch on just yet.

Whiskey Dickens: Resolute: Quebec's inferiority complex strikes again! Sometimes a KFC is just a KFC guys, even the Parisians know that.

Sorry, I don't think Calgarians are allowed to comment on other culture's issues, beyond anything more complicated than whether Timmy's cappucinos are true to their Italian heritage. Go back to your strip mall, people with actual cultures worth discussing are talking.

Quebec "culture" is just a watered-down ripoff of French culture laced with serious anger management issues.

squidgod2000: That's part of the genius of the English language: Being able to create words rapidly and efficiently, and to be sure they are used. To create words in French, we must work very quickly. Because once a word from English is implanted (in everyday speech), it's difficult to dislodge

It's the power of the culture, not the genius of the language. If French mattered, there'd be some (non-food) french words used in regularly in English.

/cue the list of non-food french words we all use frequently

"The French have no word for entrepreneur."--Attributed to George W. Bush, Jr.

Myth Debunked: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.asp You see? They're not always a bunch of Commies. Sometimes the facts are on the side of the Republicans. Sometimes.

There are about four times as many French words in the English language as there are Anglo-Saxon words. Only Latin and Greek technical and scientific terms out-number French and German borrowings.

They are particularly numerous in government (gouvernement), bureaucracy (bureaucratie), law (loi), cuisine (cuisine), diplomacy (diplomatie), literature (littérature) and other fields where the French dominated culture (culture) and society (société) for centuries before the rise of the First British Empire in the 18th century as the Empires of Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic and France declined and the Industrial Revolution gave new impetus and power to the British peoples and thus their language.

German came very close to being declared an official language in the United States. IIRC, it came within one vote.

Piou! Piou!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias

That one made me laugh. It's one of several onomatopeia for bird sounds in French and it sounds just like the Pew! Pew! meme in English

Making a bird sound into a verb is easy enough, hence the English "tweet". Here are some French verbs related to "tweet":

chant - chanter - pépier - piailler - siffler

Siffler might be a good translation. Tweets are a lot like whistling for attention. Some people use them to whistle up a storm. I think I like siffler best of the options so far, although piou! piou! is still funniest.


I might also suggest: pipper (to peep). Another possibility is suggested by the French name of Tweety Bird: titi. (Titi can also mean "little girl".) I'm not sure what the best way to make a verb of that would be: titier?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_'titi'_mean_in_French

There, somebody go tell the French that Brantgoose has decided that the correct way to translate "to tweet" is "siffler".
I'll wait here.

Looking for the French name of #.

So far I found the French name of the ampersand: esperluette.

Esperluette, gentille esperluette
Esperluette, je te plumerai ....

http://connectedweb.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/ascii-francais-les-noms-d es-symboles/

35 # croisillon/dièse

Neither of those is a great name for the hashtag. Mot-clic seems a shorter and more descriptive name. I like the sound of dièse but I think mot-clic would be catchier and thus have a better chance of becoming universal.

The damn symbol has too many names in English: it is call the pound symbol or key, the octothorpe, the hash key or symbol or tag, and the number key or tag.

There was a time when France was at the center of the world, and the language to speak was French.

Those days are over, and are unlikely to return within our lifetimes.

If the French language can not evolve, it will die. The need for language specialists to debate on changing a commonly used word in a different language that is used by virtually all languages that use the technology, save theirs, will in the long run hurt the language and make the entire debate pointless.

Is there really, honestly, any such thing as a pure language?

Years ago when I took Spanish (can't speak a word of it), the teacher explained that the spanish we were being taught wasn't the Spanish of Spain, but more like the Tex Mex spanish that was spoken in Mexico. Apparently, a couple centuries of english speakers and spanish speakers leaving next to each other and such corrupted the Spanish language spoken by those in the Americas. Logically, the same would have to be true for the french canadians.

Another name for # is the pound sign. So why don't they just call it "Quatre cent cinquante-trois grammes symbole.."

Je ne sais pas. Je me rends.