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The French, probably in the midst of a Malian air war adrenaline rush, have gone on another offensive: the hashtag is out. From now on, it’s called a mot-dièse, which is sort of like a Twitter Royale with Cheese.
The French are notoriously tight-handed when it comes to language—they don’t want American BS corrupting what’s generally considered to be one of the most beautiful languages in the world. To that end, they actually have an official government agency that dictates this thing, and makes it law, as opposed to the American linguistic Wild West, with our YOLOs and hip-hop and “booty calls” and “hashtags.” No—from now on, you’ll call it a mot-dièse if you’re working within the French government, and you’ll like it, mon ami. If you’re a private citizen, you’ll just be sneered at for using this filthy Yankee neologism. [Yahoo News]
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An article about Germany, and now one about France? All we need is something even vaguely tech-related to something in Spain or Italy within the next hour, then the other within the hour after that and we’ll have completed the mainland Western Europe quintilogy!
I think GizmodoUK is showing where it stands on the YES/NO vote regarding Europe
Good for the French.
Singes capitulards mangeurs de fromage.
If it was American, wouldn’t it be the ‘pound key’ or something? Or is that only when you dial in to conference calls? ‘Enter the conference code followed by the pound key’
I guess they just change it all around, hash, pound, gate .. whatever Im going back to my red wine and cheese
Zut alors! But in all honesty, hashtag sounds a bit dopey. Nothing new for those tech freaks :p
I hate it when there is an article on France, you always get some smart-arse who has to use a bit of schoolboy french in his comment. It’s such a cliché.
Mon dieu! And the French arbitrarily trying to ban a phrase simply because they don’t like it isn’t a cliche? Plus ca change!
Well, the French are wrong.
The ‘hash’ symbol used in hashtags is not the ‘sharp’ symbol, which is what the francosized Greek word dièse is. Admittedly, the two are remarkably similar but where the hash (two parallel horizontal lines) denotes a number, the sharp (slightly slanted lines) is used in music.