French Ministry Forces People To Use Long Sentences Rather Than Simple English Terms When Referring To Gaming

Young professional esports players playing games

The French are at it again! A new order coming straight from the Culture Ministry bans officials from using all English jargon that’s related to the gaming industry, replacing it instead with a whole bunch of complicated terms.

For example, the word “esports” from here on will be referred to as “jeu video de competition”, a live streamer will instead be a “joueur-animateur en direct” and “cloud gaming” will hereby be known as “jeu video en nuage”.

According to the Academie Francaise, the nation’s watchdog for language preservation, this is all being done to avoid the over-Anglicisation of their native tongue.

Additionally, the culture ministry claimed that the overabundance of complicated English terminology in the gaming industry might scare people away from getting involved with it.

The French culture ministry has been known to take necessary precautions to avoid the degradation of their language, with the Academie Francaise pointing out that it “must not be seen as something inevitable.”

However, this latest order came in the form of an official journal entry, which makes it binding on all of the government’s official personnel.

Interestingly enough, based on a statement from within the French ministry itself, these changes were made to allow people to communicate “easier”.

Hard to see how changing “pro-gamer” to “joueur professionnel” does that, but then again, we’re not the language experts.

It’ll be interesting to see if these efforts are as successful as their previous attempt to change the meaning of the term “wifi” to “l’access sans fil a internet”…




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