LOCAL ANGLES: FROM CHEESEBURGER TO CHEWING GUM

"Eating words has never given me indigestion," Winston Churchill once said.

But in France these days, there is plenty of indigestion to go around.

The French parliament recently barred advertisers, schools, government and corporations from using 3,500 foreign words, including cheeseburger, chewing gum and bulldozer.

Construction workers must clear roads with "bouteurs" and kids will pop "gomme a macher" into their mouths. Marketing is out, "mercatique" is in.

Computers won't use software, instead they'll use "logiciels."

It is OK to have a hamburger in Paris, but fast-food restaurants like McDonald's and Burger King will have to drum up a new word for their hamburger with "fromage."

Under the law, ads produced in a foreign language must be accompanied by a French translation. The same holds true for the instructions that accompany manufactured goods. Broadcasters must not use English words when French equivalents exist.

Americans shouldn't be surprised by all this. The French have been fighting the English language for centuries.

Past government campaigns urged the French to avoid "weekends" and "jogging" unless they did it in their native tongue. Presumably, it was OK to walk, just not jog.

But eliminating the All-American "cheeseburger" is downright hostile.

Nine years ago, my wife, Joni, and I visited Paris. Even with four years of French in high school, I found it difficult to determine what was on the menu. Besides, we didn't want an expensive, nine-course dinner, just lunch.

So we did what any self-respecting American would do. We visited McDonald's.

I tried to order in French, but was immediately cut off by the McDonald's employee, who curtly said, "You want a Big Mac, fries and a Coke."

When you're in a foreign land, a sentence like that suffices for a whole conversation.

Joni and I had traveled to Paris by train from Germany. I remember that when we arrived in the cavernous train station, we sought out the tourist information office.

We found a bunch of travelers milling around, looking confused. The reason soon was evident. The man behind the counter didn't speak English.

As a result, we ended up taking a wild taxi ride to the main tourist information office in Paris, where, surprisingly, English wasn't a dead language.

The swarthy taxi driver didn't seem to know much French, and knew even less English.

Our driver also didn't know about the brake. He kept the foot on the gas. The taxi raced over the cobblestone streets, weaving with abandon around parked cars.

Our driver was constantly sticking his head out the window, yelling at other motorists and pedestrians to get out of his way.

Other taxi drivers were doing the same thing, making the jostling ride seem more like demolition derby at the Indy 500. The Screamin' Eagle at Six Flags amusement park was less scary than this. And there, at least, people scream in English.

As to the French ban on perfectly good English words, it is enough to make you want to retaliate.

Perhaps we should ban words like laissez faire and ambiance, thereby pleasing the socialists and putting designers out of work.

Hollywood no longer would be able to hold movie premieres, airplanes could no longer have a fuselage, and military reconnaissance would be out of the question.

But, of course, in this great melting pot of a nation we wouldn't do that.

We love foreign words. Just look at all those fancy restaurants with escargot on the menu. Leave it to the French to make snails sound appetizing.

While the cheeseburger and chewing gum have been guillotined, there is still one word the French have no trouble accepting: The dollar.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.