Message de virginia posté le 2004-06-25 10:50:43 (S | E | F | I)
I've found this article in French. I've taken it from the newspaper "Le Monde". (31 of July 2003)

Since the Middle Ages, the French language has shown extraordinary hospitality to foreign words.
Travelling words, which have been borrowed from closely or more tenuously related languages, or indeed from mysterious foreign languages, have arrived in successive waves on our shores, brought to us by merchants or mariners, travellers or scientists, princes or soldiers, conquerors or immigrants. We have been able to take advantage of a variety of political and economic circumstances in order to acquire thousands of words over the centuries. How could we speak French today if we did not have polyglot tendencies?
In given hospitality to Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Greek words, to Dutch or Scandinavian words, to German, Slavonic and Hungarian words, to English words, to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian words, to Amerindian, African, Indian and Asiatic words, we have accepted a multitude of cultural gifts. In fact, borrowing vocabulary from another language means we are making the best encounter with another vision of the world and that is the most important thing of all.
This migrant words, which are so well assimilated, often seem to resemble good old French words. It's not the case of the Anglo-American words which are numerous and visible in contemporary French. Some people, armed with their patriotic fervour would like to push Anglicism out of France. Claude Duneton declares that French is 'taken over': The French themselves are at fault, 'they are all collaborators at heart'. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic other have declared the hunting season for Frenchism open. The 'Christian Science Monitor' gives an amused echo of this quarrel reminding people of the urgent need to give up words like 'to desarm', 'United States', 'current diplomatic dispute', 'imperialism', 'people', 'modern'...
The strong similarity of these reactions has a certain wit, it reveals something deep-rooted. As far as language is concerned, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the mystical monster of protectionism surfaced again in the context of the recent Franco-American political crisis... The profusion of English terms in contemporary French suggests an enslavement to the old Anglo-American culture and vice versa...
All languages are in crisis and the current problems of French are identical to those of British English, Russian, German, Italian or Spanish:Our lexicons are becoming Americanized....