Paris, Dec 11: French is such a rich language that it now has, by state decree, two words for ''z'' -- the ''at'' sign that has become a worldwide symbol for the internet -- but only one official way to pronounce it.
A special commission struggling to defend French against the spread of English in cyberspace has decided that the popular e-mail sign can be named either ''arobase'' or ''arrobe.''
But the August commission, which failed a few years ago to impose the name ''Jeunes Pousses'' (''Young Sprouts'') for internet start-up companies, decreed that the French should only call it ''arrobe'' when they give out their e-mail addresses.

The problem is that most people say ''Arobase'' – the traditional French name for the ''at'' sign -- and have never heard of the old Spanish measure of weight ''arroba'' that the commission used to create its new term.
The same decree about the ''at'' sign also told the French to say ''le site'' instead of ''le site web'' to describe a web site.



Even if these new terms never catch on, France's ever-active linguistic guardians have had other successes, fighting off other English terms and imposing ''ordinateur'' for computer, ''logiciel'' for software and ''informatique'' for computer science.


Bureau Report