‘Fake news’ falls foul of France’s word police

FRANCE’S language police have issued a decree to ban the words “fake news”.

However, the Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language (CELF) admits that the suggested alternative – “information fallacieuse” – is so unwieldy it is unlikely to catch on.

So the CELF has offered another possibility for those who want to avoid the use of Anglicisms – “infox”.

The shorter term is a combination of “infos” – an abbreviation of “informations” which means news – and “intox” – an informal word for disinformation or a hoax.

“The Anglo-saxon expression ‘fake news’, which refers to a range of behaviour contributing to the misinformation of the public, has rapidly prospered in French,” the commission said in an recommendation published in the French government’s official gazette.

“This is an occasion to draw on the resources of the language to find French equivalents.”

The CELF is part of the Académie Française and its aim is to stop the French language being polluted by English expressions or words.

It came up with “information fallacieuse” and “infox” after months of deliberation. Other options included “craque”, “infaux”, and “infausse”.

The CELF has made more than 7,900 suggestions in the past.

Some have been successful, such as the word “courriel” to replace email. But countless others met with derision and are simply ignored.

A recent example was the suggestion that the French should stop saying “smartphone” and instead use “mobile multifonction.”

The committee have also proposed “l’accès sans fil à internet” for “Wi-fi”, another suggestion that met with little success.