Europhoria gives rise to eurologisms

By Gwendoline Huang

Change in society creates changes in language. French professor Philippe Caignon gave an entertaining talk recently in which he used as an example the new words that have popped up in French since a new currency was adopted.

When the euro was introduced in 2002, France gained 600 new expressions, from eurodateur (a play on horodateur, a stamp that records the time, date), eurokit (a kit containing various denominations of the euro and ways to use them), europhobie, and vivre l’euro.

Here are some more neologisms (new words) created in French by the euro: euro formateur, eurolarge, anti-euro, euro-calcitrant, eurocomptabilité, eurodomestique, euro-euro (the European euro), euroguide, Euro-Info-centre, euroland(s), euro-phorie, euro-sceptique. Caignon said that most of these words probably won’t survive.

An associate professor of translation and terminology in the Département d’études françaises, Caignon is the author of Vocabulaire de comptabilité canadien (Essential Accounting Lexicon).

His talk, given Dec. 9, was organized by Concordia’s Translation Services in collaboration with the Réseau des Traducteurs en Éducation.

It was based on his article, “Création d’une monnaie et créativité d’une langue: l’euro et le français,” written with Louise Brunette and Élise Gagnon, and published in the journal La banque des mots.