France Bans Official Use Of English Gamer Words

Video game history is rife with bans, and even though they're mostly all dumb as heck, this one might just take the cake. The nation whose language awesomely spiced up the vocabulary of at least every western country by providing the basis for most dirty sexy words is terrified that the use of dangerous new words such as "gamer" and "streamer" will destroy their culture. That's quite the irony (also a French word). French officials from now on won't be allowed to say those and many other words of Anglican origin. That's especially funny because they don't have their own versions of those words and will have to go with awkwardly wordier alternatives. We could very easily make the joke that instead of “streamer” they'll have to instead say “vapeurer”, but that would actually sound way cooler than the official pick. Instead,  pro gamers will go by the rather simple “joueur professionnel” but streamers will go by the very impractical "joeur-animateur en direct".

We won't blame our readers if they immediately go check for sourcing or at least look at their calendars to make sure this isn't April Fools, but this is the real deal. This parody-worthy piece of news comes directly from the French ministry of culture as a response to The Académie Française, a French-language watchdog that warned in February about the possible collapse of French Civilization, or whatever. Luckily, they also said that this collapse could totally be avoided if the French stopped using terribly insidious words such as “big data” and “drive-in”. 

Let's hope the French government's effort to keep their language pure goes about as well as that time they wanted to replace “wifi” with "l'access sans fil a Internet".

Top Image: Ubisoft