Word: ordinateur
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Hand in hand with commerce goes technology, and the tools of technology were mostly baptized in the U.S. The French still cling to ordinateur instead of computer, but in Italy even schoolchildren call it by its American name. Also floppy disks, lasers, compact disks, software. Germans buy Tapes, not Magnetbander. In fact, they call the whole field hitec...
...looks like a subway entrance marked IRCAM. It leads down, four levels below, to the world's newest, most sophisticated center for musical experiment and composition, officially titled Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique. IRCAM is a hushed place that fairly radiates energy and cerebration. Here the ordinateur, as the French call a computer, reigns. In one lab, a group is seeking its aid in constructing a new, futuristic flute. In another, a composer is using it to produce a sound heard so far only in his own head...
...part of their everyday vocabulary: such non-bons mots as bestseller, sexy, blue jeans, bowling, gadget, checkup, checkout, jumbo jet, baby sitter, nonstop, dead heat (pronounced did it), hot dog, hijack, racket, zoom, jukebox, call girl, marketing, merchandising and leasing. Evidemment, the government will need un computer -preferred usage: ordinateur-to track down the offending business man, a designation that is not precisely conveyed by its closest French equivalent, l'homme d'affaires, and even less by la femme d'affaires, a term that could apply to a woman who does not know the bottom line from...
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