Paris - The guardians of the French language have come up with a new term so that Francophones no longer have to resort to the English word “hash tag” when searching for labelled terms online.
The hashtag (#) is used in services like Twitter, marking distinct keywords to link related articles. Now it will be known as “mot-diese” in French.
'Diese' is simply the French word for a hash-tag sign, while 'mot' means nothing more than 'word.'
The move has been the target of a fair number of online jibes.
“Aside from people over 70, who is going to take this word seriously,” asked one Twitter user shortly after the new word was announced in a government publication. - Sapa-dpa