Newspeak? By Bénédicte, Jérémy & Michael

It is not just French people who use abbreviations all the time on their cell phones. English-speaking people use the SMS (Short Message Service) too of course !

Some words have a double sense, like KISS “keep it simple stupid”. Other shortened words that have crosses the Atlantic include the famous LOL “laughing out loud”.

SMS can be useful, it’s easier to write long messages with shorter “words”. But is there a danger that it destroys language at the same time ? Is SMS a bad, lazy, habit ? More and more young people become SMS-addicts, and shorten words all the time. Sometimes they are incomprehensible... Even expressions like “and so on” have been shortened : ASO!

But abbreviations are so practical that we are starting to prefer them to real words, even if we feel a bit guilty about ove-using them, DYT (“don't you think”) ?

Wikipedia article on SMS language... 

Barack Obasmots! By Hadrian, Floriane, Anne-Sophie & Jérémy

US President Barack Obama congratulated France's Nicolas Sarkozy on the birth of his daughter on Thursday. On Friday he is due to make an unprecedent joint appearance alongside his counterpart on French television.

"I want to congratulate Nicolas and Carla on the birth of Giulia," Obama said, referring to Sarkozy's supermodel-turned-singer wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy who last month gave birth to the couple's first child.

"And I informed Nicolas, on the way in, that I am confident that Giulia inherited her mother's looks rather than her father's!" Obama joked to muted laughter from reporters and a rueful smile from Sarkozy...

This blooper could have created a diplomatic incident. It is a good example of how American (rather denigrating) humour does not translate well into a French context. The joke backfired because it was spoken out of turn; public figures in a public context should not mock each other about private (family) matters...