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Blawging in French

I've not been too keen about the term "blawg," but it does seem to have reached wide circulation with an agreed-upon meaning: a blog that deals with the law. To the extent that such a thing requires a separate nomenclature, this is a good term for it, implicitly combining in itself the combination of memes it embodies: "law" and "blog."

But what of other languages? Are they not to also have a certain special term to describe their legal blogs? Certainly if English blogs have need for it, ones in other languages would as well.

Enter Cedric Manara to solve the problem, at least as far as French speakers are concerned. He recommends "jurnal," and I heartily endorse his suggestion. It combines, both in suffix and pronunciation, the word "journal" (meaning newspaper) and the root "jur-," as in "juridique" (or the English word "jurist").

Surely the Academie Francaise would approve.

I may personally adopt it to describe my own blog, mostly because I think "blawg" looks so phoenetically ugly. It seems to encapsulate in its spelling a rather disdainful pronunciation of the word "blog," like someone was saying it very mockingly. "Jurnal," by contrast, looks more distinguished. Of course, everything sounds more distinguished when said in French...

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