"Joueb" is a
French translation of "
blog," first made in the 21 June
2001 entry by Stéphane "Biz" Gigandet, founder of the
Francophone weblog/web
zine site joueb.com. Just as "blog" is an
abbreviation of "
weblog," "joueb" is a
contraction of "journal web" (or as it would be in
English, "
web journal"). The information pages on joueb.com (Niutopia, la planète des jouebs) defines a joueb as "a web site where information is
published frequently...jouebs vary greatly in their
form, their number of
authors and
participants, their
subjects, their
frequency of
update, the degree of
interaction with their
readers, etc." Since some French speakers are anxious to avoid "
Franglais" terms of obvious English origin, "joueb" seems to be preferred by many to "weblog," "blogue" (proposed by the
Quebec Office of the French Language), or other borrowed words, although "carnet web" ("web
notebook") has its supporters, and plenty of Francophones have just stuck with "blog."
Google searches done 4 November 2002
- joueb: 7,490 results
- blogue: 3,380 results
- carnet web: 2,410 results
Though of course, it's difficult to tell how many of these are from sites discussing the competition between the words.
On 25 May 2005, spiregrain messaged me that "I read somewhere that the French Journal Officiel have proposed (demanded?) the word "bloc" (short for "bloc notes") be used from now on in the French-speaking world."
So I Googled the words' relative popularity again on that date (limited to French-language pages, as "blogue" seems to be used in Spanish also, and "bloc" in English).
- joueb: 201,000
- blogue: 424,000
- carnet web: 40,400
- bloc: 1,650,000 (but "bloc" in French, as in English, can mean a group of people involved in something)
- blog: 2,540,000
Sources:
http://joueb.com/niutopia/texts/qu_est_ce_que.shtml (which
Sylvar was kind enough to alert me to originally)
http://spirolattic.net/FranglaisOuPas
http://joueb.com/infos/info_886.shtml
http://joueb.com/infos/info_1007.shtml
http://ici.ici.free.fr/article.php?id_article=68
http://www.blogroots.com/comments.blog/179
http://www.eamonn.com/archives/000182.html
Translations from the French by
Segnbora-t.