"Joueb" is a French translation of "blog," first made in the 21 June 2001 entry by Stéphane "Biz" Gigandet, founder of the Francophone weblog/webzine 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.

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