The Académie Française is responsible for maintaining standards of French and has identified the English social networking term as a word that undermines linguistic purity, The Mirror reports.
Public figures, teachers and the French media have been urged to adopt the ‘mot-diese’ when referring to the micro-blogging site’s tagging system.
The Official Journal said: “The English term hashtag should wherever possible be replaced with the French term mot-diese.”
‘Hashtag’ now joins other English terms including ‘email’, ‘blog’, ‘supermodel’, ‘take-away’, ‘parking’, ‘weekend’ and ‘low-cost airline’ that are blacklisted, as authorities fear they will become commonly used in everyday French.
Sports commentators are also being asked to avoid using ‘coach’ and ‘corner’ during football matches, in favour of their French counterparts ‘entraineur’ and ‘coup de pied de coin’.
