Blockade against English ends

Guardians of the French language have dropped their famously fierce blockade against invading English words and are now welcoming them for enriching - rather than threatening - the lexicon.

"The French language is not frozen. A language is always evolving," Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin said on Wednesday at an event for the annual French Language and Francophone Week starting this weekend.

"Some languages, like English today, or Italian in the past, have been particularly generous in offering hundreds of new words to French," she added in a statement for the launch.