France has a .gouv.fr second-level domain but it's not a TLD, and I don't see any reason why it should be .gov.fr instead (.gov is reserved for the US government). France speaks French and the visitors to these sites speak French as well, why not use French names?
Notice all the other (non-US) countries in the list using .gov.<two letter country code>? There's nothing stopping them from using .gov.fr, just like Ireland uses .gov.ie.
>France speaks French and the visitors to these sites speak French as well, why not use French names?
.gov is no less of a "French name" than .gouv. They're both (natural) abbreviations of "government" and "gouvernement", as they keep the same letters in the same order and form a sound that would naturally be recognizable as a contraction of "government/gouvernement".
It would be like if the US were the only English-speaking country to use .orgz instead of .org on the basis that "Hey, we have to use the z in the abbreviation to show that we're not contracting it from 'organisation' like those Brits." It's a remarkably petty way to distinguish the abbreviation your country is using.
No, the abbreviation of "gouvernement" cannot be "gov" in French because it doesn't have the same pronunciation. It can only be "gouv" as those two vowels cannot be separated for abbreviations in French. It could be "gou" although it sounds a bit weird.
Also, what the other countries do doesn't matter much, because.gouv.fr is for websites for French citizens, not Irish or Australian citizens.
The thing is, you put yourself from an English speaking perspective, but France doesn't. English isn't a reference from the point of view of France, so there is no reason not to use French terms.
France also uses .asso.fr instead of .org, for example.
>No, the abbreviation of "gouvernement" cannot be "gov" in French because it doesn't have the same pronunciation. It can only be "gouv" as those two vowels cannot be separated for abbreviations in French. It could be "gou" although it sounds a bit weird.
There’s no general rule that an abbreviation has to keep all letters; that’s what makes it an abbreviation. Nor do such contractions need to keep the same pronunciation as the corresponding parts: even the .com TLD is pronounced differently from the (unstressed) first syllable of “commercial” which it is a contraction of, “even though” it would sound weird to pronounce it like that syllable (as “come”).
French isn’t any different about allowing abbreviations to change the pronunciation: the “el” in courriel is pronounced differently from the él in courrier électronique that it corresponds to. And the French language authority endorsed that.
Where are you getting this rule that implies gouvernement can’t contract to gov, merely because it would look like it should sound different? It seems like that constraint is entirely made up, and not even adhered to in French, so I don’t see how it’s somehow confusing from a French perspective.
The only explanation is that it’s deliberately trying to be different.
>France also uses .asso.fr instead of .org, for example.
Which is also despite French having the word organisation already.
Sorry, most. The point stands. And Spanish legitimately does not have a v in its word for government. French does, and only adds the u to signal difference, equally as absurd as leaving the z in your abbreviation of organization to indicate which variant of English you’re using.
