In order to protect the sanctity of the French language, the government of France has officially outlawed the use of the words "email" and "e-mail" in deference to the word "courriel." A story from the Associated Press, carried by the Washington Post tells the tale.

Not surprisingly, outside of the government's mandated sites, nobody seems to care. There are those who already use the word (popularized, such as it is, in Quebec), but most sources cited in the story indicate that it is in little use.

A quick Google showed ~252,000 occurrences of the word on French language web sites, and 3.5M uses of e-mail and another 2.5M of email (just on French sites, combined 173M on the whole web).