Outlawing foreign words? How…French. But it’s the Russians outlawing foreign words — foreign words and obscene words, actually, and only (I believe) in political addresses, as Law Passes Banning Rude or Foreign Words explains:
The State Duma lower house overwhelmingly approved a bill entrenching Russian as the “state language” and barring “offensive,” “obscene” and “vulgar” words. Foreign words are also outlawed when Russian-language equivalents exist.
Some of the examples are…colorful:
Putin launched a 1999 drive against Chechen rebels by vowing to “wipe them out in the sh*thouse.” He then chose not to campaign in the 2000 election he easily won, saying he would not treat politics like trying to sell “Snickers and Tampax.”Allegations of Russian atrocities in Muslim Chechnya again prompted him to tell a French journalist last November that anyone wishing to become a Muslim extremist could undergo circumcision in Moscow “in such a way that nothing grows back.”