The French do go to great lengths to protect the lingo, via L’Académie Française. This august body is officially responsible for deliberating on language use, and they get terribly miffed at the creeping anglicisation of day-to-day speech.
When the Sony Walkman became popular, in response to the fact that the nation talked about 'Le Walkman', L’Académie Française, bless 'em, dug through the dictionary of long-obsolete words and imposed an official word upon the nation from this list (IIRC, it was 'Baladeur' which was a wandering minstrel, which seemed vaguely relevant).
They've also tried to prevent the government from using the term 'La Ministre' to refer to female government ministers, since the correct gender for 'Ministre' is masculine, and if you start on the slippery slope of fiddling about with word genders, you'll be speaking Americanised English before you know it.
Of course, being French, the populace usually takes note of the fact that there's a new official word they're to use and promptly ignore it.