France has been terrified
for several decades now that its cherished national language may be losing
influence in the European Union.
In fact a recent publication
issued by the European Court of Auditors proves they may have won a surprising
coup: not by insisting on use of French, but by introducing a swathe of
Frenchisms into “EU English”.
Snappily titled “A brief list of misused English terms in EU publications” (as an aside, the document is
58 pages long, which gives you an interesting illustration of what the EU
thinks of as “brief”), it sets out English native speakers’ bête noires in terms of EU gobbledegook.
Most, if not all, have more
than a hint of French about them. They include some of my personal bugbears –
the kind of words that make me want to whip out a mug of earl grey and some
soggy sandwiches and stage a one-woman protest in defence of the English
language. “Actors” for “people who do things”, “axis” to describe an idea for
developing something, or a priority, “important” to mean big (although I have
always found something rather refreshing about the French willingness to admit
something deserves attention by virtue of nothing other than it being large).
It’s English, but not as we know it.
Of course the real danger is
that some of these words will start to sound normal. Some of these words by
themselves, read very quickly, at arms length, sound just about OK. UK civil servants
now apparently talk about “externalisation”. (Actually, that’s a bad example. I
can’t think of a single context in which the word externalisation would pass
muster).
English has always thrived on new
additions to the language. French struggles, before disdainfully adopting le weekend and le smartphone as linguistic embarrassments. But using existing words to mean something completely different causes confusion: if the EU wants to join my reactionary protest against this particular set of additions, they're welcome. Cucumber sandwich, anyone?
