Foreign words

Every now and again someone will rail against the number of French words (or Italian or German) in the English language, and suggest they be banned and replaced by good old English words.

Well, they're onto a losing battle there, because 29% to 45% of English words are of French origin, with something like 7,000 to 10,000 words borrowed from French. French words are so well-established in fact, you're looking at a fait accompli.

I can't see why this should be objectionable. It's very healthy for a language to absorb all sorts of foreign words as well as new English words.

I'm much more concerned about words that are over-used, like fucking and awesome, or words that are insulting or demeaning. I'm more concerned about the use of baffling jargon and lawyer-speak.

France has a history of fighting to keep English words out of the French language, but it's like Canute trying to resist the waves. Fleur Pellerin, France's minister of culture, declared in 2015 that trying to ban foreign words was doing more harm than good.

Personally I'm happy to ask for a croissant or an hors d'oeuvre. Bon appetit!

Unwanted words

Some people get very hot under the collar about their language being "corrupted" by words from other languages. They think it's the thin end of the wedge, that if it goes on it'll lead to a tsunami of alien words and their whole language will vanish down the plughole.

Italians love English words and use hundreds of them (il weekend, il snack bar, il taxi). We Brits love foreign words and sprinkle them everywhere to show how cosmopolitan and well-travelled we are.

But the French aren't so welcoming. They turn up their noses at dubious unFrench interlopers and try to stamp them out le plus tôt possible. They regularly round up the nasty little intruders and find respectable, upstanding French words to replace them.

The Académie Française has just run another competition to create substitutes for such ghastly arrivals as "le buzz" (an internet craze), "le tuning" (hotting up a car) and "le newsletter". They eventually decided on "le ramdam", "le bolidage" and "l'infolettre". Phew, that's more of the pesky little critturs wiped out.

Personally I don't know why they're so fussed. Foreign words add variety to a language, they enrich and refresh it. Every language is choc-a-bloc with foreign words that were introduced by travellers, translators and traders. Usually the words change naturally into something more like the host language, so eventually they seem like the real thing anyway (medicine, anyone?)

What are these language purists so afraid of? It's like cooking a meal and rejecting any foreign ingredients as polluting the taste. But all our languages have been polluted and contaminated by other languages from the start, that's what gives them their unique flavour and texture. The more foreign muck the better, I say.