English words are invading the French workplace at an ever-faster pace, including office jargon such as “workshop”, “ASAP” and “brainstorming”, a new dictionary suggests.
While the “immortals” from the Académie Française – official custodians of the French language who come up with French alternatives to Anglicisms – have managed to keep English terms at bay in the public sector, their linguistic sway over the French office has proved to be far less effective.
Already the bane of native-speaking English employees, Anglo office jargon is now taking French companies by storm with a tide of terms like “benchmarking”, “bullet points”, and “burnout”, and an even greater number of “franglais” words, like “overlooker”.
Other English terms such as drawing up a “to-do-list” rather than a “liste de choses à faire”, or meeting a “deadline” rather than respecting a “délai” – the French term are creeping in.
Henry Samuels writing in the Telegraph Comments to taglines82@gmail.com
