Hacker News Reader

Comment by icare_1er | Hacker News Reader

As a french, i can say that by using many of these words you would sound silly. But on the long run, it is clear that through regular changes to languages, people speak differently and actually believe to "think" differently.

More and more I see people writing emails with the Anglo-saxon cultural codes (ie. putting 3 lines of chit-chat at the beginning that no one cares about / saying "i am happy to ..." / etc).

And politicians are also gradually speaking more and more like CEOs of US companies. They use more and more terms like "resilience", "governance" (copy-pasted from english and with no actual meaning in French) which don't mean anything to most French. They start to have "managers", not "chefs", etc.... they "recommand", they no longer order.

View on HN

I think this aspect is quite underestimated:

> They start to have "managers", not "chefs", etc.... they "recommand", they no longer order.

Swapping English words for French words allow the word-swapper to soften a lot of things.

Having a _chef_ puts the hierarchical aspect first and foremost. There is the _chef_, and there are the subordinates. You might have a _patron_, but then there's a whole baggage of social conflicts between employees and _patrons_. The _patron_ definitely is not part of your circle. But having, say a _boss_ or a _manager_ or _leader_ is much softer.

Speaking of which, how do you translate "management" or "to manage"? If you choose "gestion" you have strong bean-counting implications, and if you choose "commander" you have, again you get military/hierarchical connotations. But "management" is (or perhaps was) devoid of such connotations.

A _crédit revolving_ does not sound scary - no idea what revolving means, something to do with a gun perhaps? But a _crédit permanent_ is super scary - you are going to be indebted forever and ever!

Yes definitely... i think the english language (or maybe i'm biased because i only speak it because i worked in the UK), inherently lends itself to ... marketing, to put it mildly.

And indeed all of the corporate language disguises the real nature of things. In the end, whether a boss asked me to do it, or a "manager" "encourages" me to "consider this option", the end result is exactly the same....

As a native anglophone working in France, I appreciate the general lack of chit-chatty openings to emails (even if the trend may be negative, as you say) as I generally prefer to get to the point.

But I have noticed, since the start of COVID, the meaningless "j'espère que tu vas bien" ("I hope you are well") at the top of many emails, which feels like exactly the thing you are talking about--a lifting and translation of a meaningless English phase that feels appropriate but adds nothing of substance.

See Crocker's Rules [0, 1]. The little part "hope you're well" though was a nice touch. During lockdown when there were hundreds of deaths a day, it made sense. Taking 30 seconds during calls just to make sure your correspondant doesn't mourn seems wise to me.

[0] http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker

As a French person living abroad (Canada then UK), I can say without a doubt that I've offended more than one person going straight to the point.

I'm getting better at beating around the bush now.

> As a french, i can say that by using many of these words you would sound silly. But on the long run, it is clear that through regular changes to languages, people speak differently and actually believe to "think" differently.

Half of those on the list don't make any sense indeed. They could have picked a better french translation people actually use instead.

As an example I could point laptop being translated as "Ordinateur de giron"(?) instead of "Ordinateur portable" which is the term people actually use.

The worst are the meta-anglicisms that are plaguing the language : those coming from dubbed films, constructed solely for the lip syncing similarity with English words. Things like "rester tous les deux" which means "rester ensemble" but comes from the dubbing of "stay together". I hate them and I can't unsee them.. and I'm not even French

Reply on news.ycombinator.com