It seems like rephrasing with the replacement of many of these terms can make you think again and check that you aren't bullshitting a bit. "progress" => "Are we indeed actually working on this?"
I'll certainly consult this list in the future to check my writing for simplicity.
In particular because I was once very close to someone working in some UE-related organization in Brussels. They routinely complained about the EU having its own English, mentioning the use of "persons" where "people" would be more correct. This use is not mentioned in this publication, maybe "persons" is actually fine-ish.
I can see how many of these mistakes could come from the French language. Ah ah. Whoops. Sorry! :-) For instance, "foresee" used to mean "plan" where it really means "predict". I never made the mistake because I never made the connection myself, but in French "prévoir" indeed means both things.
I wonder how much French being used in Brussels has influenced this. But I guess many European languages are similar to French for many of these things.
Maybe some of these misuses are a testimony of the complexity of English, like the uncountable words, the prepositions or the usage rules of "allow".
Maybe English could adopt some of these uses that seem convenient. Like, "transpose" instead of "incorporate into".
And yes, I cringe a bit whenever I see "actually" used to mean "currently". It happens all the time.
I guess English has its peculiarities in each area where it is spoken, and Europe is not an exception to this…
And I mean, a big chunk of the English vocabulary is already French, we might as well continue the trend x)
British english especially can have some weird vocabulary which is hard to use if one is not actually from britiain and understands the implied meaning of the words.
adequate is a good example of this for instance. according to british english, adequate means that is barely doable/good enough, while in most german/latin based languages. Adequate means that it is satisfactory.
Par example, s'il vous plaît?
As a German native speaker reading the first few examples this just sounds a lot like literal translations from German that I hear a lot of German speakers use when their English level isn’t that advanced (as I often perceive it to be the case for politicians as well) or only used at work and not gained from using/being exposed to English in native/cultural contexts:
Actor – Aktoren (commonly used fancy word in German government communication)
Actorness (not a direct translation but very common in German to make any noun into a different one through pre-/suffixes)
Actual – aktuell (means current and definitely not actual)
Adequate – adequat (means appropriate and definitely not adequate)
- Acteur
- Actuel
- Adéquat
(we don't have anything like actorness to my knowledge though)
What did they think if actual does not come from German nor French? :-)
Meanwhile corporate German is very different, and notable for the use of English or pseudo-English words where perfectly good German words exist. And of course an unhealthy dose of euphemisms.
Regular German probably tends more to understatement (the highest praise is "there's nothing to complain about")
Ampel is so boring though!
It makes me think of people I met at a conference doing research on vertical people transportation. In other words, lifts, or elevators.
French does indeed. For instance, the government and the corporate world love to use vocabulary to downplay situations. Like "mouvement social" (social movement) for "grève" (strike). It's like people are moving a bit, like they are dancing. It's cute. Or "restructuration" for "massive layoffs". Newspeak is all over the place. Like the sibling commenter says about Germany, "an unhealthy dose of euphemisms". We also have all the faux English startup vocabulary that makes things feel much more extraordinary than they are, or positive when they are not particularly so. In part to make France look cool internationally probably ("French Tech" [1] - "technologies françaises" sounds boring I guess).
There are also tricks you can use to make things feel less acceptable, like saying "charge sociale" (social benefits charge, feels like social burden) for "cotisation sociale" (social security contribution).
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Tech (this logo, yikes)
But on the other hand, it can be misused as well by reversing the left and right sides...