As I seem never to tire of pointing out, English business names, most of them terrible, are becoming more and more common in France every day. I’ve written some two dozen articles lamenting this trend and still, for some reason, it continues unchecked. Then again, nobody heeded my warning when I predicted climate change back in July 1984 (my exact words: “Isn’t it getting hot around here?”), so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
But now we’re seeing something different, and even more alarming: English words slipped into phrases where they’re totally unnecessary.
Consider these examples:
I predict that over the next 50 years, adopting English words will become so fashionable among Francophones that they will no longer use any original French words at all. Meanwhile, it will become increasingly popular among Anglophones to adopt French expressions, both real (savoir-faire, tour de force, etc.) and imagined (nom de plume, double entendre, par-tay).
So by 2067, the two languages will have completely swapped vocabularies and the trend will die out. Then, about 10 years later, it will once again become fashionable among Francophones to adopt English words…
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