Each season, they arrive in clusters and damage the French tongue like leafhoppers on the vine.
Anglicisms have a hard tooth.
Any new phenomenon of society is a pretext to use these terms of globish (contraction of “global” and “English”), a depreciated form of the language of Shakespeare.
“I am not able to answer you”, “he works in full-remote”, “I think I will end up putting myself on quiet quitting”… Without even realizing it, our credibility is being put to the test by these borrowings doubtful which distort our syntax and which, for the most part, remain misunderstood.
We translate them for you.
To discover
Crosswords, arrow words, 7 Letters... Free to play anywhere, anytime with the Le Figaro Games app
dinks
“The Dinks keep showing up on social media.”
You have most certainly come across them recently on the street.
Those who were once called “couple (without children)” are no more.
Call them “Dinks”.
Acronym of "double income, no kids", literally "double income, no children", the term is used for the first time in 1987 in the United States, we read in the Online Etymology Dictionary.
It's an article from
Time Magazine
, titled
Living: Here Come the DINKs
, which mentions it.
The Dinks are people who have chosen not to have children because of their doubts about the environmental crisis, in particular, and the future they will leave to a possible offspring.
Some also consider it unnecessary for their “personal fulfillment”.
Streak
No, you're not dreaming.
"Launch your career as a trainee"
, we could read on the posters of a recruitment campaign produced by a brand of "discount" supermarkets in France.
Referring to the status of "trainee", the term was, to say the least, poorly chosen by the marketing team who, having recourse to English, did not notice that in the language of Molière, the word had a meaning. different… Coming from the French “train”, which, from the 16th century across the Channel, means “to pull and manipulate in order to bring it to a desired shape”, “a trainee” designates a person carrying out a period of preparation through which they must pass those who aspire to certain professions.
Read alsoAnthony Lacoudre: “French has literally invaded the English language”
Digital
From the imperial Latin “digitalis” (“which has the size of a finger”), English and French have been using the adjective “digital”, respectively since the 15th century and the 18th century.
In both languages, it designates what is relative to the finger.
But, as the French Academy explains, it is because people counted on their fingers that English derived from this word the terms "digit" ("figure") and "digital" ("which uses numbers”, such as a computer system).
For what is said about the representation of information, of data in the form of numbers, French, on the other hand, has chosen to use the adjective “numeric” (from the Latin “numerus”, “number”).
We are therefore talking about a watch with a “digital” display, and not a watch with a “digital” display.
Proactive
“He is a proactive and motivated candidate that I saw this morning.”
Appeared in the field of psychology to qualify a person who takes his life in hand and refuses to let himself be directed by external events, the adjective “proactive” is used to speak of someone who knows how to be proactive.
Derived from the English “proactive” (from the Latin “activus”, “which expresses action”), it replaces many adjectives and periphrases that French has in order to translate the idea of “reaction capacity”.
Also, we will say:
“He is enterprising.”
Rather than:
“He is proactive.”
