Apropos the Banter banter, are there any Eurospeak/Franglais/Deutschlish terms that drive you nuts? ie non-native (or as in my case gone-native)english.

Here are some of my faves which unfortunately I encounter on a daily basis....

Viewgraphs = Powerpoint Slides
Specificities = Details
Perturbate = Disturb (I find it more than a little disturbing when a man comes into my office and asks if he can perturbate me!)
Resto = Restaurant
Bon ap = Bon Appetite
sensible = sensitive
guilty = valid (sometimes - if speaker is german)
modalities = can be used in describing everything
relooking = renovation
coocooning = vague term usually referring to a house in Brussels that is actually habitable.
Practice sport in the fitness studio = workout in the gym

I could go on but I'm just annoying myself and you.

Apparently, the folks in Britain are "aware" of things as opposed to "knowing about" them...certainly not annoying in any way, just interesting as are the manner in which the words "schedule" and "aluminum" are pronounced and the use of the term "scheme" instead of "plan;"...every time I hear the latter i think someone is plotting against us.

Delocalisation = relocation
Typical, as in "typical restaurant", which is NOT the English for "ristorante tipico"
The misplaced gerund, as in "With demand from China expected rebounding this year", seems to crop up in every Euro-report I ever get.

Oh, I can relate to this!! Especially "cocooning" - right up there with "le fooding" as one of the most irritating words in the Frenglish language.

Functionality=function

For the French again
Footing=Jogging
Brushing=Hair styling
Lifting=Work out with weights
Parking=a car park

Irritatingly the American pronounciation of Aluminum is the original and correct..dammit!

Waring, I thought the French word "lifting" meant "facelift" - didn't know it referred to weights too.

I don't really understand the reference of the original post and it seems to imply some prior knowledge or conversation of what this is about. It just seems completely out of nowhere to me.

However, I think if someone is very upset by the term "viewgraph", that is very odd, as that has nothing to do with "eurospeak" and has been used in the US for many years. What's wrong with that term? People in my profession have and do use it all the time. It's used for transparent slides and has for a long time, whether they were made previously by some other software or now by Powerpoint.

Resto is just a shortening of a word for slang, and I don't do that so much, but there are many other examples of that in French.

Never heard of "perturbate" nor anyone saying it.

Le fooding has to be the worst...

Smoking = tux
Pension = B&B
Lastly and leastly = Last but not least
Mobbing = Harrassment

Sorry Christina - I'm just venting about the decline of the English language in Europe. One word on its own may not upset you - but my day sounds a little like this...

"Bonjour Misses X, can I perturbate you for a moment to look at my viewgraphs. There are some specificities of the modalities of the new methodology that are not transparant.

After our appointment I go to the fitness studio to practice sport and then I go to the resto with my collaborators to eat something on the terASSE. It is very branche. "

All or most of the words exist in English - but they are used somewhat differently in Eurospeak.

Collaborators = work colleagues (I always get nervous when I hear this one)

Short Quiz:

What do German speakers call their cell phones?

A. Mobile
B. Natel
C. Handy

(Two possibilities)

<i>Collaborators = work colleagues (I always get nervous when I hear this one) </i>

Hee hee! I get that one a lot at work too.

One of the funniest misuses of English I came across at work was when I worked as a translator for a large IT firm in Paris. For some bizarre reason (the company had no foreign subsidiaries), they insisted on using the English term &quot;Business Unit Managers&quot; to denote a certain category of managers. But to make it sound snappier, they preferred to use the abbreviation B.U.M. - pronounced bum.

In American English this is quite amusing (correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't bum = tramp?), but as a Brit I found it absolutely hilarious. When I did try and raise the issue with the B.U.M.s in question (trying to explain the impression it would give to English speaking clients), I was accused of being childish and told that anything could be made to sound rude!! I tried to explain that it wasn't simply a double entendre, but they were too attached to their B.U.M.s... So in the end I left them to it!

In fairness, is there a neutral English word for branche?

I'm sure I remember them using it back when &quot;with it&quot; was fashionable. And it seems to have survived, untouched by the stigma of being the previous generation's slang, as painlessly as Johnny Hallyday.

We have no BUMs here but we have BUSTs.

I vaguely remeber we had a CRAC team, the head of which was referred to as the Crack Head by the Brits and the Oirish.

I'm not sure anyone has a right to be concerned about &quot;the decline of the English language in Europe&quot; (unless you're speaking of England). If you are working in Europe, I think your employees are being accommodating to speak to you in English. Since I imagine it's not their native language, you might cut them a little slack.

At least they don't &quot;conversate&quot; with you, or any of a number of terms I might name that are commonly used by some Americans.

A lifting is a facelift, and a relooking is a makeover. Pensions have been around since long before B&amp;B's became popular.

I have never even heard of these terms, do I live in a cave or something?

Oooooh Toupary!
Yes, they deign to speak to me in English - they have to as we work through English - and I deign to speak to people here in French and German, bad Spanish and worse Italian. Thats not my point. The point is that this is not bad knowledge of English. These terms are accepted as Euroenglish and sometimes its impossible for a native English speaker to understand. Sometimes, when I correct these terms in written text, or try to make things a bit more understandable - I'm told by the French/German or whatever that I am incorrect. In fact they try to correct &quot;proper&quot; english here quite a bit. Sometimes unless you have a basic grasp of French and German you will have difficulty understanding &quot;English&quot; texts in Brussels.

Anyway, enough of the rant - I'll end on a funny note. I was out for a drink with an Italian friend the other evening and he was explaining that his new girlfriend was very sympathetic (=nice) but he was concerned as she has a very important nose. (Important = big)

Okay, Lawchick, at least you can laugh about it. Fortunately, knowing their languages helps you to understand what they're getting at. I have one French friend who speaks English very well, but his speech patterns are still French speech patterns. Knowing French has helped me to understand him at times.

It reminds me of a story I heard years ago of a Latin American who was trying to explain to an English speaker why he had no children. &quot;My wife is inconceivable.&quot; When he wasn't understood, he tried again. &quot;My wife is impregnable.&quot; Finally, frustrated, he said, &quot;You don't understand, my wife is unbearable.&quot;

The term &quot;lifting&quot; is certainly not exclusively Eurospeak since it has been used for years by serious bodybuilders in the US.

I have always hera the term &quot;viewgraph&quot; used to describe the actual machine which projects those transparencies onto a screen.

And then there is &quot;Amerospeak&quot; with terms such as

&quot;verbage&quot; instead of language

&quot;dialogueing together&quot; instead of speaking or conversing

&quot;point in time&quot; displacing all sorts of simpler terms

and my favorite: &quot;paradigm&quot; which when you look it up is another word for &quot;idea.&quot;

deplane - gets me

Hoo, boy, this can get confusing. When &quot;Tattoo(?)&quot; was yelling to &quot;Boss&quot; &quot;De plane. De Plane.&quot; he was telling &quot;Boss&quot; to get off the (de) plane? But &quot;de plane&quot; was in de air. Oh, well.