EU English Misuses POLL

jesus. i unpick this kind of deeply engrained bloated jargon for a living - i've always imagined the eu must be a whole other frontier but i guess i couldn't have imagined this. sharing with some colleagues now - will have a proper read later.

"Fiche is a useful word, but it is French."

planification and comitology are amazing

fairly strongly reminded of scientology, as i read this.

disappointed to see anatine animals overlooked

seems to be predominately romance language words and terms directly converted into english, or in the case of planification and fiche, for example, just french words used in english.

'conditionality' and (albeit with a slightly diff meaning) 'competences' have infected the language of UK civil servants pretty thoroughly now. So, I'm voting planification.

In the example below, the author intended to say that the fleet adjustment schemes provided for the scrapping of 367 vessels. What he actually says is that they predict it.

xp well at least the UK foresees the formulation of a solution to that problem in a couple years

fiche = fish/ceviche hybrid, banned in eu due to genetically modified food regulations

is that kind of like how pastrami is a salami / pasta hybrid, bred specifically for jewish deli sandwiches

makes sense, explains a lot

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this is tremendous, sorry i missed it

Comitology robbed

It should perhaps be noted that this word is also used, equally incomprehensibly, by the IMF.

I hear "planification" pretty often from people who's first language is French.

I guess it's a word that sounds plausibly enough like an English language word and since people always get what they're saying they rarely get corrected.

A heavy financial envelope shipped to your house each month.

'Actorness' is kind of amazing.

Flicking through the full document linked in Tombot's initial post - this is pretty interesting. Was slightly surprised to see 'budget line' come up as one of the impugned usages. In my work (finance dept. for an agency of the Scottish Govt.) we use this all the time and it would never have occurred to me that it's a usage that has spread from EU documentation, or that it's seen as notably odd or confusing. *shrug*

A 'control', in the sense of a procedural safeguard is another one that we use all the time & would never have struck me as out-of-the-ordinary (at least in the context of an office admin. type of environment).

I note in passing that the author of the document clearly had an absolute blast writing it.