As a French native who has been living in the UK for 20 years, but regularly goes back to her homeland, I often notice how quickly language evolves to accommodate new words (an unnerving phenomenon for a translator who tries to keep up-to-date with cultural and linguistic developments in their mother tongue). Of course, the widespread use of the Internet is often to blame – or praise, depending on your opinion!
I have started to compile a list of words and expressions that, as far as I am aware, did not exist in the French language a mere 10, five or even one year ago.
- ‘S’il n’y a pas de chimie entre deux personnes’ – the love chemistry is real, but it’s hard for a child of the 80s like me to feel the romance when all that comes to mind is science labs and classroom Benson burners.
- ‘Cette décision a ruiné [tel parti politique]’ – directly taken from the English verb ‘to ruin’, this tends to replace previous French terms such as anéantir, décimer, causé la déroute/des ravages, etc.
- ‘des médicaments pour que je sois confortable’ = another example directly modelled on the English language. Many seem to forget that to be ‘confortable’, you used to need a nice lap (for someone else to sit on).
- ‘Une boîte de nuit iconique de Beyrouth’ = adieu, ‘emblématique’, whose 4 syllables clearly made it too long to avoid being consigned to oblivion.
- The ever more popular ‘inspirant’, one of the most annoying developments in recent linguistics for a long-term translator who spent their career trying to find a suitable translation for the English ‘inspiring’, only to see this eyesore rise like a phoenix out of the ashes of a bonfire of French dictionaries.
- A farmer, a profession you would think would remain impervious to the Web’s latest trends, who states he feels ‘concerné’ by the arrival of Asian giant hornets in France, in the sense of being worried/concerned rather than feeling like the topic is relevant to him (which it is).
- Finally, the beauty that is “réels”, a pleasingly-French pronunciation for ‘reels’, or short format videos. Careful! Contrary to what this neologism seems to imply, these are often not actually ‘real’ but fake.
- Other recent finds include "Ozempic fait vraiment le job", "J'ai un profil procrastinateur", and "Le bébé doit sentir que c'est secure". I will update this list as I go so don't hesitate to comment or return here later for more examples and discussion!
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