The French have a recent addition to their language.  And the word is “courriel”. 

Nothing that unusual, after all new words get created every day. But this word “courriel” is the French translation of “email”. So what they have done is taken a word that everyone across the world understands intuitively and made it into a completely different word in French that confounds all, including many French. Mountain villages in India understand “email”. Entire cities in China understand “email. Remote tribes in Papua New Guinea that have never had contact with the outside world understand “email”. 

OK, so I am making the last one up, but in an age when we are all striving for global understanding and clarity it is a bit of a nonsense to go around making up totally unnecessary words that just confuse people. 

How would the French feel if we started in on French terms that exist in the English language.  Maybe “déjà vu” could become “seenfore”, and “a la carte” would be translated to “silly prices”.  Although I am not sure you could ever translate “menage a trois” to anything meaningful outside of France.

And if the French need to start making up words then all they needed to do was respond to George W Bush when he reminded the world that “the French have no word for entrepreneur”.

Julian