In particular because I was once very close to someone working in some UE-related organization in Brussels. They routinely complained about the EU having its own English, mentioning the use of "persons" where "people" would be more correct. This use is not mentioned in this publication, maybe "persons" is actually fine-ish.
I can see how many of these mistakes could come from the French language. Ah ah. Whoops. Sorry! :-) For instance, "foresee" used to mean "plan" where it really means "predict". I never made the mistake because I never made the connection myself, but in French "prévoir" indeed means both things.
I wonder how much French being used in Brussels has influenced this. But I guess many European languages are similar to French for many of these things.
Maybe some of these misuses are a testimony of the complexity of English, like the uncountable words, the prepositions or the usage rules of "allow".
Maybe English could adopt some of these uses that seem convenient. Like, "transpose" instead of "incorporate into".
And yes, I cringe a bit whenever I see "actually" used to mean "currently". It happens all the time.
I guess English has its peculiarities in each area where it is spoken, and Europe is not an exception to this…
And I mean, a big chunk of the English vocabulary is already French, we might as well continue the trend x)
also, the english used by the EU is sometimes far more easier to understand for people who are not native english speakers but have english as a second or third language. Mainly because it uses words "wrong" according to english, but it makes sense in most latin/german based languages. (actual is a good example of this for instance).
British english especially can have some weird vocabulary which is hard to use if one is not actually from britiain and understands the implied meaning of the words.
adequate is a good example of this for instance.
according to british english, adequate means that is barely doable/good enough, while in most german/latin based languages. Adequate means that it is satisfactory.
I cannot use the word "transpose" to mean "incorporate into". Perhaps with the help of one or more additional words, like "transpose into"? For me, "transpose" by itself does not contain the separate or combined meanings of "incorporate" or "into".
As a German native speaker reading the first few examples this just sounds a lot like literal translations from German that I hear a lot of German speakers use when their English level isn’t that advanced (as I often perceive it to be the case for politicians as well) or only used at work and not gained from using/being exposed to English in native/cultural contexts:
Actor – Aktoren (commonly used fancy word in German government communication)
Actorness (not a direct translation but very common in German to make any noun into a different one through pre-/suffixes)
Actual – aktuell (means current and definitely not actual)
Adequate – adequat (means appropriate and definitely not adequate)
Thanks for that! EU "English" seems to be a hybrid of an English lexicon and a French lexicon. I got as far as 'C', and so far I haven't seen one usage that wasn't either misleading or just plain wrong.
