When French starts to sound like English native speakers feel confused

I am confused; and I do not think I am the only one. Sometimes I do not know which language I am speaking. 

There is French and there is English, I used to think, and never the twain shall meet. 

In a previous article I told how English is stuffed full of vocabulary derived from French, but I would still like to believe they are two distinct languages. 

One is ruled over by the Académie Française and the other by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (complemented by indignant letters to The Times about split infinitives). 

Read more: English-speakers share the funny mistakes they have made in French

The trouble is, that words are constantly travelling from one language to the other in an uncontrolled fashion and this distorts the verbal picture. 

As you will have noticed, a lot of English expressions are commonly used in French, as Anglicisms. 

The Académie does its best to prevent people using these and to apply the 1994 law pushed through by then Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon, to protect the purity of French.

Officially, there are wholesome alternatives to this invader terminology (such as “logiciel” for software or app and “courriel”, or message électronique for e-mail) but ordinary people stubbornly refuse to use them. 

As a result, the Académie is forced to accept that a high proportion of Anglo-Saxon arrivistes have permanently established themselves in French. 

Listen and you will hear plenty of examples. No one but a pedant these days says “fin de semaine” when “le week-end” rolls off the tongue with so much more ease. 

Who can resist referring to “un spoiler” (which, curiously, derives from Old French) which is so much snappier than “divulgâcheur”. 

And who is going to propose “un remue méninges” in a business meeting when everyone present knows they are talking about “le brainstorming”? 

Read more: Quand même: The French phrase for almost every occasion  

France's love of fake English

So far, so good. French takes an English form and uses it as if it were its own. Get over it.

What throws me is another category of words known as faux anglicisms. These look and sound like English words (even if they are pronounced with a French accent) and are assumed by French speakers to be imports but they are actually new coinages. 

By that I mean, you wouldn’t hear them in the UK or the US. They inhabit a strange linguistic no-person’s land. Often, they are intelligible to an English speaker but are not natural to say. 

A prime example is “rugbyman”. It sounds thoroughly authentic, but in English we talk of a “rugby player”. Similarly, “un camping” is fairly obviously what in English is a campsite or camping ground.

Others have meanings that you could guess at. If you are invited by colleagues to “un after-work” you know they are going for drinks when the office closes. 

A “snacking” can only be a fast food joint. Sometimes the context gives it away: “un lifting”, for example, is a facelift. 

Only with a few of these words do you need to take care: beware of “chips” which is close to the US meaning, but for a Briton would be “crisps” not chips (which are frites). 

Some faux anglicisms are unintelligible to Britons and Americans without a dictionary. How could we ever guess that “Catch” is the sport of All-in Wrestling; “Baby-Foot” is table football; “Ball-trap” is clay pigeon shooting; “footing” is jogging; a “smoking” is a dinner jacket; and a “dressing” is a walk-in wardrobe (or closet)? 

Occasionally, I have to admit, French improves on the English: “relooking”, meaning to renovate furniture to give it a new appearance, is worth sending over the Channel to be incorporated into English. Equally charming is the verb “snober” (to treat with disdain).

And then there’s “walkie-talkie”, which the French insist on calling “un talkie walkie” just because they can.