Nearly 29% of US dictionary terms have French origins

Perhaps in an attempt to reclaim some national pride following France’s defeat by England in July’s football World Cup third-place play-off (deemed a booby prize by all accounts, what the French would call a lot de consolation), Le Figaro proudly cited a survey by language-learning platform Babbel.

The newspaper is a proud defender of the French language in the face of the oft-cited (here at least) slow creep of Anglicisms used by French speakers. 

For once, there was some good news for lovers of la langue française.

“Nearly 29% of the words in the American Merriam-Webster dictionary are of French origin, an increase of seven percentage points since 1828,” boasted the strapline.

“Le français regorge d’anglicismes, certes, mais l’anglais est également truffé de gallicismes,” it continued. (French is certainly full of Anglicisms, but English is also rife with Gallicisms.)

Furthermore, “terms such as ‘entrepreneur’, ‘silhouette’, ‘genre’ and ‘sommelier’ are now part of everyday English-speaking vocabulary.”

Citing Babbel, it added: “This influence reflects the historical role of French in cultural, artistic, gastronomic and economic exchanges around the world.”

The British Council, Le Figaro said, has previously pointed out that more than 10,000 French words became established in the United Kingdom in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066, while a 1973 study of 80,000 words from the Shorter Oxford Dictionary established that 28.3% of English vocabulary derived directly from French.

Still, I feel that most French people would have preferred a World Cup win for their beloved Les Bleus.