Reports on English being the death of other languages have been greatly exaggerated. Yet, English words keep on popping up.

In 2010, China banned the use of foreign words, and the use of English in particular, in all Chinese-language media—print, broadcast and online. The government cited the “damage” foreign words were doing to the “purity” of the Chinese language.

In 2014, the French Academy added the English words “news” and “spoiler” to their list of banned words and encouraged French speakers to use the perfectly good French-language equivalents. Just a year prior, the French Academy’s decision to ban the word “hashtag” from French vocabulary had raised a lot of eyebrows. Spoiler alert: the ban didn’t work. “Hashtag” is the word of choice in French.

Now, the pandemic has given linguists and other concerned, non-English-speaking parties even more reason to despise the sprinkling of English words into their native tongue. In a recent article from The Guardian, Greek linguist Georgios Babiniotis decried the flood of English words into Greek vocabulary, such as “lockdown,” “curfew,” “rapid tests” and “click-and-collect.”

Of course, the pandemic didn’t start the phenomenon of English words peppering other languages (like any guest, sometimes welcome and sometimes not so much), but the pandemic does appear to have accelerated the frequency.

For a while now, a large percentage of new vocabulary from the worlds of technology, business, science and advertising have originated in English. The reasons for that range from practical to cultural to their perceived chic factor. Consider the words “Wi-Fi” and “deadline,” for example, which have a certain je ne sai quoi.

Sometimes English words and phrases are translated or adapted into the local language and the adaptation becomes widely adopted, but also sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes the English word just sticks, and that’s where the problem lies (and the complaints originate).

As in all things though, moderation is key. I think that sometimes you just have to let people say “Wi-Fi” and “hashtag,” if they want to, instead of accès sans fil à l’Internet and mot-dièse, while recognizing that le week-end and le jogging are probably a bridge too far.

In the meantime, I’ll continue helping speakers of different languages to communicate with each other, especially when it counts most.

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