{"id":30142,"date":"2016-12-31T09:28:15","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T14:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=30142"},"modified":"2016-12-31T10:05:36","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T15:05:36","slug":"eu-english-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=30142","title":{"rendered":"EU English again"},"content":{"rendered":"

A.S. sent in a link to the 2016 edition of\u00a0Misused English words and expressions in EU publications<\/em><\/a>, from the European Court of Auditors<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Over the years, the European institutions have developed a vocabulary that differs from that of any recognised form of English. It includes words that do not exist or are relatively unknown to native English speakers outside the EU institutions and often even to standard spellcheckers\/grammar checkers (\u2018planification<\/i>\u2019, \u2018to precise<\/i>\u2019 or \u2018telematics<\/i>\u2019 for example) and words that are used with a meaning, often derived from other languages, that is not usually found in English dictionaries (\u2018coherent<\/i>\u2019 being a case in point). Some words are used with more or less the correct meaning, but in contexts where they would not be used by native speakers (\u2018homogenise<\/i>\u2019, for example). Finally, there is a group of words, many relating to modern technology, where users (including many native speakers) \u2018prefer\u2019 a local term (often an English word or acronym) to the one normally used in English-speaking countries, which they may not actually know, even passively (\u2018GPS<\/i>\u2019 or \u2018navigator<\/i>\u2019 for \u2018satnav<\/i>\u2019, \u2018SMS<\/i>\u2019 for \u2018text<\/i>\u2019, \u2018to send an SMS to<\/i>\u2019 for \u2018to text<\/i>\u2019, \u2018GSM<\/i>\u2019 or even \u2018Handy<\/i>\u2019 for \u2018mobile<\/i>\u2019 or \u2018cell phone<\/i>\u2019, internet <\/i>\u2018key<\/i>\u2019, \u2018pen<\/i>\u2019 or \u2018stick<\/i>\u2019 for \u2018dongle<\/i>\u2019, \u2018recharge<\/i>\u2019 for \u2018top-up\/top up<\/i>\u2019, \u2018beamer<\/i>\u2019 for projector etc.). The words in this last list have not been included because they belong mostly to the spoken language.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact we covered the 2013 edition of this document \u00a0(\"In case of pigs and poultry…<\/a>\", 5\/12\/2013).But it's worth citing it again, for those who are might be in need of a little lexicological cheer this New Year's Eve.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My favorite of the cited lexical innovations\u00a0is comitology<\/em>, about which the 2016 report says<\/p>\n

There are 1,253 instances of the word \u2018comitology\u2019 in EUR-Lex. However, not only does the word not exist outside the EU institutions, but it is formed from a misspelt stem (committee has two \u2018m\u2019s and two \u2018t\u2019s) and a suffix that means something quite different (ology\/ logy means \u2018the science of\u2019 or \u2018the study of\u2019). It is therefore highly unlikely that an outsider would be able to deduce its meaning, even in context.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wikipedia explains<\/a> that<\/p>\n

Comitology in the European Union refers to a process by which EU law is modified or adjusted and takes place within \"comitology committees\" chaired by the European Commission. The official term for the process is committee procedure<\/strong>. Comitology committees are part of the EU's broader system of committees that assist in the making, adoption, and implementation of EU laws.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as I pointed out with respect to the 2013 edition,\u00a0the OED has an entry for comitology<\/em>, glossed as<\/p>\n

Originally: the study of the organization and functions of committees. In later use also: committees and their practices considered collectively, now esp. in the context of the implementation of European Union legislation and policy.<\/p>\n

with citations going back to 1956.<\/p>\n

1956<\/strong> \u00a0 C. N. Parkinson in Economist<\/em> 3 Nov. 395\/1 \u00a0 The Life cycle of the committee is so basic to our knowledge of current affairs that it is surprising that more attention has not been paid to the science of comitology.<\/p>\n

Yes, THAT C.N. Parkinson<\/a>, whose command of the English language is (in my opinion) not to be questioned. And as I noted in 2013, 1956 is well before the 1992 Maastricht Treaty — but I failed in the earlier post\u00a0to underline the authoritative nature of both the author and the publisher of the foundational quotation.<\/p>\n

I haven't been able to locate the 1956 Economist article, but the same material seems to appear as Chapter 4, \"Directors and Councils, or Coefficient of Inefficiency\", in the\u00a01957 work Parkinson's Law<\/em><\/a>, which begins<\/p>\n

THE LIFE CYCLE of the committee is so basic to our knowledge of current \u00a0affairs that it is surprising more attention has not been paid to the \u00a0science of comitology. The first and most elementary principle of this science is that a committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: \u00a0it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn. Only those who bear this principle in mind can make real headway in understanding the structure and history of modern government. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Committees, it is nowadays accepted, fall broadly into two categories,\u00a0those (a) from which the individual member has something to gain; and those \u00a0(b) to which the individual member merely has something to contribute. \u00a0Examples of the B group, however, are relatively unimportant for our \u00a0purpose; indeed some people doubt whether they are committees at all. It is \u00a0from the more robust A group that we can learn most readily the principles \u00a0which are common (with modifications) to all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Parkinson<\/a>\u00a0died on March 9, 1993, just about a year after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty<\/a>. But we can pretend that\u00a0his spirit\u00a0has been able to enjoy watching the past 25 years of comitological evolution, perhaps in company with Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli and Vifredo Pareto.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Update — As evidence of my own comitological expertise, I note that in a former life, after serving for several months on a committee to plan and implement a \"Technology Portfolio Fair\", which\u00a0featured selected company researchers giving well-rehearsed demos of recent innovations to a crowd of line-organization vice presidents, I was\u00a0appointed to a committee whose task was to \"offer advice\u00a0on the methodology for prioritizing the feedback\" from that event. It's possible that at some subsequent point, a methodology was chosen for prioritizing the feedback, and that the feedback was duly prioritized. It's even possible that some actions were eventually taken based\u00a0on that prioritized feedback. But before the fate of our methodological advice was revealed, I had moved on to another life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.S. sent in a link to the 2016 edition of\u00a0Misused English words and expressions in EU publications, from the European Court of Auditors: Over the years, the European institutions have developed a vocabulary that differs from that of any recognised form of English. It includes words that do not exist or are relatively unknown to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30142"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30149,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142\/revisions\/30149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}