My former colleague Colin Randall was, and still is, the style guru for The National. But as a French speaker, he’s keen to point out that English isn’t the only language that falls afoul of dubious changes:

My kindred spirits at the wonderfully named Académie de la Carpette Anglaise have, in each of the past 10 years, awarded the “civic indignity” of the English Carpet prize to the members of the French establishment judged to have acquiesced most deplorably in the use of English to the detriment of French.

Last year, for example, the minister of higher education and research, Valérie Pécresse, was awarded the prize as punishment for her declaration that with French in decline, it was necessary to break remaining taboos on the use of English within EU institutions. A special international award went to a police force in the French-speaking part of Switzerland for calling itself the “United Police of Geneva”.

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