"The nature and genius of the German language"

This is the name of a mammoth tome published by philologist Daniel Boileau in 1840.

Can't say I've read it all but, at one point, he draws attention to the fact that words in German are often cleverly formed by uniting two known ideas.

Listening to the radio, I heard "nun ein Ausschnitt von...", literally a "cut-out". And now, an excerpt from...

In English, we have "excerpt", formed from ex- (out of) and carpere (pluck).

Any German speaker would recognise the two stand-alone words aus and Schnitt. It's harder to spot "carpere"...

I do snow...

As many an English native speaker knows, we have lost control of the English language. Words keep cropping up everywhere and while we recognise the form, the substance has changed.

Classic Frenglish examples are, of course, le lifting or le brushing (a simple blow-dry). Incidentally, the Germans have scored a point for us by taking the French verb friser and coming up with the noun Friseur (hairdresser or barber - NB: Coiffeur tends to be used in Switzerland).

I once asked a Swiss friend if she skied and she replied Non, je fais du snow.

She makes snow...

Nonsense to ears attuned to English. The word snowboard has been shortened to snow by the youth of today. Having the word neige in French ensures there is no confusion.

So, as Hank the Yank would say, "What's the takeaway?" (Two cod and chips plus a pot of mushy peas, please).

Annual report season is upon us and, as ever, the word reporting is ubiquitous. Do we blindly translate it as "reporting" or "reported information", "company data", etc. The context will decide.

Still, let's be careful out there (!) when translating English words that have been hijacked by other languages.