"This list is weirdly fascinating. It explains a lot about why EU documents read like some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare, where you're being commanded to do things that don't quite make any sense". Yonatan Zunger, chief architect, Google
"In un anno e mezzo a Bruxelles questo è il primo documento ufficiale europeo che mi ha fatto
finalement (scusatemi, enfin) sorridere." (sole24ore)
"Dem Einfallsreichtum der Brüsseler Beamten scheinen dabei nur wenig Grenzen gesetzt". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
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 (‘planification’, ‘to precise’ or ‘telematics’ for example) and words that are used with a meaning, often derived from other languages, that is not usually found in English dictionaries (‘coherent’ 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 (‘homogenise’, for example) ... read more.
