If you’re French, it seems that you shouldn’t be using so much English in pursuit of your goals. It’s a feature of an active language, that it will readily assimilate words from others.

With roughly one-third of the English language being derived from French, according to some estimates, it's no surprise that there are a few words that didn't exactly remain true to their original ...

Tim Harford talks to Dr Beth Malory, lecturer in English Linguistics at University College London, who explains why so many words derived from French have ended up in English.

That is because English has taken the word for “underwear” and applied it exclusively to fancy and high-end undergarments because, you know, anything French is luxury. 8 of 20 Hamburger (German) ...

“English has always borrowed words from ... From modern languages, words derived from French knocked out the most final-rounders. From living languages, it was German and Italian that lead ...