ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) has its own language that is foreign to anyone who does not live in the Brussels bubble. There is, the lawyers' language – all the technical, legal terms. There is also the EU jargon that politicians, officials and Brussels-based journalists use in their day-to-day communication. EU jargon is a hodgepodge of the member states' languages and a result of the EU's consensus culture. All official EU terms exist in all official EU languages, but the jargon does not. As English and French are the main EU languages, the EU jargon is often closer to the way normal people talk in English or in French, but sound more foreign in other languages. People from small countries working in the EU institutions tend to use the English jargon, which makes it difficult for journalists to know what term to use when writing the story. If the English speakers watch out for the EU Frenglish, be wary of Anglicisms.
