Franglais has a long and noble history in England, probably dating back to the day after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when, I feel sure, Saxon courtiers of the slain King Harold, made peace with Duke William and offered him a “right royal bienvenu”.
In Private Eye, the tradition is kept alive with contributions from the late “Kilometres Kington” including this reported exchange between President Macron and a gilet-jaune:
Macron: Vraiment, la Grande Bretagne est mad comme un serpent! Après le Brexit, il y aura le trouble sur les rues.
Protesteur: … de Paris?
Macron: Non, non. De Londres! Le Royaume Uni est un pays divisé et toxique.
Protesteur: Ah, Monsieur le Pot, ou should that être Président Kettle?
But Franglais – as distinct from the centuries-long absorption of French words and phrases into the English language, such as restaurant, menu, silhouette, cliché, depot and the one I’m sure you have all seen before many times, déjà vu – is essentially a form of verbal pantomime. It is in the opposite direction, from English into French, that the phenomenon properly exists today.
