Expressions

This part is of course more tricky, as English is not my mother tongue. However, I keep wondering why English speakers (as well as French speakers in their own language, by the way) tend to use the complicated word instead or the good old English word.

There may be a few good reasons to use the "complicated word":

• Poetic license. But I don't write poetry everyday.
• There is no other simple word to express this. This is a good reason. However, there are few concepts, outside of science and absconse philosophy, that require complicated words to be expressed accurately.
• Makes me look smarter. This is the most probable reason. However, only simple souls, who don't really understand the complicated word, will think you're smart.
• Don't want to repeat the same word (said my American friend Barbara). Well, in this case, just try to be more concise.

Cases where the "complicated word" may be justified also include legal matters, where that word may have a very precise meaning.

Some of the examples below are blatantly popular, others are less.

• Why do you say commence when you can say begin ?
• Why do you say comprehend when you can say understand ?
• Why do you say in lieu of when you can say instead of ?
• Why do you say "to accomplish our mission", rather than just "to fulfill it", or possibly "achieve it".
• Don't utilize "utilize", use "use" instead. ;-)

A particularly bad one:

• Why do you say "it impacts our business" when you can say "it affects it"? In his 2012 novel IN ONE PERSON, John Irving writes: "When I hear the same people use impact as a verb, I want to throw up!"

The next one is an americanism, but created by someone who forgot the beauty of simple English language:

• "Prior to the end of the year", instead of just "before year end".

We in business are permanently reminded by our management to do only "value added" things. When speaking or writing, we should also check (or is it "verify") that the language we use does not contain "non value added" expressions.
A very specific feature of the English language is the existence of two words to express the same thing: one of Germanic origin, one of Latin origin. In most cases, the Germanic word is more natural (e.g. before vs. prior to), and the Latin word more sophisticated.
I asked my British and American colleagues what was the difference between "drinking water" and "potable water". They said they didn't see any.
For us foreigners with a Latin-based language, the Latin word is very easy to understand, but I doubt very much that the English speaker uses it to make our life easy. On the other hand, the same Latin word (I mean the "complicated word") will be difficult to understand for speakers with a different culture, such as Asians. Many English speakers don't realise this. Personally, I prefer "drinking" to "potable" water. It just sounds simpler.
A few other couples:

Profound	Deep
Facile	Easy
Aubergine	Eggplant
Sorbet	Sherbet
Apartment	Flat

Others can express this much better: see Orwell and King below.

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Nouns as verbs

The English language seems to be very flexible in using nouns as verbs. The dictionary contains hundreds of words that can be used as a verb or as a noun, such as age, blur, blush, board, coach, cruise, fire, help, list, note, swim. The list is almost endless. Interestingly, most of these words are very short. Examples: age as a verb: "This wine is ageing particularly well"; swim as a noun: "Let's have a nice swim before lunch".

Nevertheless, when the Human Resource Manager (I hate this term in any language) of my company sends a note saying:

"She will transition into her new role immediately"

I can't help being shocked. To start with, this is a barbarism: the word "transition" does not exist in the dictionary as a verb. Secondly, the expression is ugly; but you will tell me this is a matter of taste. Thirdly, all words ending in "-tion" are nouns, and originate from latine words that are nouns as well. There are only rare examples of words in "-tion" used as nouns and verbs, one coming to my mind is "partition", which has a quite technical meaning.

To me, this neologism is not necessary. The HR manager could as well have said: "She is moving into her new job immediately".

You are not going to say "Romeo passions Juliet", are you?

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To leverage

My Collins English dictionary knows only the noun "leverage" and defines it as: 1) the action of a lever 2) the mechanical advantage gained by employing a lever 3) power to accomplish something; strategic advantage. My Collins Dictionary is the 1979 edition. The on-line Webster dictionary has an entry for the verb "to leverage", defines it as "to use for gain or exploit" and gives the date of 1957 for its first appearance. Another example of the "noun as verb" trend shown just above.

Today, my company hardly issues a press release without using that verb at least once, preferably several times. The problem is that verb is so vague that everybody assigns it a different meaning. If you visit multilingual internet forums, you will see that we non-native speakers of the English language are struggling to translate that verb. My conclusion: leverage is another of these buzzwords that have little more merit than express their speakers' vanity and confuse their audience. See my link "Corporate lingo" below.

Problematik

Warum hört man (scheinbar nur in Deutschland) immer wieder das Wort "Problematik" wenn ein gewöhnliches Problem gemeint wird? Neuerdings habe ich auch "Thematik" gehört, wo "Thema" eigentlich genügt hätte.
Ein weiteres Beispiel von "trendy language": siehe Larry King (auf Englisch) unten.
Seit ca. 2003 haben beide Wörter Problematik und Thematik, dazu noch im Plural, auch die französische Journalistensprache infiziert...

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Es macht keinen Sinn

Ein typischer Anglicismus. Bis vor fünfzig Jahren existierte der Ausdruck gar nicht (Grafik anklicken). Korrekt ist "Es hat keinen Sinn", oder "Es ergibt keinen Sinn".