A recent exchange of correspondence in the FT made me laugh. First came an article entitled 'The unavoidable English language', discussing the spread of English vocabulary into other languages. Within a couple of weeks, the following two letters had appeared on the letters' pages:

From Mr Florian Lennert.
Sir, With only a little schadenfreude I read the fascinating article “The unavoidable English language” (September 24) regarding the takeover of the global linguistic hinterland by the wanderlustig Anglo-Saxon language. This phenomenon clearly is a welcome manifestation of the zeitgeist and serves as the leitmotif of a contemporary weltanschauung. Clearly, a language blitzkrieg would not be desirable, would create a lot of angst and would lead to a not so gemütlich lebensraum for all. So we language doppelgänger should accept this diktat of realpolitik and not abseil into weltschmerz with a rucksack full of schnapps. Instead we should celebrate the glitzy gestalt of English, our ersatz language of choice.

And subsequently:

From Mr Jem Eskenazi (not a nom de plume).
Sir, I read Florian Lennert´s excellent letter (October 1) while waiting for my fiancée who was shopping for some lingerie (not too risqué, but with a certain je ne sais quoi and just a hint of décolletage), from a cute boutique hidden in a cul-de-sac in our neighbourhood (a sense of savoir-faire makes keeping one´s eyes glued to the FT de rigueur in such a milieu, lest one appear gauche or make a faux pas).

While having a tête-à-tête with her afterwards in a gourmet restaurant (we ate à la carte; she had the soupe de jour as entrée and I had the escargots, which were a tour de force only bested by the plat de résistance, the courgette soufflé – the raison-d´être of this niche establishment, founded by a young entrepreneur, that reinstates the joie de vivre in the most depressed soul), we wondered whether your writer was right in giving a “budget” as an example of an English word used in French.

Au contraire, it is a French word – bougette – adopted by the English during the 15th century. C´est la vie!