As a native English speaker, I've inherited a very chaotic perspective on language: "correct" language is defined by usage, loan words are less "loaned" and more like the mandolin someone lent me 20 years ago- mine now. New words can be ginned up on the fly, and parts of speech are just a suggestion.

Many other languages don't take this approach. French, for example, is defined by the Académie Française. There is a standard, and officially correct way to use French. In programming terms, we could say that French is C, while English is Perl.

A good example of French is that, years ago, as email was becomming a thing, many French speakers just used "email"- a very anglophile phrasing. So the Académie sat down, and decided to introduce the correct French way of saying it: courriel. Also acceptable, the less pithy message electronique.

Now, as I understand it, your average person-on-the-street will still say "email", but for official communications, courriel is considered more appropriate.

This brief linguistic journey brings us to today's code sample, from Seb, which is maybe not a WTF, but still makes me laugh:

private String supprimerEspaceDevantEtDerriere(final String variable){
  return variable.trim();
}

Seb adds: "supprimerEspaceDevantEtDerriere is translated as DeleteSpaceBeforeAndAfter".

Now, this is, in every way, shape and form, more cumbersome and confusing than the method it wraps. Certainly more annoying to type, in any language. But- it's very French. I mean, in sheer quantity of French, it's a lot more words than enlever, which (in my absolute ignorance of French) seems a more direct translation.

Obviously, more is better- which strikes me as a much more American perspective than a French one.

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