&gt;&gt; The same one who came up with &quot;Au jour d&#x27;aujourd&#x27;hui&quot;.<p>&gt; That one is indeed beyond stupid. And even &quot;aujourd&#x27;hui&quot; is long and strangely build. Its english counterpart &quot;today&quot; on the other hand couldn&#x27;t be shorter.<p>You might find this tidbit of information interesting regarding « Aujourd&#x27;hui » :
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;french.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;727&#x2F;evolution-du-mot-aujourdhui" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;french.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;727&#x2F;evolution-du-m...</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fr.wiktionary.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;aujourd%E2%80%99hui" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fr.wiktionary.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;aujourd%E2%80%99hui</a><p>If you don&#x27;t read French - pardon me if you do - it states that « aujourd&#x27;hui » is already a pleonasm where « hui » stands for « today », « this day ».<p>&gt; I&#x27;m confused by your statement. Especially on &#x27;book english&#x27;. Where else would you find proper, complete English ? Maybe you meant that today&#x27;s litterature is poor ?<p>My mistake. I should have been more precise and stated that I was referring to the current state of popular YA literature. I read a Stross book and Ready Player One this summer and even as a non-native speaker I found some weird grammar (I confirmed it by asking a native later). But it&#x27;s true I also find today&#x27;s literature quite poor (at least the one making the headline).<p>&gt; And even concerning &#x27;internet english&#x27; I find that in places like HackerNews or Reddit one enjoys a high level (from my limited point of view) of language. And, returning to my point, I find that equivalent people (in this case middle-class higher-educated STEM) use a strinkingly broader lexicon on the english side compared to the french.<p>I believe it&#x27;s a bias and we are (you, me and surely others) in a kind of bubble. I notice my English grammar is getting less and less good over time. So I believe I make a lot of mistakes that people won&#x27;t correct - out of kindness or tolerance - and that I certainly don&#x27;t catch them anymore [0]. For instance there are more and more sentences in posts I can&#x27;t figure out because the punctuation makes no sense or a verb is clearly missing. HN being a polite place I don&#x27;t correct the author or ask for a clarification (edit: and the author could be on mobile and correct it later). I can&#x27;t be the only one who reacts that way though.<p>It surely has to do with the fact HN - and the Internet at large in the Western world - is an international crowd and non-natives end up using some kind of common English. Native English speakers sometimes can easily deduce what is a person&#x27;s native language from (written) grammatical or vocabulary quirks but I couldn&#x27;t (except for Indians, go figure).<p>I also believe the same thing happens with my native language: Internet is lowering its users&#x27; language capabilty.<p>With that said HN is the only place I know of where comments are both interesting, well thought out and well written. I am pretty sure most of us come here for the comments.<p>[0] Which means that as time goes by I restrain myself from making complex sentences. Which kind of bothers me because I love making them in french :].