Comment by euroderf
4 days ago
OT: This page uses the term "Learnings" a lot. As a Murrcan in tech comms in Europe, I always corrected this to something else. But, well, is it some sort of Britishism ? Or is it some weird internet usage that is creeping into general usage ?
Likewise for "Trainings". Looks weird to Murrcan eyes but maybe it's a Britishism.
From where I sit (in Norway), it seems to have become standard corporate-speak in any company where English is widely used. They've even started using the directly translated noun "læring" in Norwegian, too. It's equally silly. Both variants are usually spoken by the type of manager who sets out all future directions based on whatever their LinkedIn circle is talking about. It's thus a very valuable word, because the rash it elicits lets me know what people to avoid working with.
I'm not sure if the people who use this word think it's proper English. They rarely seem to care what words mean anyway.
The big question is why is it not proper english, when "teachings" is?
That's a good question. But it's not like English is at all logical in this way ;)
The author is obviously an overcompensating French speaker naively going for the more English-sounding word, i.e. "learnings" instead of "lesson", in this instance an overly literal translation of French "enseignements" as in "tirer des enseignements" meaning "learn a lesson", but since you can also say "tirer des leçons" in French with the same meaning and root, it's just a case of choosing the wrong side haphazardly on the Anglo-Saxon/Latin-Norman-French divide of the English vocabulary, sheep/mutton ox/beef pairs and the like.
Interesting theory! And "Trainings"?
"Learnings" is a piece of corpspeak derived from Indian English. I believe "trainings" also has the same origin.
Please elucidate! Maybe a URL?
It's pure corporatese.
It's not a Britishism particularly. My sense was it is coming in part from Indian Standard English but it may well be European english mistranslation. I rather like it, actually. Not least because it is the reciprocal of "teachings", which is long established usage.
"What are the asks" and "what's the offer" are turning up much more than I'd like, and they annoy me. But not as much as other Americanisms: "concerning" meaning "a cause for concern", "addicting" when the word they are looking for is "addictive", and the rather whiny-sounding "cheater" when the word "cheat" works fine. These things can meet the proverbial fiery end, along with "performant" and "revert back" (the latter of which which is an Americanism sourced from Indian English that is perhaps the only intrusion from Indian English I dislike; generally I think ISE is warm and fun and joyful.)
The BBC still put "concerning" in quotes, because the UK has not yet given up the fight, and because people like me used to write in to ask "concerning what?" I had a very fun reply from a BBC person about this, once. So I assume they are still there, forcing journalists to encase this abuse in quotation marks.
Ultimately all our bugbears are personal, though, because English is the ultimate living language, and I don't think Americans have any particular standing to complain about any of them! :-)
ETA: Lest anyone think I am complaining more about Americanisms than other isms, I would just like to say that one of my favourite proofs of the extraordinary flexibility of English is the line from Mean Girls: "She doesn't even go here!"
The other day the varying meaning of "lolly" came up in a discussion. In the UK, when it's not a slang term for money, a "lolly" is either a sticky sweet (candy) on a stick, or a frozen treat on a stick. From "lollipop" and then a shortening of "ice lolly".
In Australia, a "lolly" is more or less any non-chocolate-based sweet (candy).
British people find this confusing in Australia, but this is a great example of a word whose meaning was refined in the UK long after we started transporting people to Australia. Before that, a "lollipop" was simply a boiled treacle sweet that might or might not have been on a stick; some time after transportation started, as the industrialised confectionary industry really kicked off, the British English meaning of the word slowly congealed around the stick, and the Australian meaning did not.
I'm English and "learnings" is one piece of corporate speak that really annoys me. It just means "lessons", for people apparently unaware that noun already exists. British corpo drones seem to need their verb/noun pairs to be identical like
action/action learnings/learning trainings/training asks/ask strategising/strategy
I gotta say, of all the corpo speak things, the whole verb/noun normalizing thing is maybe the least distasteful to me.
Not that I particularly like it, but compared to all the other stuff it at least seems tolerable. The penchant for deflecting questions and not answering directly, the weasel wording done to cover your ass, the use of words to mean something totally other than the word (e.g. "I take full responsibility" meaning "I will have no personal or professional repercussions"), etc. Some of it seems like it comes out of executive coaching, some of it definitely comes out of fear of lawsuits.
"In the end I did what I believed was right" meaning "I concede I did not do the right thing but accept no blame".
Mind you there are so many expressions like this and we British are masters of them, like "with the greatest of respect,", which conveys meaning slightly more severe than "you are a total fucking idiot and".
lettuce not forget strategerise/strategery
I like to think it dates from 2000 when we had The Teaches of Peaches.
Teach the pain away...