XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk   
      
   In article ,   
   Hibou   wrote:   
      
   >> I spend all my life in computing contexts, and have never heard anyone   
   >> say the word.  But then I had never heard anyone say "informatics"   
   >> until our department was renamed to that.  Both sound like the sort of   
   >> made-up English found in EU technical documents.   
      
   >EU? 'Performant' is an unremarkable adjective in French:   
      
   As is "informatique".  But we probably wouldn't have picked them up   
   from the French directly.  The EU has in recent times been the route   
   into English for many such words, as documents written in one language   
   are translated into those of the other member countries.   
      
   (English is of course still an official EU language.)   
      
   -- Richard   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)