Is "legalese" a thing in languages other than English?

Question

The idea of legalese needs little introduction. An archaic professional jargon that has developed in the English-speaking world over hundreds of years, it has been largely preserved and sustained by lawyers both due to inertia and a desire to speak very specifically about legal concepts.

My question is, does the concept of legalese exist in the legal practices of non-English speaking legal systems? For example, are contracts in China written using archaic Confucian phraseology and obsolete characters that non-lawyers largely do not understand or study in school? Do Israeli lawyers file court pleadings written in quasi-Biblical Hebrew that sounds almost nothing like what you hear on the street in Tel Aviv? Do native Hungarian speakers who want to become lawyers in Hungary have to take coursework in Legal Hungarian in order to understand what other lawyers are talking about or is that not a thing there?

If you have experience in a non-English speaking legal system, your input is welcomed! Answers from the perspective of any non-English speaking system are welcome. For example, something like "In the legal system of Xonia we lawyers pretty much just write in formal written Xonian, it's essentially identical to what you see in the local newspaper except for about a dozen legal words that students typically learn in high school anyway but don't generally use outside of legal contexts, but in the Yish Kingdom, we have to learn the ten Legal Tenses of Yishish, the Contractual and Conspiratorial Moods, the Participle of Agency, the Adverbial Forms and Voices of General and Specific Civil Liability, and from two to five thousand legal Yishish words that almost no one else knows, even those who have obtained an advanced university education in Yishish." could be a great answer.

Answer 1

Germany definitely has a legal jargon that is sufficiently distinct from standard German that a foreigner with decent skill in standard German will have trouble understanding what a legal text actually means. It frequently uses uncommon grammatical structures and vocabulary. It also can go so far that some common expressions like 'usually' or 'most of the time' have a legal meaning that is somewhat different than what these expression would mean in standard written German.

Answer 2

In france, legal texts are written in "everyday" French, although the legal vocabulary may not be known to non-specialists.

However, for some reason (tradition, I guess), court judgements are to be written in ONE sentence, even if it is several pages-long (that is changing: in particular administrative law judgements no longer follow that since 2019).

Get ready for hundreds or thousands of commas (and semi-colons) with as many subordinates propositions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_grammar#Cleft_sentences) when reading them.

Answer 3

The Islamic legal system, Shari`ah, is similar to common law in having special legal terms. For instance, a legal duty may be farīḍah, mustaḥabb, mubāḥ, makrūh or ḥarām. Legal authorities include Qur'ān, Ḥadīth, Ijmā` and Qiyās, which are relevant to fiqh. Marriages can be nikāḥ, nikāḥ misyar, or zawāj al-mutʻah. Setting aside the fact that these are Arabic words, they are special technical terms, just as "consideration", "scienter" and "tort" are special technical terms in common law.

Answer 4

A single data point, Bulgarian: Like in English, but more diverse.

In addition to the normal Bulgarian lexical content and grammar, legal text also contain:

• Archaic Bulgarian words in places where a modern word would be a perfect fit (my favorite "досежно" instead of "относно" for "relevant")
• Some Bulgarian "trap" words having substantially different from the ordinary meaning ("поръчител" - in legal context, it is someone accepting liability, in ordinary language it is someone ordering something - e.g. goods or services)
• The normal Latin words and phrases just like in English legalese, some of them traditionally spelled in Cyrillic ("фидуциарно", "суперфикция", "ab initio").
• Rare loan legal terms from German and French (this is where Bulgarian legal system emerged from back at the end of 19th century)
• Even more rare terms of obvious Russian origin

A person of average literacy needs some "getting used to" and an occasional web/dictionary search in order to fully understand an ordinary legal text.

Answer 5

Sweden has its own version of it, called myndighetssvenska (approx. "authority Swedish"), but in recent years, the government has been actively encouraging more ordinary Swedish in regulatory documents. There is an official manual, dramatically called Svarta Listan ("The Black List"), of myndighetssvenska terms to avoid and examples of how to replace them with ordinary Swedish. You can find it here (in Swedish, of course).

Answer 6

Speaking for all countries/languages: yes. What you call "legalese" is just the - as professionals in Computer Science would call it - domain-specific language of law professionals. Many, probably all, non-trivial professional domains have words that either don't exist in the rest of the language, or do exist, but have a meaning unknown to the general public. Think about doctors, bureaucrats, engineers, mathematicians, etc.

I assume what sets legalese a bit apart from very modern special sub-languages is that, since the profession is so old, it reflects words that used to be more commonplace either in the same language, but hundreds of years ago; or loan words from Latin or other predecessor languages.

A domain language for a profession which is either quite new (e.g., computer science) or at least subject to frequent renewal (e.g., engineering disciplines which are being influenced by newer technology that may well make almost all older technology obsolete in a very short amount of time; think of CAD replacing hand-made drawings, in construction) will probably tend to take their special words more from English (in the western parts of the world), or some other modern language in other parts.

Answer 7

In Italy, the concept is described by an Italian word with the exact same spelling:

https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/tag/legalese/

The word is pronounced according italian orthographic rule, and it is almost often used pejoratively. I do not know if it is related to the English one in its origin.

The concept of lawyers using an obscure and deceiving language is very present in Italian culture and is best represented by one of the character of the book "I promessi sposi": the lawyer "azzecca-garbugli". If you can understand Italian there is a very enjoyable lecture from Italian journalist Gian Antonio Stella which analyses many contemporary legal texts highlighting their incomprehensibility and their unwanted comical effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tNYzNqbhow

EDIT: Another term used to describe the concept is "burocratese", which might be related to the English word "bureaucratese" according to this source (quite reputable). The same source reports that already in the XVI century, many writers were complaining about the obscure and deceptive language of the various Italian administrations.

Answer 8

As a student in China, I once read one of China's law codes in the original Chinese. I wouldn't call the language used in that document "legalese"; it was standard, modern Mandarin, but written in a very precise style, which is not usual for most written Chinese.

Answer 9

In brazil we have juridiquês, marked by the usage of excessive legal jargon, Latin, older words that nobody uses in everyday conversation and long sentences.

But it's pretty much a thing for older lawyers and judges (or for those trying to emulate this style), younger ones tend to frown upon it and have a more practical and concise style.

Answer 10

In denmark we have the term "kancellisprog" which means something like

Verbose language with long sentences and intricate sentence structure known especially from legal and administrative writings

Answer 11

In indonesia bahasa hukum (literally 'legal language') is noted by a former attorney general as

Bahasa hukum sering ‘memperkosa’ kaidah tata bahasa, baik dalam susunan kalimat atau penggunaan istilah yang tidak lazim dalam pengertian umum

in English:

Legal language often 'molest' the grammar, both in sentence structure and usage of uncommon terms

Aside from Latin words, Dutch (as a legacy of colonial history) legal terms are also still used in modern courts. Note that Latin isn't even offered in schools, and very few (as in, likely dozens at most in a country with hundreds of millions population) schools even have optional Dutch language classes, usually offered alongside the more popular French or German. While the Indonesian language does have plenty of Dutch loanwords in general usage, very few of them share the basic form of the Dutch legal terms. Thus, an educated Indonesian not from a legal background wouldn't be able to understand the legal terms without guessing in case the words happen to share a root with English words which are far more understood by Indonesian, since Dutch was never a lingua franca in Indonesia even during the colonial period.

As noted, even if no uncommon terms are used, the sentence structures tend to look awkward and might be misunderstood by laymen, to the point that news covering court sentences or proposed law would have to explain them in non-legal terms, sometimes (deliberately or not) ambiguously.

Answer 12

Turkish law system uses a lot of words from the so-called Old Turkish (aka Ottoman Turkish or Ottoman Language). Many of those words are no longer used in modern Turkish, or even recognized by most people.

Though, rather interestingly, the grammar constructs mostly match modern Turkish, it is just the words that are still being used in legal context.

Answer 13

Not a full answer, but to address a specific remark in the OP:

Do Israeli lawyers file court pleadings written in quasi-Biblical Hebrew that sounds almost nothing like what you hear on the street in Tel Aviv?

In Israel some affairs are handled by the government (i.e., secular) courts, while others are outsourced to religious authorities (these are limited, but include such aspects of life as marriage and divorce, burial, kashrut, etc.) This state of affairs has its root in some particularities of the difficulties that the first Israeli parliament experienced in passing a constitution. Correspondingly, the religious affairs are handled in more "traditional" language by special Rabbinical courts, grounded in the long legal Jewish tradition (dating back to the Laws of Moses).

Secular legal system in Israel is largely based on the Western legal systems. However, as an anecdote, I have heard of the Israeli legal firms working mostly with immigrants from the former Soviet Union (who form a significant minority in Israel), which would employ native Russian speakers as interlocutors for interacting with clients, but to hire Israeli-born lawyers for actually pleading the cases in court - motivating it by those better grasp not only of Hebrew, but also of Aramaic - ancient language used in many old legal writings, but which is not spoken today.