Office, bureau, and kantoor

When I have been working in Nokia and spoke English throughout the day I didn’t flinch when saying „office“ in Russian, because Russians use that word too. About half a year after joining a german company where I mostly speak German I have said „Büro (bureau)“ in Russian, because that word exists in Russian as well. So that post was conceived as a text about six months time.

However I dug deeper and realised I was wrong. Nowadays Russian-speaking people mostly use „office“ for that purpose, and „bureau“ is reserved for some special cases. There’s yet another older word, which I considered really russian, but it also has special meaining. And ironically it also comes from another language, originating as Dutch „kantoor”.

So yeah, I’ll have to translate „Büro“ as „office“.

Artemy Tregubenko,
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