Posted on 02/12/2005 1:31:43 PM PST by FormerACLUmember
Paris - The dominance of English as the world's lingua franca continues to grow, with the number of pupils studying French dwindling every year, language teachers from several countries gathered at a Paris trade show this week said, many with regret.
The predominance of English on the Internet, the relative ease of learning basic English and the perception that English is "cooler" - thanks in large part to popular music and films - means French is becoming more and more restricted to older generations and the upper classes of many countries where it used to be the second language of choice in schools, they said.
"Some among us see a sort of victory in this. But personally, I side with a campaign in the British press against our deficit in learning languages," Julie Squires, a Briton who teaches French at Oxford House College, said at the Expolangues show in southern Paris.
In Britain, she said, much of the problem lies with a recent government decision to make a second language optional for pupils 14 years and older.
Losing ground fast
She pointed to a study which showed that, across British schools, 72% registered a decline in the number of students learning French. German studies declined in 70% of the schools, while Spanish declined by just 44%.
A teacher at Germany's Goethe-Institut, Christina Trojan, said "French remains a beautiful language much appreciated by the upper class" but it was losing ground in curricula, even in areas near the French-German border.
French was still holding up compared to Italian and Spanish, but that may gradually change.
"Given the difficulty of the grammar and spelling, many prefer not to take up French," she said.
A teacher from the Spanish town of Burgos, Julia Martinez, said most of her colleagues agreed that French was "in free fall".
A teacher from Portugal, Teresa Santos, said in her country 70% of Portuguese students preferred to take English courses, compared to just 10% for French.
Even in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, English has crowded French out of the classroom, despite French being one of the country's official languages.
In Russia, where speaking French was once a prized talent among the tsars, French is trailing "far behind English" in Moscow and Saint Petersburg schools, Mascha Sveshnikova, of the Russian Cultural Centre, said.
David Fein, the head of the Alliance Francaise in the United States city of San Diego, said French studies was part of the collateral damage suffered in the transatlantic fall-out resulting from the US decision to invade Iraq, but now it looked as though pupils were slowly returning.
Only two Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm, with one of them saying that the luxurious images the language conjured up were its best advertisement.
French, she said, evoked "dreams, fashion, history, cooking and wine."
But is is becoming the universal language of all humanity, thanks in large measure to the internet!
What tickled me is when Condi Rice spoke French while visiting there this week. Mainstream media like to quote how Jackie Kennedy won over Paris. Unfortunately, mainstream media refuses to acknowledge kudos to Condi Rice for the same thing.
Has French ever been a world's lingua franca? I thought it was mostly the language of the elites.
Nothing, absolutely nothing about Condi's talents. As a black, the racist liberals want to portray her as a moron.
France was the language of diplomacy (and still is) since the 1700s.
English is the defacto language of prosperity and technology. I don't know why anyone would want to waste their time learning French. Plus, French makes you sound like a homo.
Where does that leave all the Mexicans here that refuse to learn and speak English.
It's a hard language to master, but an easy language to get your point across in. You can mangle it pretty badly and it's still intelligible.
Hey, if you are going to study a dead language, you might as well study Latin instead of French. ;-)
Well, thanks to the democrats' "bilingual education" impoverished and enslaved. Which is EXACTLY where the democrats want them.
LOL. Latin (plus basic Greek) gives you better SAT verbal scores to boot!
LOL
There are always toilets to clean.
Bye bye French. Bye bye froggies. Not too sad to see you croak.
Dja tink it'll catch on here in America?
Everybody would be laughing so hard at what everyone else was saying, there would no longer be room for hate or discrimination or ickkyness towards others.
Ixnay on the igpay atinlay.
Begone, DU plant! ;-)
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