Posted on 02/24/2005 9:27:36 PM PST by ijcr
The French language is in dramatic decline around the world, including in its traditional foreign heartlands, according to international language teachers recently gathered in Paris.
French is disappearing from European classrooms in favour of English
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 ever more restricted to older generations and the upper classes of many countries where it used to be the second language of choice in schools.
That was the consensus among language teachers from across the globe who gathered in Paris in early February for the Expolangues trade fair, dedicated to language teaching, learning and translating.
"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," said Julie Squires, a Briton who teaches French at Oxford House College.
In Britain, she said, much of the problem lies with a recent government decision to make a second language optional for pupils aged 14 years and older.
Twenty years ago everybody spoke French in Spain but in Burgos now French teachers outnumber students!She pointed to a study which showed that, across British schools, 72 percent registered a decline in the number of students learning French. German studies declined in 70 percent of the schools, while Spanish declined by just 44 percent.
A teacher from 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.
Only Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm A teacher from the Spanish town of Burgos, Julia Martinez, said most of her colleagues agreed that French was "in free fall".
"Twenty years ago, everybody spoke French in Spain. Today, in Burgos, there are more French teachers than students!"
A teacher from Portugal, Teresa Santos, said in her country 70 percent of Portuguese students preferred to take English courses, compared to just 10 percent for French.
"English is magnifique!" a teacher of Ancient Greek at the Aristotle University in Thessalonika, Thalia Stephanidou, said. "Even in poorer neighbourhoods, that language - which replaced French right after the second world war - is taught, even to old people," she said.
There's only one French school in Greece, and that's reserved for the elite "My grandmother spoke French, my father too. Today though, there is only one French school in Greece, and that's reserved for the elite," she said.
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 Française in the US 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."
I remember when I took a visit to the local high school when
I was in junior high. They had all the foreign language
teachers and their toadies trying to recruit people. I looked
at the Spanish guys in their ponchos and sombreros, and the
French guys in their striped shirts and lame berets, and made
my decision... I took Latin.
That is above the payscale of most mathematicians.
What wonderful news!
I'm going to sleep really good and happy tonight!
Will Canada drop French as well?
"There's good news tonight"
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The only modern-day Frenchmen worth a tinkers damn are Sabine Herod, Jean Reno and the chick who played Nikita.
Depends what one means by "recent". I spend so much time deep in history that I consider anything after Columbus to be modern times and anything after the invention of the flintlock to be ultra-modern.
One of the more spectacular French achievements was flight. They were first with a man aloft in a balloon.
But the greatest thing for Americans will always be the support they gave for our revolution--guns, men, ships, and recognition.
Easy, I feed them beans and Franks.
And as for syphilis, it was arguably an American Indian gift to Europe because as you point out it was unknown in Europe before the early voyages.
Or, should I say, ''You're on quite a roll.''
:^)
(wiping tears...)
The real reason, why French is disappearing from our European classrooms is, that it is much more difficult to learn than the quite simple English. It is just the most convienient way with the lowest expenditure for pupils. BTW - like it or hate it - French and Italian are probably the most popular language in Europe because of their wonderful sound. Just like music. Not to compare with the heavy German or the harsh Slavic languages.
Of course it is nothing new that English has overtaken French or German as the world language since a long time. Contemporary kids need it as "the" communicationplatform in this world. Since all kids in Germany i.E. have to learn Engish from 6 years on it is normal to take French as a second language. But - O tempora! O mores! -The real looser in languages is Latin... Nobody wants to learn it anymore. :-(
Simple -- France lost a lot of her manpower during the Napoleonic wars and the wars in the first half of the 19th century.
Maybe we're both in Seine. ;o)
Some people want to learn it or at least their parents want them to learn it:
http://www.stratfordcca.org/why_latin.php
"What wonderful news!
I'm going to sleep really good and happy tonight!
Will Canada drop French as well?"
I'd prefer that Canada drop "Canadians," instead...
LOL. You would be SURPRISED at what mathematicians are worth.
How about $80k at 24 years old?
And they are employed to explain exactly why wars go the way they do.
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