Posted on 07/13/2005 12:40:59 PM PDT by saquin
TOKYO - A group of teachers and translators in Japan on Wednesday sued Tokyo's outspoken nationalist governor for allegedly calling French a "failed international language," a news report said.
Twenty-one people filed the lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding that Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara pay a total of 10.5 million yen ($94,600) compensation for insulting the French language in remarks last October, national broadcaster NHK said.
In their suit, the plaintiffs accused Ishihara of saying: "French is a failed international language because it cannot be used to count numbers."
"It's natural for different languages to have different names for numbers and different ways of counting them, so it's unacceptable for him to insult French in this way," Malik Berkane, who heads a French-language school in Tokyo, told reporters at a news conference.
The Tokyo metropolitan government refused to comment, saying it hadn't received word of the lawsuit.
French is the official language in about three dozen countries and territories worldwide and is one of the official working languages for international organizations such as the United Nations. In French, some numbers can be unwieldy to say, such as 90, which translates as "four-twenty-ten."
Japan's counting system can also be tricky. Adopted from Chinese, the Japanese numeric system ignores the western system of classifying large numbers every three digits. Though one thousand is the same, 30,000 would translate as "three-10,000," 4 million would be "400-10,000" and 4 billion would be "40-100 million."
Counting one pencil or one bottle of beer ("ippon") in Japanese differs from counting one sheet of paper ("ichimai") or one book ("issatsu").
Ishihara, one of Japan's most popular politicians, is known for his blunt nationalist talk, criticism of illegal immigrants and unapologetic view of the Japanese wartime military's atrocities in Asia. His remarks often rile Chinese and Korean residents in Japan.
Bush should sue the French for claiming that the US government shot at missle at the Pentagon on 911. That there was no plane crash in DC that day.
Yeah, but the French ones are. :-P
In French, some numbers can be unwieldy to say, such as 90, which translates as "four-twenty-ten."
Sheesh, certainly needlessly unwieldy, if you ask me.
Well, it is.
I truly hope the Governor has friends in the Yakuza who can permanently eliminate this inconvenience for him.
I think the nearest equivalent would be Michael Savage, who's said he'd never run for public office (wish he'd reconsider).
Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)
Calypso Louis would go nuts trying to discern the meaning behind those numbers.
I'm starting to love the french, they provide so much comic relief to my work day!!!
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
He's got a point. In French they run out of names for numbers past sixty (soixante), 70 is sixty-ten (soixante-dix), 71 is sixty-eleven, etc. etc.
80 is four-twenty, 81 is four-twenty-one
90 is four-twenty-ten, 91 is four-twenty-eleven
I learned to speak French fluently as a kid and the numbers used to drive me nuts.
The Yakuza are experts at eliminating unnecessary digits.
Sounds like they lost interest after 69 (about the only French number much of the world knows).
PL,
All of that might be true, but it doesn't add up to a "failed language".
Consider the linguistic heritage in other languages, the words, phrases, etymologies that are rooted in French. Consider that one can find native French speakers on every populated continent.
I'm no apologist or anything, but credit where credit's due: French isn't a failure.
How about this, French is a language with a rich, historic, and bountiful past, with its future alongside Latin.
Japan has many borrowed words. Their word for bread is "pan".
This is being blown all out of proportion.
It hardly warrants a lawsuit.
It is only spoken by a majority of the population in France, Belgium, Monaco and Haiti.
French undoubtedly had a good run, but WWII ended the party.
La Francophonie is a joke.
Sure it does. If a language is unable to adapt and change then it becomes a dead language. And a dead language is a failed language.
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