Posted on 03/23/2006 8:04:39 PM PST by blam
Chirac walks out of speech in English
By David Rennie and Toby Helm in Brussels
(Filed: 24/03/2006)
President Jacques Chirac of France stormed out of a European Union summit last night after a French employers' leader said that English was "the language of European business".
Jacques Chirac: Intensely nationalistic mood
The walk-out, seen by Tony Blair, prompted a sheepish exit by the French foreign, finance and Europe ministers and threatened to derail the summit before it had begun.
The meeting had been called to try to fight a wave of "economic nationalism" sweeping the Continent, as France, Spain and other nations seek to erect barriers to cross-border competition.
Mr Chirac's behaviour, in front of two dozen European leaders, was seen as a sign that he and his team were in intensely nationalistic mood.
It emerged that the president's spokesman had gone out his way to inform the press of the incident.
If not for English speakers from the U.S, Great Britain, the Commonwealth and Canada, the idiot would be storming out of meetings held in German. What can one expect from a country whose greatest soldier was a girl, and whose greatest general was an Italian.
Chirac looks like LBJ in that picture. Going to have the same political outcome I see.
...would he have preferred Arabic?
"linguistic patriotism".....and he made sure it was noticed. More narcissism over substance.
You are right.
He looks like he's about to cry.
Poor wittle Jacques-y.
The international aviation language is English.
French is the international language of surrender
. . . and whose greatest naval victory was the sinking of the unarmed Greenpeace ship 'Rainbow Warrior' in Auckland harbour with the loss of only one life - one of the french secret-service agents who planted the bomb! :D
Pah! Us English didn't spend 500 years conquering a quarter of the world's surface and a third of her population so that everyone could speak a completely gay language like french did we? About time he learnt English is the world language and french is a cultural backwater with too small a vocabulary to be useful.
As Paris burns.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1602210/posts
Gotta love a man with priorities!
Chirac is lucky. Actually, about a quarter of the Earth's population speak Mandarin - the most spoken language on the planet. The accent with French clashs wildly.
But even moreso, doing arithmetic functions in written Mandarin is hell.
Which is why all the educated Chinese speak English as well and play Cricket, the worlds most widely played game according to Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/09/30/china-india-cricket_cx_pm_1003chinacricket.html
Yep.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.