Posted on 03/24/2006 7:38:06 PM PST by ex-Texan
When Jacques Chirac stormed out of a meeting at the European Union summit he said it was because he had been "profoundly shocked" to hear a French industrialist speaking in English.
On this basis, the French president may wish to stay away from a number of his nation's boardrooms.
Mr Chirac's outrage was all too visible on Thursday night when he heard Ernest-Antoine Seillière, the head of the Unice employers' organisation, explain he had decided to deliver his speech in English because it was "the language of business".
But in the boardroom of Air Liquide, the French industrial gases group, meetings are usually held in English. So too at the media group Thomson, once chaired by Thierry Breton, the French finance minister, who joined his president in boycotting Mr Seillière's meeting. At France Telecom - where Mr Breton was also once chairman - English is commonly used in internal memos.
French companies choose English because they do most business outside France and because of an increased foreign presence on their boards.
Meetings at Total, the oil group, regularly take place in English, even when only Frenchmen are present. "It's the language of the oil industry," explains a spokeswoman. English is also the lingua franca at Thales and EADS - the French government has stakes in both defence groups.
Air France-KLM holds meetings of "le strategy management committee" in English, while competence in the language is compulsory for managerial recruits at Renault. Mike Quigley, the chief operating officer and heir apparent at the telecoms equipment maker Alcatel, is an Australian who does not speak French.
"The English language has connotations of liberalism," said Jean-Louis Muller, the director of Cegos, a management training school. "The defence of the French language by politicians and unions is the defence of the French social model."
Mr Muller said the rise of English in French boardrooms appeared unstoppable: "I witnessed a meeting at [engineering group] Alstom where there were only French managers in the room but English was still the language."
Business French has become peppered with anglicisms - from "les roadshows" to "le spin-off" - and few managers prefer "une marge brute d'autofinancement" to "le cash-flow".
Students protesting at French labour reforms are employing banners in English, from "We shall never surrender" to "My kingdom for a real contract".
Opposite the Sorbonne, the ancient seat of French learning that has seen some of the most violent clashes between protesters and riot police, is a piece of graffiti that Mr Chirac and his government have more than one reason to worry about. "We are winning!" reads a slogan in blue spray paint.
Mr Chirac is not alone, though. French courts fined a division of General Electric €580,000 (£400,600) this month for failing to translate English documents into French.
At the EU meeting on Thursday night, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, sought to soothe ruffled French feathers by later abandoning the English notes for his speech in favour of an impromptu French translation, "in the interest of linguistic diversity".
In spite of Mr Barroso's efforts, the Commission, for so long a bastion of French dominance, is now a predominantly anglophone institution. Figures from its translation service show that in 1992 some 47 per cent of official documents were drafted in French, with only 35 per cent in English. By 2004, 62 per cent were in English, with only 26 per cent in French.
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It's the Académie Française. The Alliance Française is a network of centers in cities throughout the world that provide French classes and promote French culture.
I wish the US was as concerned about preserving English as a primary language as France is about preserving French. While I was living in Miami, I got really tired of having to press 1 for English.
It really does get annoying encoutering French in everyday life. Especially when they put those silly, sissy, hard to pronounce French words on restaurant menus in a pathetic attempt to dress up salisbury steaks and mashed potato into something you can charge twice as much for.
Didn't help the Democrats any...
France had French as its official language, yet many now prefer English. The U.S. DOES NOT have an official language, yet EVERY SECOND GENERATION American speaks the language (even in Miami, where I lived for three years in a Colombian neighborhood).
If French culture were erased from the face of the earth, we would miss, uh, TinTin? The Michelin Man?
You can't be serious. The only two languages uglier to the ear than French are Hebrew and Mandarin Chinese.
I guess, based on your numbers, we had all learn to speak Chinese!
You guys are forgetting one thing..... This is the EU were talking about. In 20 years the ONLY language will be Arabic!!
Why so hostile? I'm not "Gallic," even though I am mostly of French descent (I'm from Louisiana). I'm American and it IS possible to be a proud American and appreciate and even participate in the cultures of other countries.
There are many people in the south Florida area that are unable to speak even passable English. That is not really my gripe though. I was learning Spanish and was happy to have the near-immersion.
My complaint is that Spanish and, increasingly, Creole are quasi-official languages in south Florida. When I went to court in Miami-Dade County (I was an attorney), informational signs outside the courtroom were displayed in English, Spanish and Creole. Service information with every complaint had to be in English, Spanish and Creole (this may be statewide; I don't recall). My Miami-Dade voter registration card was in English, Spanish and Creole. I imagine the situation is similar in the states on the Mexico border.
English is the de facto "official language" of the US and I think anyone who chooses to live there should have to learn English. Those who choose not to should not be accommodated at taxpayer expense.
My brother loves France. He knows Paris quite well and has been there many times. Needless to say, he has little patience with Americans who rush about and get upset about French attitudes.
Up until World War II, French was the language of international communications. All diplomats would have to be conversant in French and in fact, even at the helight of the British Empire at Palmerston or Disraeli's times diplomats from the British Foreign Office used French rather than English to communicate with foreign representatives. Not many people learned English back then unless they were Dutch or Scandinavian, but almost every educated person knew French. English only became accepted usage in international affairs when the United States started to exert active influence in the world stage at the beginning of the 20th century - as the US State Department diplomats weren't too conversant in French.
In fact, although French has declined in international importance since 1945, it remains an important working language at this level. For example, in 1977 Italy and the then Yugoslavia signed a treaty finalizing the borders following post-World War II cedings and referenda. The treaty was written in French rather than English and any disputes regarding the treaty itself would be resolved according to the version in French.
Scientific and technical articles present an interesting angle. Germany was the leading power in this field up until 1945 and most American or British scientists (such as Millikan) would spend time in German universities for post-doctoral researches. Because of this plenty of scientific journal articles were first written in German and learning German was deemed necessary for most good scientists or engineers from the English-speaking world. Still, French was used as a working language to release many journal articles as well and thus many English-speaking scientists were often trilingual. Today, I think standards for measurements (SI units) are still drafted in French rather than English.
So learning French is a tool because it is still a working language for international communications while German is good if you want to delve into science and technology. But for most people knowing neither English nor French English would be the best language to master first.
I agree with your analysis. I studied German and Italian in college and picked up a other languages along the way. Learning Italian was more fun than Deutsch and helped me to read French and Spanish. Reading Hegel and Neitzche in German was daunting. In high school we had an exchange teacher come in for one year. We all acquired a Schwabisch accent. My professors were amazed when we recited in class because he claimed we sounded like natives.
What languages do you need in Slovakia to get around?
I learned one year of French in first year of high school, and then dropped it for German in the following year. As someone who has none of English/French/German as a first language and from an Asian background, I found learning a second or third European language using English as a medium of instruction helps my English indirectly as well. Some grammar points in English were not understood properly until I learned French from scratch.
From a comparative perspective as an outsider, I feel French have more complicated vocabularies, pronounciations are a nightmare, and puzzling gender information for nouns, but since most of the "big words" in English are borrowed from French, it means often you can make an educated guess about specific meanings of French vocabularies without using a dictionary if you know English, and its grammar is far simpler than English (no continuous or perfect tenses).
German is more complicated in overall grammar structure, but it is very logical, and compounding nouns make memorizing English vocabularies look trivial. And more importantly there are no "exceptions" in grammar that will trip you up as in English.
That was 15 years ago. I think I can recall more of my German learned than French, but living in this part of the world French is probably more useful as a tool than German (French is still a world language, while German is just a pan-European language).
Ping!
LOL!! The perfect graphic for any Chiraq thread!
I hate to be pedantic, but that 'z' in 'Parlez' should not be there -- that makes it "YOU speak".....
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