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.
English has 1 million words, whereas French has fewer than 100,000. In other words, English has 10 times the number of words than French. German only has 200,000 words, or 1/5 of the number in English. As a matter of fact, English has the biggest vocabulary of any other language on the earth. Perhaps that is why it is the most useful in so many different situations all over the globe. And, it is easier to learn one very useful language than many not-so-useful ones.
"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 the numbers keep up that will change.
in France it is illegal in offical correspondence to say the word "email" you must say courrier electronique
Actually, I think Tintin is Belgian, but I'm not positive. :0)
Ha! Bisch sicher? I be so an rächter Sauschwoab ond komm vo dr Alb ra.
This is real hard-core Swabian accent from the place where I was born - the Swabian Alb. Most Germans north of Tübingen are unable to understand even one word. Thank God! ;-)
Burger Royale anyone?
This is for sure true although German and German related languages (like Dutch, Schwitzerduetsch or Danish) are of course spoken by much more Europeans than French. French is the most important language for a westerner in Africa (as long as you do not want to learn the local languages) since France and Belgium were the most important colonial powers on the black continent.
Personally I like the very feminine (I am a real male and I like women :-)) and melodic sound of French and Italian. Maybe I feel this way because one of my first (and really sweet) girlfriends came from France and she gave learning the language a real new meaning to me. A very pleasant afterglow. Besides of that I like the classical French and Italian way of living and have spent a lot of time in both countries.
English has the advantage that it is really easy to pick up. Since it is part of the German language family Germans like me have no real problems to learn it (in difference to languages with latin or slawic origin). A easy grammar combined with a limited, but very flexible vocabulary makes it the "common denominator" for all of us. It is and will be the real "world language". Besides of that wide parts of the cultural outcome of the last century were verbalized in English. No matter if we speak about the Beatles, Freddie Mercury, Roy Lichtenstein or John Steinbeck.
Last but not least my own language, German, gives the possibility to verbalize very accurately and sharp due to its big vocabulary. Much better than i.e. in English. Although it only has its importance in the European hemisphere, it is still worth learning it.
P.S. Do you speak Mandarin if you live in Hong Kong? Do you think that Mandarin will have the chance to become also one of the "world-languages" in the west (in the far east it has this status anyway)?
It is interesting because I found English grammar very confusing. Almost every grammar rules have exceptions in many cases which are non-existent in German and even French, and prepositions, articles, and tenses are nightmares for Chinese speakers as Chinese doesn't have these features and the sense of time actions in English are not explicitly defined as in Chinese.
But having said that, I dount learning German directly from Chinese would be any easier than without prior knowledge of English. Indo-European languages are worlds away from Sino-Tibetan languages that any first Indo-European language would be difficult to learn anyway.
Hong Kong speaks Cantonese as the first language, and no matter how the government information suggest otherwise, even in today's climate most Hong Kong Chinese speak Mandarin only as well they do English. I would even go further and suggest that many people's Mandarin are even worse than their English!
With regards of Chinese's popularity, my personal opinion is that it won't really be something you must learn for communications - not even the scenario of China (post-Communist or otherwise) becomes the world's largest economy will make any difference at all. Historically among Chinese people only those from Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu/Zhejiang and Shanghai have knacks to run businesses and make good products but not others, and none of them speak Mandarin as first language. If you really want to communicate with them, it would better be Cantonese, Fukian, Teochewese, or Shanghaiese.
Mandarin would be useful as a national security tool and understanding wealth of Chinese thoughts, but I doubt it would be more important than, say, Japanese. In fact, in Korea or Southeast Asia, I think Japanese has more currency than Mandarin.
This is for sure true although German and German related languages (like Dutch, Schwitzerduetsch or Danish) are of course spoken by much more Europeans than French. French is the most important language for a westerner in Africa (as long as you do not want to learn the local languages) since France and Belgium were the most important colonial powers on the black continent.
French is also useful in the South Pacific. Although most places use English courtesy of past British colonial rules and contemporary links with Australia and New Zealand, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and French Polynesia (Tahiti) have French ties. In Canada French is also very useful if you are in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while as you said French is essential in large parts of Africa. I can't say about Asia though - French still has residual usefulness in Indochina's countries, but years of chaos, wars, and communist misrules mean French is largely irrelevant nowadays and may be you can get by with only English now.
Don't forget India, with some 600 local dialects, uses English as its language of business.
BTW - The "Black Forrest" is about 150 - 200 km away (this is quite a distance in such small countries like Germany) in the south-west direction. I am living near the Black Forrest and the Lake Constance in a small town called Trossingen.
True, but you can also make as many new words in German as you wish. Just hook them together one long jumble.
There is supposedly a German word,
"Mississippischaufelraddampferkapitänsmützenfabrikbesitzer",
that has been used at least once in print. It means the owner of a factory for making hats for captains of paddle boats on the Mississippi.
So the number of German words is really infinite. Any combination of words that can be conceived can be used as a legitimate word.
-ccm
Learing a second language is very important. I dont want to say we should not.
Your handle says a lot. Thanks.
Well, in this case, it's rather the American lexicon which is bizarre.
LOL! Never seen that one ;^)
However, as far as I know such long words aren't something you encounter in everyday German and especially these extra-long words are just made up for fun because you can and not because you have to.
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