*MM spikes her French dictionary and dances around her living room.*For generations, the French have fiercely guarded their language against the horreurs anglais.
But France's education minister yesterday admitted for the first time that the secret to success is speaking better English.
Xavier Darcos claimed poor English is now a 'handicap' because all international business is conducted in the language, and said French schools would offer extra lessons during the holidays.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Euro Notes: French Surrenders to English
I knew it! Mwahahahaha!
Labels:
culture,
Euro Notes,
Europe,
France,
globalization,
language
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3 comments:
It always amuses me to say "English is the lingua franca of the world."
Isn't that just grand?
Nothing to be ashamed of, either: it's the language of Shakespeare and Churchill.
The French educational establishment, year after year, is very unhappy at the low ratings their universites receive. And the fact that the normal colleges generally get higher rankings from the Shanghai Jaio Tang University then its Grande Ecoles.
But each year one of the solutions is to make every research article, published article and opinion piece available in good English translations. And every year that same educational bureaucracy won't provide the money for those translations because they fear the inevitable article mentioning their reliance on English.
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