Language and arrogance

Some of the abundant comments on my last post show that my mild mockery of President Chirac's manifestation on behalf of French created some misunderstanding. Perhaps I should have made the disclaimer stronger:  The aim was not to gloat about the supremacy of English, as suggested by Sandrine, Nicole and others. The target was the president and the excesses of his campaign to promote the language. 

I heartily agree with everyone who notes that the world would be infinitely poorer if English became the only language. Like most of those who have taken the trouble to comment, my life has been enriched by learning other languages and acquiring the view of the world that comes with them. I have spent most of my adult years in non-English speaking countries (Russia, Mexico, Belgium and France) and French is the main language in my home. 

Rather than being a noble gesture in defence of French, I believe that behaviour such as Chirac's in Brussels does a disservice to the language.

His petulance only feeds the smugness of monoglot Anglophones who believe that they need not bother learning another language. As Peter Carrington notes, there is nothing worse than Anglophones in France and elsewhere who just fire away in English without apology.

It is not surprising that the Chirac story and similar tales of Gallic unhappiness with English should feed xenophobia. The last posting has brought several messages full of hate for France, the French -- and Francophile British journalists. I have not bothered to publish them, but here is one printable example. It comes from Greg Bass:
   
Understand this: The USA does not care if you speak French, English, or Pig Latin. We speak English and since France is a third world power still in decline nobody else but you really need it.

Not very coherent, but we get the point. You can find much more like that on American sites devoted to denigrating France. The language question here is a trigger for all the ancestral hatred and rivalry that came to the surface with Chirac's campaign to stop the United Nations approving the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

I would like to answer the question from Nicole Trabaud: "Could bigotry or envy account for so much spite?." If the question is about the gloating, then the answer, in part, is yes. The American comment above and the anti-French bile in some British tabloids does not reflect harmless fun, just nastiness. But I hope that debating the merits of aggressive policies to promote a language has nothing to do with this.

Some of the logic of the French language laws, quotas and subsidies is a little doubtful. The rationale is that by promoting French, Paris is encouraging the vitality of all languages in the face of the English steamroller.  Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène makes this point in his very thoughtful response.

The resistance of the big languages to English can serve as a model and help save other languages.

But he agrees that issuing laws or complaining in blogs is not the answer. The only way is to set examples. If we are good enough, we can afford to impose our language.

That seems clear. Language policies do not extend the influence of a language. English has emerged as the lingua franca because it was the tongue of the big world powers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Maybe Chinese will be the next, as several comments suggest. It is fine that France should promote its language as a balance in an English-only world but no-one imagines that Gallic commercial, political or military power is strong enough to allow French to come anywhere near to challenging English as the language of the globalising world. 

Everyone is surely better off  if they can communicate, which means using the same language. On the European level, for example, a lack of a common tongue is one of the main barriers to the movement of workers. The EU Commission calculates that up to three million jobs are unfilled in the Union because people will not consider working in another country. Libération today reported that a French person who spoke no other language would only be able to apply for 0.5 percent of the jobs on offer in Austria.

While the dominance of English robs many Anglophones of the chance to broaden their minds, it does obviously give them a big advantage as native speakers of the common language. This is one of the reasons why the EU institutions continue to spend hundreds of millions of euros a year on interpreting all 20 official languages into one-another. You are at a disadvantage when you speak a foreign language. The French have an unbeatable riposte whenever a Briton complains about the army of EU interpreters: France, they joke, will accept English as the common language provided that all native English-speakers use a foreign language in EU meetings.

While awaiting tomorrow's day of national revolt against Dominique de Villepin,  some figures have emerged from the University of Maryland that provide vivid confirmation of l'exception française:

France is the only one among 20 large nations surveyed where a majority of the population rejects the free market as the best system.  The country whose population most favours the free market is China, followed by the  Philippines and the United States.  The least favourable are Turkey, Russia, Argentina and France.          

Footnote: I shall exclude the Arte Franco-German TV channel from future mockery. It is a fine channel even if hardly anyone in Germany watches it.

Comments

[laurent , paris]

I've just read the poll you commented about the free market. As a french I understand very easily..and I understand why foreigners don't understand.
History has created France through dreams, theories, and sometimes practics. Maybe we are dreamers and so what ? I personnaly think that the free market is not the best system, there must always be something better. Which doesn't mean I don't live in and by, and by my job I'm very much in free market, and worldwide.
The other interesting thing in another poll on the same site is that france (surprinsingly I must admit) is the most highly regarded individual country. It is seen as having a positive influence in 21 countries—58 percent on average. (of course UK and US have the highest negative view of it...). Mayby these 2 polls are linked ?
I'll keep on dreaming about it

[laurent , paris]

Where does come this hatred (or at least obsession) of french by english people. Because of the press ?
Just reading this title in theTimes, which is not supposed to be a tabloid :
"Germans are brainiest (but at least we're smarter than the French)"
By Helen Nugent
BRITAIN and France have experienced long periods of conflict and rivalry but now victory in one area can be claimed: Britons are more intelligent than the French."
What an obsession ! There seem to be this obsession of comparison to France in every domain in UK press, or also to comment, about language or anything else, while in the same time the ignorance runs deep.
This doesn't really exist in France and is very surprising for us

[Quentin Girault]

Well, the choice of a common language in E.U is quite a symbol of how hard is supranational construction between old countries with very long and very complex histories.
I think you can't forget, even if it's not really what English people sees for the E.U future, that some countries (France, Germany, Spain...) work nowadays for something like a politic federation of united states of Europe later, even if it's a far away future. This is very hard to do, and obviously this is not what all the European people want, but you can't avoid to talk about it you're about to say the E.U needs a common language (which surely has to be English). Because how can France or Germany could accept to see their own languages fade away from Brussels, Strasbourg and Frankfurt if their own goal for E.U is not only economic stuff? Because E.U is not just a big market to us, we have to consider all the European cultures, equally, even if it's expansive for all of us, even if it's quite harder than just leaving the place and let the things go on their own way.
This is not what France does when Chirac yells on Poland because Lesczek Miller was'nt supportive in our struggle against U.S foreign policy, and this is not what we do when we fight against Enel for an OPA whichi was totally legal and enconically insteresting, and that's why i feel bad about my country policy concerning Europe right now.
Hoping this post was clear.

[andrew kelsey]

While there are many advantages to be gained by English speakers from studying any of the many world languages none remotely compares with the advantages to be gained by non English-speakers from learning our language. This is not arrogance or cultural imperialism; it is a simple statement of fact.
There is, and can be, only one true world language. For whatever reasons the world has chosen English, voting with its feet by marching into language schools from Shanghai to Rio. Choosing a language to learn when you do not have native English is a no-brainer, while choosing between French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi or any of the other hundreds of world languages is an absolute lottery for native English speakers. Personally I speak fluent Brazilian Portuguese only because I married a Brazilian and lived in Brazil for 8 years. I studied French and Italian at school and greatly enjoyed both languages but I have never found much use for either of them. While I sympathise with the French the battle for language dominance was lost long ago. The pragmatic Chinese need no encouragement and are furiously studying the world language in their millions. The French would be well advised to do the same.

[Victor Tan]

The days when a colonising country imposes its language and culture on its subjects are long gone. It is nigh impossible to suppress a language or culture. The modern day examples of Northern Ireland, where the Catholic republicans engaged in armed conflict against the Protestant loyalists for over 30 years to unite Ireland failed to achieve it political aim. The present "civil war" in Iraq between the Sunnis and Shias to dominate and iimposed its branch of Islam costs untold lives, and is far from settled. Note that the conflicting parties belong to the same religions. Christians fighting Christians, and Muslims fighting Muslims.

The ascendancy of the Chinese economy should not bring fear to anyone having to learn Mandarin. The Chinese government is more concerned to raise the living standards of its people, especially the farmers than to impose its language to the lesser countries. It encourages its people to be more proficient in the language of business, and learn modern management techniques of the West to compete more effectively as demonstrated by the large numbers of its students in the UK and the US.

What we are witnessing today is not that English is a superior language to French, but that it is a language more widely used globally in commerce. The xenophobia in France is totally unjustified. The malaise in France is not its language or culture, but its unsustainable system of socialist government. The solution is not to defend the language, but to be proficient in the language of business to compete globally, bringing business and wealth to the country.

Lest the readers of these columns think that I am pontificating, I am proud to say that, though a Malaysian, my children are French nationals, and French is their first language. I have made my contribution to perpetuating the French language in my household, and into the next generation.

[fan]

as a French Language Assistant in england who also has a M.A in English, I must confess that I am always very surprised and amused by reading comments on French culture. Let me tell you that the best way to defend French is to promote it at school as English is promoted in France. those who criticize Chirac's behaviour are maybe right but let me point out that he is from what could be called as "the generation from before/ la generation d avant". Namely Chirac, who speaks English, is from a generation when learning languages had no importance, it was considered as part of a "upper-class" way to educate while at the same time education was still focused on the ideology of maintaining the idea of a "strong" France, despite the gradual loss its colonies.Chirac well represents this nostalgic generation but at the same time by defending French in a awkward way, he is defending our culture and this is not a bad thing. the younger generation, my generation, wants to defend French but is also aware of the importance of speaking English. as Mr Bremner pointed out learning foreign languages and living in foreign countries makes you more open minded and this does not necessarily make you less proud of your origins. Let us defend French noble and poetic language even just for the sake of its beauty and let us promote English as a beautiful language definitely essential in our modern world.

[Michael B.]

Britons, you have learned in the past how to be critical about yourself, because you just had no other alternatives. We are now learning it too in France...self derision, the mask for vanity? Why not? Let’s be poor and then we will have no other choices. Look what Tatcher did. Look what happened in Canada. At some points, they considered going bankrupt and start a country on a new name. They are now the second economy in the Nasdaq.

The things that I would not like to see in France is papers such as The Sun or other tabloids, that feed xenophobia, that only call for hatred and stupidity. Similar web sites exist already…let’s not print it on papers. Populism, what an evolution to humanity; I can see myself climbing a tree with one of these news paper, while chewing the right leg of a skinny mammoth.

Other than that, I think that the French travel a lot and well, are not imposing there way of life to others (you should see Britons on holidays) and although they have such a low IQ (talking about xenophobia...I remember this article of how black people and women have a lower IQ...do you include a test of tolerance in it), do succeed in US and UK universities.

As for Victor, in case you didn't notice, there are more than 1 billions chinese and only 60 millions French. That makes me slightly more insecure about the culture I like and don't want to sale to anyone else than to the one that wants to. No proselytism...ain't a religion. Size does matter.
Whether you like it or not, I still do want to see my French movies, listen French music, with words that have a colour and a dimension to me, read my French books, and express my love in French. On this basis, it allows me to love Ken Loach and other great Brit directors, read J. Coe, J K Jerome and other great Brit writers. As for the Business, in english or in arabic, who should really care. Where is the creativity there; there is more humanity in a skinny mammoth than in a motivated and convinced business man.

Oh, and in case you didn't realise it, there is more to music than english pop rock and the Baby shambles or Oasis...check some world music (st America, Africa, middle east...), they might help you to diversify and use less "everybody, somebody, anybody", work on sensuality, and make you popular to others. Not that brits are not attractive, but if you work on that, I'll devore you all, sexy Brits.

[Colin]

Surely the point about Chirac is that with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets of Paris there are more serious issues to bother with than a Frenchman speaking English in public?

[Tim]

The English of which Chirac complains is itself a hybrid language profoundly influenced by French cultural imperialism.

Norman cultural hegemony made French the "language of business" and government for centuries and has peppered English with French - one of the main reasons the modern language has three times as many words in its armoury as its neighbour. For four centuries after the conquest, French was the language of the royal court, the legal system and the church. To take one prime example banned by the French civil service ("email"), "mail" itself was a French import. So all we're doing is re-exporting it.

Of course Chirac wouldn't understand something so dynamic; that languages are organic and grow through external influences. Nor would he understand that this "international language of business" will probably turn out to be divorced (another Norman import) from the English people actually speak as a daily language. The French may lament (or should I use the Old English cwiþan"?) this phenomenon but they needn't worry since it's not really English at all. Its word range is tiny and its corruptions manifold since it is a tool like church Latin and not a vulgar language.

[Huan Dang]

For Mr Victor Tan when he said : "The Chinese government is more concerned to raise the living standards of its people, especially the farmers than to impose its language to the lesser countries."

He must forgot that speaking tibetian and not accepting chinese culture is a crime in Tibet...

In my point of view it's clear that china is the most imperialist country and people should not be blindness about China.

I don't fear the day when everybody would be able to speak english here in France because i would be still able to speak in french with my friends, i would be more worried if everybody have to speak chinese.

[Peter Carrington]

I am, I suppose, not surprised by the results of the University of Maryland poll you commented on nor by Laurent’s quick response defending her countries right to be a nation of ‘dreamers’. Unsurprised but disappointed. France is a great country with enormous talent and is wonderfully rich in resources but it’s reluctance to deploy that talent and use those resources to exploit the opportunities that the free market offers is very sad.

Looking for the roots of this reluctance to embrace the free market, this persistent belief that there is a better system or that France can somehow avoid the realities of the modern world, I am left with the conviction that the blame lies solely with the political leadership of the past 30 years. With the unions once again flexing their muscles today it’s tempting to pin the responsibility on them but I think that would be wrong. Turkeys don’t, as the Americans say, vote for Christmas and that the unions fight doggedly to retain their privileges is to be expected. Nor is it realistic to blame the business community for its addiction to protectionism. Business will and should use the system in place to maximise its profitability and that French businessmen take full advantage of the prevailing rules and practices is right and proper. Notice that when French business enters fully into the free market place is it very successful indeed – an example of the underlying talent and resources I noted above. No, the responsibility is with the political establishment.

French leaders and governments have spent decades misleading their citizens about the reality of the modern world and they have done so out of simple vanity and love of power. Leadership is not a popularity contest but short term political advantage is. All populations fear change and rightly so. There is always a real human cost to change, ask, for example, the mining communities of the North of England about the price they paid for the reforms that led to the improved competitiveness and growth in the UK that we take as a matter of fact, but the job of politicians is to lead and mange necessary change not to simply seek short term love from the electorate.

France lacks leadership, real genuine courageous leadership and until it gets it the free market will remain a fear for the citizens and this great country will sink deeper into the mire. The task facing the exceptional man or woman who must eventually emerge is enormous and the longer the current politics-as-a-popularity-contest style continues the harder the task will be.

[Jonny Sly]

Exactly Colin, couldn't agree more. What raised his hackles more that day? Riots in Saint Denis? Or a Frenchman speaking English? If someone had burned his tête de veau that lunchtime, we might have witnessed spontaneous combustion. Here's a man with his priority list back to front.

Maybe rioters should try rioting in English and see if that gets a proper rise from the dead sheep.

[Brian Dixon]

Apart from the way France boos English national sides (it boos its own national side) and the excessive gloating when a France national team beats an English national team (that was muted at the 6 Nations because we were so dire), I find France generally very generous about Britain (even if the D-Day celebrations were relatively quiet about Britain's involvement). The British press can be really nasty, caught somewhere post-WWII where the Germans are still the Hun and everybody should thanks us for winning the war. Funny that we're the only country of Europe still hung up about it.

[hey]

As a multilingual english speaker, it is very hard to maintain your other languages. When dealing with non-native english speakers, there are just so many alternative languages, and a few romance languages and a bit of deutsch barely covers it. Arabic, Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, a few of the slavics, would all be more frequently useful than French or German! Though my French does help get better service in some restaurants and shops, wine tours, and conversing with a few gamines.

Dixon: Of course the rest of Europe isn't "hung up" on WWII, as they either lost badly and were rescued by the Anglo-Saxon Menace, or started it and lost badly to the Anglo-Saxon Menace. If you look at the rest of the Anglos, we still love talking about WWII, and throwing it in the face of the French and the Germans at any opportunity. The only people that don't much care are those from the sub-continent and the Afrikaners, for their own reasons.

[Deirdre London]

Laurent's agitation is misplaced. It is simply a fact of life and of history that English is now the world language. There are aspects of English as a language which might have made this possible. It is not a highly inflected language and it lacks genders. It also absorbs at a terrific rate from a wide range of other languages including those outside the Indo-European family of languages. A decade ago while at a research centre in Italy I met a delightful Russian Professor of Psychology whose new field of research was international internet English. His own English was superb and he entertained a dinner table by reciting the whole of Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark' from memory--more than I could do. French will not die away and obviously in parts of the world with strong ties to France it will remain a key second language.

[Robert Marchenoir]

Peter Carrington, I would love to think that the blame lies entirely with the French political leadership. Indeed, many French people say so.

But witness the countless times various leaders tried to push reform through -- any reform --, only to be met with vociferous strikes and protests. And I don't mean only protests by the unions. I mean the man on the street. The guy in the bistro.

Leaders are elected, after all. At some point, you can't blame them for bowing to the voters.

When the conversation gets there, lefty smart-alecks usually retort: maybe the leaders would like to elect a different set of citizens in order to get where they want? (Brecht, I think.)

Well. Precisely.

I'm afraid we have the leaders we deserve.

[Michel]

Thank you Laurent from Paris for having found this very interesting poll about France being the world's most positively viewed nation in the world. That is funny that this kind of poll does not have the same coverage in the British (or American) press than does the one of free-market principles (I'm getting tired of seeing it quoted in EVERY single paper I read these days...). Yes, the British press can't help having a good French-bashing from time to time, though I won't blame M. Bremner who is quite moderate in his comments. But personally, I'd rather be hated than ignored ;-)

PS: And about language, why the hell didn't Sellière speak in his native language as everyone in the room was equipped with ear interpreters?! Of course the answer is political. Monsieur le Baron chose his side, and it is not the one of cultural diversity... That is just sad that this man has no other principles than business, money and efficiency...

[anna de brux]

I believe there will always be French bashing in the British press because they really believe that they alone should be arrogant and don't quite understand why the French beat them at it.

The reason why the British feel so hateful of the French is the fact that they don't speak the language whereas a French will always try to speak English.

Now, if I were to speak the language of Shakespeare like a Cockney or like the fella next door from Yorkshire, I think I'd rather keep my arrogant sounding French with its chapeau pointu tilt.

[anna de brux]

Peter Carington is out of his depth when he says that France lacks leadership - why doesn't he look in his own backyard before he goes around French bashing.

Does he really think that Britain has leaders with itss current crop of Labour government craps?

So, stop fooling yourselves guys! Easy to bash - I can do it too but let's be decent about it - stop saying that we ain't got leadership. We have or why else would the likes of Carrington be so scared of us?