The lost fight of the French
Besides the 11 official languages of the European Union, there are somewhere around 50 language communities in the member states who speak regional or minority languages. We’re not talking dialects here, but real languages like Basque, Welsh or Saami. In general, these languages are considered to be important parts of the European cultural heritage.
There were therefore some raised eyebrows when the French president Jacques Chirac recently spoke up against the European Union policy towards minority languages. After all, the French government had already decided to permit (limited) use of minority languages such as Corsican and Basque, thereby conforming with the 1992 charter of the European Council.
The president, however, saw the chance to make headlines again, after a long period of languishing in the shadow of the energetic Mr Jospin, the socialist prime minister. The suppression of regional languages is an old tradition of the French right-wing parties, and by raising the issue again president Chirac hoped to rally the tattered remnants of the French right behind him. A feeling of being under attack always helps in politics.
The president could also have mentioned what has been happening in Brussels. This year will be the first year in the history of the European Commission when the majority of the documents prepared within the Commission will be written in English, not French.
For the world outside France, this of course comes as a relief. For the French, it is interpreted as an attack on the very heart of everything that makes life worth living: the eternal glory of the Revolution of 1789, the plays of Molière, Burgundy red, pungent goat’s cheese, Cardin cocktail dresses and Mediterranean beach resorts.
The French language is faced with problems everywhere. Efforts to restore French as a second language in the former colonies have been costly and without effect. France has spent several hundred million francs in countries like Vietnam, where students of English outnumber those of French by 10 to 1. The 70 000 francophone Vietnamese are almost all over 70 years old. The young speak English, just like the young generation in Eastern Europe does.
English has also become the language of global communication. Roughly nine out of ten Internet websites are in English. Where several languages are on offer, one of them is always English.
“If in the new media, our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized,” president Jacques Chirac declared last year.
It is not without a certain irony that it is Jacques Chirac who waves the French flag in the face of the advancing English-speaking hordes. Chirac, like almost every French Eurocrat, speaks perfect English. But he also likes the US better than any French leader after 1945. He hitchhiked his way across the US as a young man, finding work as a bellboy, a chauffeur and a shop assistant. He speaks of his exploits in the US in the early 1950s with fondness.
The Swedish royal family, the Bernadottes, has its origins in the city of Pau in the sunny French region of Gascony. The young general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was persuaded to take the Swedish throne in 1810, taking the name Karl XIV Johan.
His wife Désirée, formerly Napoleon’s fiancée, had enough of the Swedish cold after just one winter and headed south again, five months after her arrival in the country. It was to be twelve years before she returned.
The Swedes were not impressed, but the contacts between France and Sweden, which flourished during the 18th century, were kept alive into our times. Then, the court life of Europe was conducted in French, from Russia to Spain; even in England a gentleman was supposed to be able to speak French.
Now, the European courtiers flock again, but the court is no longer Versailles. Brussels beckons. But in ten years, when new member states in Eastern Europe have entered the Union, French will be one interesting European language among others, no more. And students can concentrate on learning English, and other languages useful for international careers, like Spanish, the mother-tongue of 300 million people around the world.
Published in Metro Stockholm, 13 August 1999
There were therefore some raised eyebrows when the French president Jacques Chirac recently spoke up against the European Union policy towards minority languages. After all, the French government had already decided to permit (limited) use of minority languages such as Corsican and Basque, thereby conforming with the 1992 charter of the European Council.
The president, however, saw the chance to make headlines again, after a long period of languishing in the shadow of the energetic Mr Jospin, the socialist prime minister. The suppression of regional languages is an old tradition of the French right-wing parties, and by raising the issue again president Chirac hoped to rally the tattered remnants of the French right behind him. A feeling of being under attack always helps in politics.
The president could also have mentioned what has been happening in Brussels. This year will be the first year in the history of the European Commission when the majority of the documents prepared within the Commission will be written in English, not French.
For the world outside France, this of course comes as a relief. For the French, it is interpreted as an attack on the very heart of everything that makes life worth living: the eternal glory of the Revolution of 1789, the plays of Molière, Burgundy red, pungent goat’s cheese, Cardin cocktail dresses and Mediterranean beach resorts.
The French language is faced with problems everywhere. Efforts to restore French as a second language in the former colonies have been costly and without effect. France has spent several hundred million francs in countries like Vietnam, where students of English outnumber those of French by 10 to 1. The 70 000 francophone Vietnamese are almost all over 70 years old. The young speak English, just like the young generation in Eastern Europe does.
English has also become the language of global communication. Roughly nine out of ten Internet websites are in English. Where several languages are on offer, one of them is always English.
“If in the new media, our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized,” president Jacques Chirac declared last year.
It is not without a certain irony that it is Jacques Chirac who waves the French flag in the face of the advancing English-speaking hordes. Chirac, like almost every French Eurocrat, speaks perfect English. But he also likes the US better than any French leader after 1945. He hitchhiked his way across the US as a young man, finding work as a bellboy, a chauffeur and a shop assistant. He speaks of his exploits in the US in the early 1950s with fondness.
The Swedish royal family, the Bernadottes, has its origins in the city of Pau in the sunny French region of Gascony. The young general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was persuaded to take the Swedish throne in 1810, taking the name Karl XIV Johan.
His wife Désirée, formerly Napoleon’s fiancée, had enough of the Swedish cold after just one winter and headed south again, five months after her arrival in the country. It was to be twelve years before she returned.
The Swedes were not impressed, but the contacts between France and Sweden, which flourished during the 18th century, were kept alive into our times. Then, the court life of Europe was conducted in French, from Russia to Spain; even in England a gentleman was supposed to be able to speak French.
Now, the European courtiers flock again, but the court is no longer Versailles. Brussels beckons. But in ten years, when new member states in Eastern Europe have entered the Union, French will be one interesting European language among others, no more. And students can concentrate on learning English, and other languages useful for international careers, like Spanish, the mother-tongue of 300 million people around the world.
Published in Metro Stockholm, 13 August 1999
posted by Pelle at Friday, August 13, 1999
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