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Clank · August 30th 17, 05:23 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 29.08.2017 11:52 PM, wrote:
In article , (Clank)
wrote:

On 29.08.2017 4:14 PM, wrote:
In article ,
(Clank) wrote:

On 29.08.2017 2:50 AM, wrote:
I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost
all of us are supposed to have learnt it at school.

It's a bit of a mystery why it's taught in school, given it's about the
least useful language to learn. Not so much because of the level of
use, but rather because the native speakers would rather sniff
haughtily than descend to the level of communicating with anyone less
than perfectly fluent in it...

It's taught in school because France is our largest near neighbour and
the single foreign country with which this country has interacted down
the centuries. Young people like you

That's the nicest thing anyone said in a while.

:-)

all. French was also the universally accepted international language and
language of diplomacy until the Internet enabled (American) English to
sweep all before it.

This may be true, but it's most certainly not the international language
of business*, and given the paucity of competent diplomats in the UK
(currently being highlighted by the Brexit negotiations,) it is more than
apparent that commerce is a more common career ambition than diplomacy.
I'm not sure that usefulness in the court of Charlemagne is a valid basis
for determining a 21st century school curriculum.

It's a more recent basis than many other decisions on the school curriculum.

* Hell,I worked in France a little over 20 years ago (young man that I
am), for a Dutch multinational, with a working language of - you guessed
it - English.

If you mean Philips (for which I worked one way or another for most of 25
years) even they accepted that "Concern English" wasn't proper English.

French as the default language in UK schools really is daft - Spanish
would make more sense, or German.

A very holiday-oriented or American attitude if I may say so.

Nonsense. I spend my holidays in places like central Russia, I've been on
holiday to Spain exactly once in my life (although since I was visiting a
business partner in his villa, maybe that counts as half a holiday.) But,
I do have clients in Spanish speaking nations, and the total numbers
certainly work in favour of Spanish over French. 100 million speakers
(your number, a quick Google suggests actual native speakers is
75million but let's take 100) isn't very many at all, after all. I'm
visiting a *small* Chinese city next week - with a population of roughly
1/10th of that, more or less none of whom speak French (barely any speak
English, for that matter.)

1. Anecdotes are not data. I doubt you (or I) are typical.

When it's my attitude you're talking about, anecdotes *are* data. I was
pointing out that you should not be so presumptuous (or in other words -
no, you may not say so.)

2. I was guessing the total world Francophone population which includes a
lot of Africa as well as France and its possessions. "France Diplomatie"
says 220 million "including 72 million so-called partial French speakers".
That may be top whack but my 100 million looks very conservative. See "The
status of French in the world - France Diplomatie". Other sources are
available with figures up to 300 million.

Indeed, I read that site - to say it clutches at straws rather is an
understatement. "France is an official language of the International
Olympic Committee!" I'm surprised they didn't mention Eurovision (maybe
they did and I forgot.)

One is tempted to presume that anyone who ever uttered a phrase like
"noblesse oblige" immediately gets counted in their "partial French
speakers" category.

You're probably right that a more radical rethink might be required, and
Mandarin+simplified Chinese probably ought to be the second language
taught if we're being entirely practical (certainly would be far more
useful to me than French.) But that might be a step too far, and I think
Spanish or German provide a significantly better level of utility for both
business and leisure than French.

When I was at school we used to says "optimists learn Russian, pessimists
Chinese".

I attempted to learn Russian when I was at uni, so guess that makes me an
optimist. I say attempted - I can at least read Cyrillic (and that gets
you a surprisingly long way, there's plenty of common vocabulary between
English and Romanian, enough that I find getting around in Russia and
Ukraine no problem) and speak a little.

My father regarded German as a dead language (he was a native speaker).
Times have changed though.

I have a good friend who speaks excellent German. We always reckoned that
between our English, his German and my Russian we could probably make
ourselves understood almost anywhere in Europe. At the expense of being
able to also offend people almost anywhere in Europe ;-).