London Banter - View Single Post

[email protected] · August 29th 17, 02:14 PM posted to uk.transport.london

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 have been spoilt by the ease of travel in
recent times. Few people used to travel at all and many got no further than
France in the days before cheap air travel. It's only 50 years ago after
all. French was also the universally accepted international language and
language of diplomacy until the Internet enabled (American) English to sweep
all before it.

As for your ludicrous claim about the attitude of the French to others
speaking French, it is, in my experience, utter tosh. In any case it is
nonsense to make such a generalisation about any population of over 100
million people worldwide.

I haven't quite forgotten all my French, but I don't recall a time I
needed to use it in anger since I worked there 20 odd years ago (I rarely
visit France, and while I do visit Brussels a fair bit English is a much
safer language to use - speaking French to the wrong person will cause
more offence than speaking English.)

That has got worse in Belgium in the last 30 years, I have to agree.

Learning Romanian has pushed most of the French vocabulary out of my
head anyway...

I found that a bit with Portuguese but, apart from the general vocabulary
recall issue, I find that Latin languages complement each other. I got Latin
and Greek "O" Levels at school so I did learn proper grammar.

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. I've never
actually spent a holiday in Spain though I have done so in Portugal more
than once. I find my mainly Brazilian Portuguese is more useful in handling
Latin American Spanish. Both are simpler and more similar to each other than
their European counterparts.

--
Colin Rosenstiel