In article ,
(Richard) wrote:

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:07:01 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
(tim...) wrote:

(fortunately, the machines offer instructions in 4 languages -though
you can just about bluff your way through without translation -
unlike the bloody Scandinavian offerings)

I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

That's a bit harsh - unless you're suggesting that French has a
special status, which I think it has, but you can't know the language
everywhere you go. The other option is not going anywhere not on your
language list, far too limiting (even if I'm guilty of it sometimes).

I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost all of
us are supposed to have learnt it at school.

I must say I do feel uncomfortable going to countries where I know nothing
of the language to the point of not knowing which are the words for Ladies &
Gents' loos and have only done it once, to Poland in 2002. I got away with
English entirely except on one occasion, buying single train tickets from
Krakow to Warsaw. I thought of trying German but decided it would be
undiplomatic at least. Luckily the next person in the queue behind us was a
student who did the necessary interpretation.

The other exceptions are the Netherlands and Belgium. I've found that my
German helps me pass the loo test (and which poster in a railway station
lists Departures and which lists Arrivals) but having found how good Dutch
and Flemish-speaking people are at English I was surprised in Gent a few
years back how few prisoners they took linguistically.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 29.08.2017 2:50 AM, wrote:
In article ,
(Richard) wrote:

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:07:01 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
(tim...) wrote:

(fortunately, the machines offer instructions in 4 languages -though
you can just about bluff your way through without translation -
unlike the bloody Scandinavian offerings)

I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

That's a bit harsh - unless you're suggesting that French has a
special status, which I think it has, but you can't know the language
everywhere you go. The other option is not going anywhere not on your
language list, far too limiting (even if I'm guilty of it sometimes).

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...

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.)

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


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

In message , at 18:50:10
on Mon, 28 Aug 2017, remarked:

I got away with English entirely except on one occasion, buying single
train tickets from Krakow to Warsaw. I thought of trying German but
decided it would be undiplomatic at least.

A German man walks up to an immigration desk in Warsaw.

Immigration officer: "Occupation?"

German man: "No, just holiday."

--
Roland Perry

In message , at 05:00:54 on Tue, 29 Aug
2017, Clank remarked:

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.

Probably because it's the language of the diplomatic community, and of
other educated professionals worldwide, and thus a throwback to when
most people staying on at school long enough to be studying any
languages at all, would have a plausible need for it.

Our physical proximity to France is a co-incidence.

I agree that today Spanish is likely to be more useful for a tourist.

But to make one's way in the world of business the language one really
does need to be proficient in, is English as a Foreign Language - being
able to speak with a simplified vocabulary that you adapt in real time
to your audience, and an ear for strong accents.
--
Roland Perry

wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Richard) wrote:

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:07:01 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
(tim...) wrote:

(fortunately, the machines offer instructions in 4 languages -though
you can just about bluff your way through without translation -
unlike the bloody Scandinavian offerings)

I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

That's a bit harsh - unless you're suggesting that French has a
special status, which I think it has, but you can't know the language
everywhere you go. The other option is not going anywhere not on your
language list, far too limiting (even if I'm guilty of it sometimes).

I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost all
of
us are supposed to have learnt it at school.

I must say I do feel uncomfortable going to countries where I know nothing
of the language to the point of not knowing which are the words for Ladies
&
Gents' loos and have only done it once, to Poland in 2002.

In Poland you don't need to know the words, you need to know if you are a
circle or a triangle.

My Polish colleagues where actually amazed to find that the rest of the
world did not subscribe to this system.

Fortunately most countries recognise the issue with toilets and revert to
pictograms rather than words to identify them

I got away with
English entirely except on one occasion, buying single train tickets from
Krakow to Warsaw.

I always write this sort of stuff down

"Krakow (big arrow) Warsaw, time and date of train"

Of course that still leaves you with the DDMMYY MMDDYY problem :-(

I thought of trying German but decided it would be
undiplomatic at least. Luckily the next person in the queue behind us was
a
student who did the necessary interpretation.

The other exceptions are the Netherlands and Belgium. I've found that my
German helps me pass the loo test (and which poster in a railway station
lists Departures and which lists Arrivals)

This is a transport board so I expect people here would be able to work this
out without actually needing any translation abilities (hint, the times
shown at the "destination" on the departure board will be after the
departure time, on the arrivals board they are earlier)

but having found how good Dutch
and Flemish-speaking people are at English I was surprised in Gent a few
years back how few prisoners they took linguistically.

yes it's embarrassing, isn't it

tim

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

wrote in message
...
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 must say that, when visiting places, I was surprised how far it was into
the conversation before I got "rumbled".

It was only when they started on some complicated instructions for visiting
that I had to ask them to converse in English :-(

tim

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.


* 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.

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.)

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.

In article , (tim...)
wrote:

wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Richard) wrote:

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:07:01 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
(tim...) wrote:

(fortunately, the machines offer instructions in 4 languages -though
you can just about bluff your way through without translation -
unlike the bloody Scandinavian offerings)

I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

That's a bit harsh - unless you're suggesting that French has a
special status, which I think it has, but you can't know the language
everywhere you go. The other option is not going anywhere not on your
language list, far too limiting (even if I'm guilty of it sometimes).

I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost all
of us are supposed to have learnt it at school.

I must say I do feel uncomfortable going to countries where I know
nothing of the language to the point of not knowing which are the words
for Ladies & Gents' loos and have only done it once, to Poland in 2002.

In Poland you don't need to know the words, you need to know if you
are a circle or a triangle.

My Polish colleagues where actually amazed to find that the rest of
the world did not subscribe to this system.

Fortunately most countries recognise the issue with toilets and
revert to pictograms rather than words to identify them

I got away with English entirely except on one occasion, buying single
train tickets from Krakow to Warsaw.

I always write this sort of stuff down

"Krakow (big arrow) Warsaw, time and date of train"

Of course that still leaves you with the DDMMYY MMDDYY problem :-(

In Poland?

I thought of trying German but decided it would be undiplomatic at
least. Luckily the next person in the queue behind us was a student
who did the necessary interpretation.

The other exceptions are the Netherlands and Belgium. I've found that my
German helps me pass the loo test (and which poster in a railway station
lists Departures and which lists Arrivals)

This is a transport board so I expect people here would be able to
work this out without actually needing any translation abilities
(hint, the times shown at the "destination" on the departure board
will be after the departure time, on the arrivals board they are
earlier)

Only the actual Arrival or Departure times were shown when I first met this
problem, at Schipol Airport station too!

but having found how good Dutch and Flemish-speaking people are at
English I was surprised in Gent a few years back how few prisoners they
took linguistically.

yes it's embarrassing, isn't it

We managed pretty well, I found. My wife has no foreign languages at all.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

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.
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.

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".

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

--
Colin Rosenstiel