future of French language?

[Last Conformist]

The French are killing off the utility of learning French by learning English. Same for German, basically.

Depends on where you live, too, of course - here, German is still the foreign language the companies ask the most for.

(They don't ask for English, because they take it for granted you know it.)

[Lawrence of Arabia]

german is easier to learn and pronounce for an american than french because they are in the same language group. ever wonder why the french butcher english so bad? its the same when americans go over. the french cannot relax their jaws enough to get the open sounds out and the americans cannot tighten their jaws enough to get the closed sounds out (or pronounce the r)

[Zevico]

A question--is the limitation on the "official" French language a good thing or a bad thing? Does it stifle it? Or is it fine as it is?

[fed1943]

Assuming you do not want to work as language expert:

If your language is not english, learn english.

If your language is english, do not learn a germanic language because they are good at languages and speak english.

Best regards,

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Zevico
A question--is the limitation on the "official" French language a good thing or a bad thing? Does it stifle it? Or is it fine as it is?

What do you mean, "the limitation on the official French language"?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Ah, you had such a good point...until you mentioned German.

French is far, far more useful than German.

Not true. On a global scale maybe, but not in Europe. While not many people speak German as a first language, most of Europe has it as their second language (sometimes third, after English). Scandinavia, Benelux, eastern Europe, Balkans, almost everyone. Basically only most French, English, Italians and Spanish don't speak it, but they generally speak at least some English if not. And Germany is the biggest economy in Europe, many companies have a least some if not many German clients/suppliers (speaking from a Dutch point of view here), so it's still what companies ask for most from prospective employees, as LC said.

For the scientific world there's still great value in learning either French or German (especially French). France and Germany have thriving scientific communities that do great work, but they often publish their articles only in their own language (this is more true of traditional sciences like mathematics or history than of modern ones like computer science or genetics, but to an extent it's true there as well). Relatively new countries in the scientific community such as Asian countries generally publish in English, but the French and Germans (especially the French) so far aren't terribly willing to make that step. And there's of course a very wide body of older articles that still has relevance today that's also published in either French or German. My knowledge of both of these languages has helped me greatly in doing literature research, both in the fields of computer science and history.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

swiss german

[Snotty]

I like it when Chirac throws a wobbly when he gets reminded of English being the language of business

[Richelieu]

On va vous enterrer!!!

[bipolarbear]

I really wanted to take French just because I'd like to go hang out in France, but to be honest French is teh most technicalinest and I'm not really up for the struggle of that.

Russian is just kind of cool, and Japanese is easy.

I think what you are missing though is the decline in people taking Latin. That is still incredibly useful but noone really cares.

[Kassiopeia]

I study French because I want to read À la recherche du temps perdu in the original language.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Spiffor
What do you mean, "the limitation on the official French language"?

IIRC, France has an official committee that oversees the French language. That's one reason it's pronounced exactly like it's spelled (unlike English).

But this committee opposes the Englishfication of the French language and has banned such words as "le pullover" and "le Big Mac."

[Eli]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


IIRC, France has an official committee that oversees the French language. That's one reason it's pronounced exactly like it's spelled (unlike English).

But this committee opposes the Englishfication of the French language and has banned such words as "le pullover" and "le Big Mac."

Meh. We have a Hebrew Language commitee too. They keep inventing crazy words to use instead of the popular English ones and get ignored by everyone except the newspapers who publish their decisions as jokes.

[Zkribbler]

[Nostromo]

But this committee opposes the Englishfication of the French language and has banned such words as "le pullover" and "le Big Mac."

We have this in Quebec also. And its more of a problem here, given that we're surrounded by english. I agree, sometimes they get carried away, but why use an english word when there's a perfectly good french word for it?