Is the teaching of French in our schools an anachronism?

[Karmadillo]

Well, this guy's talking about the UK, but I wonder if anti-France feelings will eventually lead to fewer high schools teaching the language.

http://argument.independent.co.uk/letters/story.jsp?story=557705

End the anachronism of teaching French in our schools

Sir: The exam results season has provoked outbreaks of lamentation over the decline of French and German in schools. We should be concerned about any reduction in foreign language learning; but this is a suitable point at which to reappraise the absurd level of primacy given to French within foreign language teaching.

For generations, French has been the automatic first foreign language taught to our children. This tradition was established in the Victorian era, at a time when French had an international significance which it no longer possesses. Our children would be much better served if the first foreign language to be taught were to be Spanish. They would be learning a true world language, whose relevance is growing. They would also be learning a language with relatively straightforward grammar, which is agreeable to pronounce and which would be more likely to foster an enthusiasm for further language acquisition. The clever or keen ones could then be offered a second language, probably German, which is of international commercial value.

It's time to throw off the shackles of the past and stop pointlessly inflicting French on our schoolchildren.

DAVID OLIVER
Cambridge

more...

[DrWeird]

1. If I'm not mistaken...

French is still one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

[getoffmytrain]

2. Especially in Africa.

[DrWeird]

3. Must be spoken more often then German, right?

Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it is.

[rooboy]

15. A hell of a lot more than German.

there are only about 130 million german speakers in the world.

[getoffmytrain]

5. here's a list..

French and English are the only languages spoken as a native language on 5 continents.

French is the official language of France and its overseas territories* as well as Bénin; Burkina Faso; Central African Republic; Congo (Democratic Republic of); Congo (Republic of); Côte d'Ivoire; Gabon; Guinea; Luxembourg; Mali; Monaco; Niger; Sénégal; Togo; the Canadian province of Québec; and the Swiss districts of Vaud, Neuchâtel, Genève, and Jura.



French is a co-official language in Belgium, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti (the two official languages are French and French Creole), Madagascar, Rwanda, Seychelles, Switzerland, and Vanuatu.

In many countries, French plays an important role, either as an administrative, commercial, or international language or simply due to a significant French-speaking population: Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Dominica (French patois), Egypt, Greece, Grenada (French patois), Guinea-Bissau, India, Italy (Valle d'Aosta), Laos, Lebanon, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Poland, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, United Kingdom (Channel Islands), United States (Louisiana, New England), Vatican City, and Vietnam.

http://french.about.com/library/bl-whatisfrench.htm

[madrchsod]

8. i find it`s very easy to read French

and i haven`t taken any French in school.some words, phrases, etc are hard to figure out but it`s not that difficult. Spanish -i haven`t a clue and that is a handicap where i work, since English is the second language

[starroute]

4. Chinese and Japanese

Give them what they *really* need to prepare for the future. :)

[progdonkey]

30. I've studied both...

(Mandarin) Chinese is a bitch of a language; it's extremely simple grammatically (IIRC no past/future/perfect tenses, no noun cases, no plurals except "we" and "you," etc.), but the pronunciation and tone system is frightening.

Japanese was awesome, though I didn't stick with it. I think Japanese would be an excellent choice in schools, as it is complex yet logical.

Any of the European languages, though, are good if taught well. I remember my mother saying that she learned more English grammar in Spanish than in English class; I'm now studying German, and it's the same situation.

[Nimrod]

6. Spoken widely in Canada

Who are still our neighbors as much as the "Freedom Fries" geniuses want to deny it. (Next person who says that to me seriously gets them shoved up his nose by the way).

If you're looking for domestic use of foreign language, French, Spanish, and Japanese are pretty useful.

[Terran]

7. First of all, Latin was

the "automatic choice" for generations, not French. Which just shows this idiot is an ideologue not out to make any useful point. And second, French is still vital if one has any intention to go into advanced study of art, literature, history, or the sciences, because of the amount of material that France producers in this area. Thinking about getting a Ph.D.? French is still pretty central to that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. What are you talking about?

French has been far more widely taught in Britain than Latin, since at least the Second World War, so that is 'for generations'.

French is not central to getting a Ph.D.. People can get doctorates in almost any field without being able to read articles in French.

Your whole post is just wrong.

[oscar111]

10. abolish all foreign language courses

well, we still need a few for "chatter" intercept translators.

But we must work toward a WORLD LANGUAGE.

Enough of wasting millions of man-hours learning three ways to say "table". We need to have budding scientists spend full time studying ways to end hunger, not duplicative foreign language rubbish. What a HUGE waste,

a brake on human progress!

Begin with UN adopting a STANDARD SECOND LANGUAGE for all to learn, and in time it will become the world language. Maybe english, maybe Loglan, maybe esperanto.
Loglan is artificial, built of all poured into it.

Languages are a HUGE INEFFICIENCY, and the future will laugh at us for tolerating them all.

[rooboy]

14. There was an attempt at an international language...

it was called ESPERANTO. Some people still speak it as a hobby, but it never took off.

[nemo137]

18. oh oh oh such, such a bad idea

Languages are so tied to culture and learning that forcing everyone to learn an automatic, bureaucratically decided second language would be about equivalent to putting everyone into forced labor. Language is more that 3 ways to say table, it's 3 ways to look at the table, 3 sets of values for eating with family, 3 ways of thinking. If you look at the research on language and dialect and thought you begin to see how important language is as a social marker and in shaping how we think from birth onward.

The future won't laugh at us for "tolerating" language. The future will laugh if we try to impose a "world language." Look at Esperanto now; it's a punchline for jokes, and an interesting oddity for linguists. Imposing a world language would be fascistic and barbarous.

[Davis_X_Machina]

11. His whole post is not 'wrong'...

...he's just working on a different time-frame.

'For generations' from Shakespeare's time to the mid 19th century Latin was the default language in the UK. There were battles about even giving degrees in modern foreign languages in UK universities well into the second half of the 19th century. Candidates for university entrance had to present in Latin, or even Latin and Greek, within living memory.

The situation you describe has perhaps been the case for sixty years, the case the other writer refers to for the three hundred years before that.

So chill....

[Terran]

17. Thank you

You said it better than I. :)

[Terran]

16. Since the second world war, that would be, what...?

Two generations? Right. Around the same time Latin started to fade as the language of choice to be learned in schools all over the western hemisphere. "For generations," I'm talking about the last 150 years or more. Your British school boys back before the War may have had the option of learning French, but I guarantee they were required to learn Latin.

And I didn't mean to imply that French was required to get a Ph.D. I simply meant it's still one of the front-running choices in Ph.D. programs, most of which require you to be fluent in one foreign language and able to at least read in another. Among western languages, French, German and Latin are likely the top three choices.

Sorry if you were confused.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. I said since "at least the Second World War"

because I know people educated in Britain at that time, which is at least 2 generations ago(and covers the present situation, which is what the letter writer was talking about). The letter writer says it started in Victorian times; here's an example of him being right for the time between the World Wars - a boy born in 1910:

I was put in the A class where it was compulsory to take Latin as well as French. The B & C classes took only French.

http://www.paisley.org/paisley1/history/mytoon2.php
So we see that French was more common than Latin.

I wouldn't have bothered with replying to your original post, if you hadn't been so insulting by saying "this idiot is an ideologue not out to make any useful point", when he had got his facts right.

Yes, I did get confused by your calling French 'vital' and 'pretty central' to a PhD. That does seem to imply it's required, to me. If you're now saying that it's fluency in another language that's required (which I still doubt, knowing some PhD students), then the letter writer's suggestion of making Spanish the first language to learn in British schools would be fine.

[Terran]

31. Oh PLEASE

You were insulted because I referred to the letter writer as an "idiot"? Why so sensitive? I wasn't insulting you.

And as to Ph.D. programs, perhaps it's done differently in Britain than in the US. Where I attended grad school (University of California), fluency in two foreign languages was required for Ph.D. candidates.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. Did I say I was insulted? No.

I said you were insulting. It was the combination of incorrect facts, and a gratuitous insult about someone who was right, that moved me to respond. I felt people needed to know the facts, not your incorrect opinion.

Yes, perhaps it is done differently in the US. But since the subject was teaching French in Britain, maybe you should have found out what the situation is in Britain before pontificating.

[Donkeyboy75]

20. Getting a Ph.D. requires knowledge of English

above all else. In the sciences, most leading journals are written in either German or English...but especially English. French won't help you there.

[mediaman007]

12. If we don't teach French there will be no FBI/CIA agents to read

all of the captured documents and intercepted messages after Bush* (President for Life) invades France to free the French. The French people will greet the Americans with roses and champaign. Americans will throw chocolate (carob) bars to little children.

The Americans will march easily through the French army. They will seize all gasoline stations, but not the museums or architecture (all of which will be looted by FOX journalists.

General for Life Rumsfeld will comment that we can replace the art with jpegs.

(end sarcasm)

[Still_Loves_John]

13. I think its unfair to label this as "French Hatred"

All he's saying that French shouldn't necessarily be the automatic second language choice, since its no longer the international language of diplomacy.

And I have to agree that Spanish is probably a more useful language to learn, even more so for US citizens, since we're so close to Latin America and since so much of our own population speaks Spanish.

This might just be because I'm from Texas, though. Spanish is the language they teach us through elementary and all that. I suppose in the Northeast, closer to Quebec, they still teach French?

[Swamp Rat]

21. David Oliver is an anachronism.

We should remove him, and knuckle-draggers like him, from schools. It's time to throw off the shackles of the past and stop pointlessly inflicting asshole Anglophiles on our schoolchildren.

[SoCalDem]

22. Languages are derivative..

It only makes sense to teach as many languages as possible. When I went to school they were electives.. Are kids being FORCED to learn French now?? :P

[Swamp Rat]

23. I'm still pissed that they stopped teaching French in elementary schools

when I was young in the ONLY STATE in the USA that had French as a primary language. The Anglophiles deliberately tried to wipe out all French language instruction over the last 50 years here in Louisiana. Only in the last decade has there been a revival of the language in the Lafayette area.

Learning more languages makes us smarter. I plan on learning Italian and French next.

[SoCalDem]

24. The younger the better.. Little kids (K-6) learn languages FASTER

and the accents are better too:)..

When we lived in Panama (on an AF base) there was a guy who was a naturailzed citizen (Chinese), married to a Portuguese woman.. Their little kid knew Chinese/Portuguese and Spanish before he went to first grade..:)

[Swamp Rat]

25. It took me 6 months in Brasil last year to attain fluency because I'm

an old blockhead. :D

I have lived with families that are native Spanish and Portuguese speakers whose children also grew up as native English speakers. It's amazing how intelligent they are! Some of these kids have easily mastered French by high school.

Were you in Panama when Noriega was taken out? I was living in Costa Rica around that time. I've seen some scary ex-pat mercs on the boarder with Nicaragua too.

[SoCalDem]

26. Noriega was a STUDENT of my father's

My father taught at the School of the Americas.. (yeh, I know :(.)

[Swamp Rat]

28. abraço

:hug:

[Obamarama]

27. C'est merde de taureau!

n/t

[Swamp Rat]

29. Je suis d'accord avec vous.

Merde!

[freestyle]

33. Spanish and French should be required, in elementary school.

That's just my two cents. I didn't start taking a foreign language until middle school, and quite randomly ended up with German. I stuck with it, and it is a very intersting language, but of very little use in the U.S. We should at the very least be able to communicate with the people we share a continent with, and the sooner the better. Being monolingual is a competitive and cultural disadvantage for individuals and nations.

[RichardRay]

34. Some language, any language, but EARLY

I don't care whether it's French, German, Japanese or Inuit, but some sort of language instruction should be included from the very earliest grades. It's been shown over and over again that whose who obtain basic fluency in a foreign language early in life can quickly absorb other languages later, and that those who try to learn their first 'foreign' language as an adult struggle much harder.

Unfortunately (for me, anyway) learning a programming language doesn't seem to fill the bill :-).

Richard Ray - Jackson Hole, WY