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Pardon my French
As we reported last time, French officialdom is worried that in an expanded EU English will easily become the absolutely dominant language for working purposes. And a good thing, too, some might say, daunted by the need to translate documents into twenty different languages from Latvian to Maltese. What’s more, some have argued, adopting a single language would have God’s approval. Before that Tower of Babel business we read about in Genesis “the whole earth was of one tongue and one speech”.
Prime Minister Raffarin, a realist in the matter, has told his colleagues to brush up their English and a bunch of ministers are taking private lessons. Some are doing well, like Sarko, others – notably and discouragingly Foreign Minister Michel Barnier – are struggling. How can this guy hope to make peace with Condi Rice who, other than English, only speaks Russian?
But maybe there’s a solution for the dunces. Jean-Paul Norrière, a former French executive with IBM, has brought out Parlez Globish (Editions Eyrolles) which offers a simplified international English with a stipped-down grammar and a basic vocabulary of 1500 words. You can, he says, get along fine if you repeat everything twice, make supportive gestures and never – never! – attempt a joke. Trouble is born anglophones don’t talk Globish and could be difficult to understand.
Meanwhile, France’s language cops continue to tell us what English words not to use in French – and their natty native equivalents. How about jeune pousse for start-up, jeu décisif for tie-break and the opaque fils de ses oeuvres for self-made man? And then there’s une bonne heure for happy hour? Why do they bother with this nonsense?
From Reporter 108
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