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| [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [9], 10 ] |
| Subject: French | |
Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 12:57:05 11/07/04 Sun In reply to: Ian (Australia) 's message, "really?" on 12:36:56 11/07/04 Sun Owain has a point, but perhaps not the one which he wants to make! Sorry. I mean that, in criticising the learning of French as the primary second language in British schools, we are about 200 years out of date. French has not been the language of diplomacy and science and all the rest of it for centuries, and more over it is one of the least-spoken languages in the modern world. Why continue to teach it in the 20th Century, let alone the 21st? Spanish would be much more useful, but at the moment only public schools offer it. German is the language of finance, so why not that rather than French? Or world languages: Japanese and Chinese will be very important in the 21st Century, as the centre of the world shifts from the Atlantic to the South China seas. And what about Arabic, spoken by almost one billion people, in what is proving to be politically the most important region in the world? Swahili, Africa's lingua-franca? Hindi and Urdu, spoken by hundreds of millions of people? Personally, I deprecate the teaching of French as a self-sustaining and self-referencing cycle: people who learn a little French do not use it, since no Frenchman speaks worse English than a schoolboy speaks French; and those who learn it properly (i.e. at A-Level, then University) go on to teach other people high-level French whose only use for it is to teach other people, and so on and so on. Teaching other languages would instantly remove this pointless waste of money from the education budget. Moreover, teaching languages like Swahili, Arabic, Bengali, Latin American Spanish, would provide prestigious and well-paid jobs for thousands of immigrants with these as their first languages, who would otherwise have to take menial jobs as waiters and cleaners. But, on a personal level, I'd say that the King's English and Ancient Greek are the only two languages which a gentleman needs... [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:23:58 11/07/04 Sun Oh, and Sanskrit. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I personally feel that my life has been severely hampered by my limited grasp of the linear B script | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:34:58 11/07/04 Sun [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: And... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:36:22 11/07/04 Sun And mine by ignorance of the Walla-Walla Borioboolaga dialect! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I'd rather have Latin... | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:35:50 11/07/04 Sun My dad suggests that we should bring back Latin as the common language of Europe - not a bad idea really. Better than French, and moreover, it could be highly useful for understanding English. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Latin | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Off to London again) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:18:39 11/09/04 Tue You know, the Scandinavians - well, a couple of Scandinavian countries - are just nuts about Latin, and show the weather forecast in that splendid old language. Sweden is certainly one, but I forget the other. Perhaps they would support the reintroduction of Latin as the 'European' language? Just so long as it is not accompanied by Roman Law, I'm happy with that... it's Common Law for me, laddie; none of that bloody Justinian Code as far as I'm concerned. Decius and Julian were all right, but Diocletian and Theodosius and Justinian's legal frameworks - which I fear have crept into the Euro Constitution - make me want to tear my hair out and bite people to death. Well, not quite... but they make me rather angry. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I quite agree that there are more relevant languages to learn than French | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:38:03 11/07/04 Sun [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: French isn't too bad, but Spanish is probably more useful nt | |
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Author: Random Jock [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:27:02 11/08/04 Mon [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I would disagree with that analysis, Ed. | |
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Author: Paddy (Scotland) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:55:39 11/07/04 Sun In a great many countries speaking French is very much a sign of being civilised. Most of the better words in English come from French. Who can doubt that impenetrable is several orders of magnitude greater than the hellishly barbarian ungothroughable? Yes, practically no-one speaks it on a global scale but nevertheless its litereture is far superior to Spanish and is still, by a long way, the best language to express many feelings. In diplomatic terms, it is one of the few languages that can be spoken slowly and with little animation required to emphasise a point. Also French is a very precise language unlike English in many intances. Quite apart from that, seven million of H.M. subjects speak French as a first language. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Ah,,, | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Back in Shropshire) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 14:53:33 11/08/04 Mon So true... mustn't forget the Quebecois. But I still think that, after English, there are languages whose speakers outnumber those of French in HM's realms. As for the sophistication and elegance, having studied French and French literature - and, though I say it who shouldn't, having done it rather well, coming top in the country for my year - I really don't think that it can match English, or Italian. And English is only imprecise because we allow it to be, combined with its diffuse and evolving nature. I like to think of the relationship between the mind, language, and meaning in terms of a quaint metaphor, involving boats and expanses of water. Ancient Greek, for example, is like navigating up a river with many tributaries: it takes you in a straight line from where you are to the end, ever pushing you forwards, with new flows coming in from the sides and forcing you further and faster forward in the same direction, towards the inevitable, the only outcome. Explains a lot of Sophocles, that. But English is like being in a small coracle in the middle of the Atlantic: you can go in any direction, for thousands of miles, with more over the horizon, no end in sight, you can even go straight downwards if you don't row properly. Explains a lot of modern poetry, that. And French is precise because it is like going up a canal in a barge: it's straight, it's concrete, and occasionally you have to pause while the lock-gates open and you have to wait for the water to come up to your level. Great for science, lousy for poetry. I have many French friends and am quite the Francophile, but I don't care for the language, and have never understood the emphasis which is placed on it. It sounds pretty, but if that is to be our basis for deciding which languages are most important, then we should all be learning Italian, Swahilli, or those wonderful-souding native American languages. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Blesse mon coeur d'une langueur monotone! | |
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Author: Paddy (Scotland) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:24:10 11/08/04 Mon Perhaps you have a point about French poetry... A translation into French of Beowolf would lack a certain somthing. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Aha! | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Back in Shropshire) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:05:07 11/08/04 Mon A chink in the Auld Alliance, methinks! ;-) Well, perhaps not until Scots bumper stickers stop saying "Ecosse" on them... Seriously, though, I do feel that some languages would make good translations of Beowulf. I've seen a rather nifty one in Norwegian, and indeed most Teuto-Nordic languages can translate English quite well... I know I'm always banging on about Norwegian, but if you want proof that we're not a Latin people just get a Norwegian grammar book: Norwegian sounds like Scotsmen trying to speak Dutch... fantastic. I do take your point about some cracking words comming from French, but I would say that many of them come straight from Latin and were in use here before the Norman Conquest. The classic example is the word "Germany". The Romans said 'Germania', we say 'Germany'... but the French say 'Allemagne', so we couldn't have got the word from them. Beware of Frenchmen who tell you that "soixant pour-cent des mots anglais ont une origine francaise'... At least half of those, I'd say, come straight from Latin, and another quarter are scientific words from the 18th Century, like Newton's "centrifugal forces". That said, I'm not quite a Thomas Beecham... was it he who wanted to remove all Latin/French words from English, and would not call himself the 'conductor of the orchesta' but insisted on 'master of the band', because the latter phrase uses only Germanic words? Ah, our country has produced some fine eccentrics! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |