Abdou Acknowledges Decline

Prefacing an interesting document titled "Suivi Vade Mecum", Secretary General of la Francophonie Abdou Diouf dispenses with the buoyant tone that is de rigueur in such publications to take stock of the real status of French in international institutions. Apart from acknowledging the decline of French, this text gives a marvelous example of the impossible balancing act which la Francophonie has condemned itself to perform as it is seen forever shilling for diversity against monolinguisme all the while denying or plotting to deny smaller languages the same official recognition that French enjoys, be it in France, Africa or the European Union.
Well, if we are to believe the same document, we shall very soon be able to observe if the Francophone lobby still is in a position to force a lesser status on such languages as Spanish, Italian or Polish within the EU:
"Dans un communiqué, daté du 17 septembre 2008, annonçant la nouvelle stratégie de l’exécutif européen sur le multilinguisme de la Commission, M. Orban a indiqué que la « prochaine Commission décidera en novembre 2009 de l’ajout de nouvelles langues de travail, qui sont actuellement l’anglais, le français et l’allemand." (p. 83)

Adopté par le Sommet de Bucarest, en septembre 2006, le Vade-mecum relatif à l’usage de la langue française dans les organisations internationales est un texte de nature règlementaire qui s’impose à tous les États et gouvernements membres, associés ou observateurs de l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). Si les États et gouvernements ont souhaité son existence, c’est qu’ils ont mesuré à la fois le déclin du français dans les organisations internationales et l’importance que revêt le respect du multilinguisme pour un fonctionnement efficace et démocratique. En me demandant d’assurer le suivi de la mise en oeuvre de ce texte, les chefs d’État et de gouvernement se donnaient, au-delà de la déclaration politique, une obligation supplémentaire : celle de se doter des moyens de renforcer, en toutes circonstances, la présence de la langue française au service du multilinguisme. D’ailleurs, certains de nos pays membres reconnaissent d’autres langues officielles et utilisent ainsi l’arabe, l’espagnol, le portugais ou l’anglais. Notre conception de la diversité des expressions culturelles et linguistiques ne réfute, en effet, aucune langue, mais elle s’oppose avec force à la facilité réductrice qu’offre le monolinguisme. De même, l’OIF ne considère pas que telle langue aurait, par je ne sais quelle qualité intrinsèque supposée supérieure à celles des autres langues, ou par la force du nombre ou du fait accompli, plus de légitimité à être utilisée plutôt que telle autre. Concernant les organisations internationales et les échanges entre États, nous ne succombons pas à la tentation radicale consistant à revendiquer pour chaque langue le même statut. Si cette revendication est tout à fait légitime dans une approche patrimoniale de sauvegarde et de reconnaissance des milliers de langues que compte encore notre planète, elle nous conduirait, dans le contexte des organisations internationales, au résultat inverse de celui escompté. Le Vade-mecum a été adopté voilà deux ans. Cette « jeunesse » explique sans doute pourquoi si peu de nos États et gouvernements membres ont pu, jusqu’à maintenant, se doter de réels moyens de mise en oeuvre de ses principes. Cela étant, certains sont engagés, depuis plusieurs années parfois, dans des actions de formation de leurs fonctionnaires et de leurs diplomates, avec l’appui de l’OIF, mais aussi celui de la Communauté française de Belgique, de la France et du Luxembourg pour ce qui concerne l’Union européenne. De nombreux pays dont la langue officielle est le français, singulièrement en Afrique subsaharienne, par leur pratique irréprochable, renforcent le statut de langue internationale du français. Certains de nos membres ont même pris le soin d’émettre des directives prescrivant explicitement l’usage du français, parfois aux côtés d’une autre langue officielle.

Bien que plusieurs de nos États et gouvernements membres n’aient accordé au français qu’un statut de langue étrangère, certains d’entre eux font néanmoins de remarquables efforts pour la promotion de la langue française. Les Groupes des ambassadeurs francophones s’organisent et s’emploient à faire respecter le statut du français par des interventions auprès des organisations internationales. Des diplomates agissent parfois directement, lorsqu’ils sont en situation d’exiger une traduction ou une interprétation défaillante au cours de telle ou telle réunion. Ce sont là autant de faits encourageants. Mais nous devons être plus ambitieux encore. Car je dois constater que, malgré la lettre que j’ai adressée à nos États et gouvernements membres et à la lumière des réponses reçues, aucune nouvelle circulaire, instruction ou recommandation spécifiquement dédiée au Vade-mecum, ne nous a été signalée et son existence même est souvent ignorée par des représentants des États et gouvernements sensés l’appliquer. Je déplore, par ailleurs, l’existence de contre-exemples emblématiques du comportement de certains très hauts représentants de pays francophones, qui s’expriment systématiquement en anglais, brouillant ainsi un message que le Vade-mecum cherchait pourtant à rendre clair. Je compte donc sur la mobilisation de tous nos États et gouvernements. N’oublions jamais que la langue française est le socle de notre Organisation. Et je forme le voeu que le vade-mecum soit perçu par tous comme un levier puissant permettant de faire progresser notre langue en partage, plutôt que comme un instrument de contrôle tatillon. La langue française ne pourra rayonner que par l’adhésion responsable et enthousiaste de tous ceux qui l’ont acceptée en tant qu’outil de l’expression concrète de leur solidarité, dans le respect de la diversité linguistique.

Abdou Diouf, Sécrétaire Général de la Francophonie

French Verb Decaying

The below thesis work focuses on the decline of written accuracy in pupils' use of French verbs. As any linguist knows, the verb is the most difficult part of language, but also the one part that most clearly sets a language apart from the others. The verb, its constructions, its forms, are at the core of a language's identity. The rapid decay of the modern French verb is a clear sign of the rapidly changing nature of the French language.

The decline of written accuracy in pupils' use of French verbs
Authors: Peter Metcalfe a; Diana Laurillard a; Robin Mason a
Affiliation: a The Open University,
DOI: 10.1080/09571739585200431
source

This article presents a survey and analysis of Examiners' Reports on French written papers, looking specifically at difficulties in using verbs appropriately. It draws on evidence from second-language acquisition research to determine the nature of the problem and hypothesizes links between the decline in written accuracy and the rise in oral fluency. (25 references) (CK)
source

English pushes aside French as the language of status in Lebanese capital

Lebanon has been particularly affected by the spread of English and the decline of French. The Lebanese can now be said to be in the phase of English- learning, the next phase being the near-total disappearance of French through disuse.

BEIRUT–There's a deal being offered on Mazda automobiles in this freneticMiddle Eastern capital, a city where little stays the same for long. "Turn me on," urges a billboard on Zalka St. in the east end of Beirut. "Zero down payment, 1.99 per cent interest. Limited quantity."

Sounds good – but what is most intriguing about this advertisement is not the nature of the offer. It is the nature of the language in which the offer is being made. The offer is being made in English – and only in English.
The same goes for much, if not most, of the brash outdoor advertising that sprouts like gaudy thickets of mercantilism along the boulevards and avenues of Beirut.
"The Chivas Life." "For Burger Lovers!" "Chicken Your Way." "Sally Hansen Line Freeze for Lips."
Never mind the absence of French – long the language of choice for cultured Lebanese – there isn't even a single Arabic character to be found on most of these signs.
"English is cool," said a Western diplomat in Beirut. "If you're hip and you're young, you speak English."
You do if you are Lebanese.
According to Christian Merville, an editorial writer at L'Orient Le Jour, Lebanon's only French-language daily newspaper, English has incontestablement (indisputably) supplanted French as the language of status in this resolutely status-conscious land. Or, as Merville, puts it: "Rambo has replaced Rimbaud."
He's referring, in the first instance, to the action hero played by American Sylvester Stallone in a series of 1980s movie thrillers and, in the second instance, to the mercurial 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
It's a play on words, but the point is clear. English – particularly American English – has muscled French aside in this Mediterranean land,whose capital was once known as le Paris du Moyen-Orient. The Paris of the Middle East.
In many ways, the sobriquet remains apt.
Despite the pummelling it has suffered during a succession of wars, Beirut continues to boast an array of continental charms, including fine restaurants, an exuberant nightlife, a sophisticated café culture, and enduring ties to a certain former imperial power whose capital is the Paris of Europe.
Increasingly, however, when les citoyens et citoyennes of Lebanon converse with the outside world – or even among themselves – they do so in English, not French.
Granted, Arabic remains the sole official tongue of the country properly known as Al-Joumhouriya al-Lubnaniya. But even Arabic is starting to buckle somewhat under the globalizing force of English.
This is Merville's view, anyway. He believes that Arabic speakers in Lebanon increasingly express themselves in an impoverished vocabulary and tired clichés.
"There's a decline in the quality of French," he said, "but there is also an extraordinary decline in Arabic."
Arabic, of course, has been spoken in these lands for millennia. French, however, arrived in the late 19th century, when Jesuit clergy in France sought to counter increasing Protestant influence in the region by dispatching legions of missionaries to the mountainous eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
Following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the territory now called Lebanon became a French protectorate, an arrangement that lasted only a quarter-century. But Parisian influence – linguistic and otherwise – endured long after Lebanon became an independent state in 1946. "Cultured Lebanese were all educated in French-speaking countries," said Ghassan Moukheiber, a Beirut lawyer.
Even families that could not afford to send their children abroad typically dispatched them to local schools where the language of instruction was French, not Arabic.
Explanations vary for the recent ascent of English.
Some observers here – oddly, these individuals tend to be native French speakers – advance the view that English is a "simpler," less challenging tongue than French.
But others note that English opens more doors nowadays than French ever could. It is the primary language of the Internet, for example, as well as the lingua franca of industrial and commercial globalization.
In Lebanon, as in much of the world, U.S. television and films are a powerful cultural force, easily exceeding the influence of their French counterparts.
At the same time, Lebanese citizens who may be contemplating an international move – as many do – are far more likely to be accepted as immigrants in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada or the United States than they are by France.
"English," said a French-speaking diplomat, "is a lot more useful if you want to go abroad."
Still, French is far from dead in Lebanon. Especially among gatherings of well-educated folk, it is not uncommon nowadays to hear the conversation shift easily from Arabic, to English, to French, and back again. "It's a wonderful trilingual country," said the Western diplomat. "In a single sentence, you will hear all three languages."
And, although dramatic and unmistakable, the current shift toward English is not uniformly spread among all of Lebanon's four million citizens.
Fluency in French is still highly prized in the affluent Ashrafiye district of Beirut, for example, a neighbourhood mostly populated by Maronite Christians, for whom the language of Voltaire continues to imply good breeding and high economic status.
The country's large Shia Muslim community, meanwhile, is said to be the sector of Lebanese society most drawn to English, but no group in the country is immune to the economic opportunities or the cultural appeal now associated with the language of – well, of Sylvester Stallone.
Repos dans la paix, Arthur Rimbaud. Rest in peace.

TheStar.com - News - English is cool in
trendy Beirut

October 08, 2007

More and More Franco Enrolments in Quebec's English-Language Schools

In spite of strict language laws, English retains its attraction in Quebec and many a Francophone wishes his children to become Anglos. Those who can afford the costs of private education even send them in ever greater numbers to English-language schools:

French Language Meets its Waterloo

This article by Ian Black is a bit old (March 2002), but has the merit of summing up a few useful facts about language trends in Eastern Europe:

Enlarging the EU is good news for the English language, confirming its victory over French as the classic medium of European integration.

Adding to the woes of the French, who fear an Anglo-Saxon plot to get the top jobs in Brussels and liberalise protected markets, a new survey shows that the language of Shakespeare is more popular than that of Molière in the candidate countries for union membership.

According to the European commission's polling arm, Eurobarometer, 86% of people in the 13 countries applying to join regard English as one of the two most useful languages to speak.

German is favoured by 58% per cent, largely in central and eastern Europe, and French by a paltry 17%.

(...)

"After years of armchair speculation about what the linguistic map of Europe will look like after enlargement, this survey is the answer," commission official said.

"It spells the end of a rearguard action to preserve French as the dominant working language."

English is the most-spoken foreign language in the candidate countries, scoring 16% compared with 14% for Russian, 10% for German and 4% for French.

(...)

Romania has most citizens who speak French as a second language, though there too, English is considered far more useful.

Cyprus and Malta, both former British colonies, are special cases, where 57% and 84% respectively speak English as a second language.

(...)

French dominated the European project from the 1950s until the 1980s but was set back when Finland, Austria and Sweden joined in 1995, and has suffered further from English's dominance on the internet. Today, two-thirds of commission documents are written in English.

French and English in Europe

Dr Svetlana Carsten, Deputy Director of the Center of Translation Studies and Director of Postgraduate programmes in Interpreting at the University of Leeds, has published a pdf document about main trends of language teaching in Europe. A few screenshots might be of interest before the presentation is taken offline. Click the thumbnails to enlarge:

I find it particularly interesting that French as a foreign language has all but disappeared from Eastern Europe except in Romania. Not really what Francophonie propaganda would have you believe.

Further Erosion of French Teaching in UK

The Joint Council for Qualifications reported a further decline of French entries in British examinations in August 2009. Of all foreign languages, French has experienced the steepest fall over the last few years:

Entries in modern foreign languages continue to decline with French down by 13,252 or 6.6 per cent (from 201,940 in 2008 to 188,688), German, down by 3,226 or 4.2 per cent (from 76,695 in 2008 to 73,469). However, entries in Spanish are stable, only down by 22 (from 67,092 in 2008 to 67,070).
Other modern languages continue their upward trend, by 1,429 or 4.5 per cent (from 31,682 in 2008 to 33,111).

Morocco and the Rise of English

Here is an interesting Facebook conversation about current language trends in Morocco, a very multilingual country, as I could witness myself some fifteen years ago. Language competition is fierce there, and English is making headways in spite of the elites doing all they can to entrench the French tongue as a means of maintaining the status quo.

SWITCH AWAY FROM FRENCH TO ENGLISH IS IRREVERSIBLE

Some may have felt that the Rwandan authorities' decision to drop French in favor of English would be short-lived. Yet they are as resolute as ever to punish the genocidal ambitions of la Francophonie:

RWANDA SAYS ITS SWITCH AWAY FROM FRENCH TO ENGLISH IS IRREVERSIBLE KIGALI, Sept 15 (NNN-RNA) -- As the fallout over Rwanda's implementation of the shift from French to English as the medium of instruction in schools rages on, a top Cabinet official has made it clear that the road away from French is unstoppable. The new Education Minister, Dr. Charles Murigande, has shut the door to any more discussion over the policy with the strongest comments ever made by a top government official. Dr. Murigande said Sunday that everything is on course for all schools to start teaching in English. "There is no turning back to French as a language of instruction in this country," he said to an audience of journalists and stakeholders, while pounding the table. “We have switched to English forever." The government has argued that taking up English simply reinforces Rwanda’s position in the international system. However, critics accuse the government of abandoning a constitutional stipulation which makes Rwanda a country with three languages -- English, French and Kinyarwanda. Last week, one of the fiercest critics of government, Paul Rusesabagina -– the exiled face behind the Hollywood movie "Hotel Rwanda", also launched his strongest attacks, claiming in a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) programme that a "small group of between 30,000 and 40,000 people who came from Uganda" is imposing English on the whole country. Rusesabagina has launched a campaign to ensure that Rwanda is not allowed into the British Commonwealth group of nations. Officials just brushed off these latest actions by the man accused here of seeking to acquire fame from the country’s suffering. Rwanda has been French-speaking for ages which completely disqualifies it outrightly from the British grouping, argues Rusesabagina but supporters of Kigali have branded him as irrelevant. For Education Minister Dr. Murigande, who is not new to very strong comments against France, the road to ending French is no room for compromise. Rwanda, he told his audience Sunday, will never go back to French "unless France re-colonises Africa". About two years ago, Dr. Murigande, when he was Foreign Affairs Minister, told RNA in a wide ranging interview: "We were killed by the French in the name of Francophonie", referring to the grouping of French colonies. The government is finalizing plans to build thousands of new classrooms across the country in time for the start in January of the nine-year basic education programme. Education officials also want the expansion programme to come with a phasing-in of English in all schools as the language of instruction. Science subjects are already being taught in English and universities have all switched all instruction to English. - NNN-RNA

EU Enlargement and Decline of French

Numbers speak for themselves:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU enlargement is pushing German ahead of French on the European language ladder, with non-indigenous languages such as Russian and Turkish also on the rise, a new European Commission study has shown. The number of German speakers and English speakers jumped 6 percent each between 2001 and 2005, hitting 14 percent and 38 percent respectively, while the rate of French speakers rose just 3 points to 14 percent. "With the enlargement of the European Union, the balance between French and German is slowly changing. Clearly more citizens in the new member states master German, while their skills in French and Spanish are scarce," the report stated. Almost two thirds of Europeans feel English is the most important foreign language for adults and children to learn. But support for learning French as a foreign language dived from 40 percent to 25 percent in the past five years, while support for German slipped just 1 point to 22 percent. France is fiercely protective of its linguistic heritage, with the Paris-based Academie Francaise sending out ambassadors to eastern Europe to promote French studies and awarding prizes to foreign francophones. The academie also enforces the so-called "loi Toubon" of 1994 against the usage of foreign terms in French public sector texts, providing French options for new words, such as "courriel" instead of "email." "We are aware of international trends, but we want to show that French is able to express reality equally well," academie lexicographer Jean-Matthieu Pasqualini told EUobserver. "There is a danger that the value of French could be forgotten in the language of international science and finance." Exotic tongues on the rise The new study also put Russian on the map as the joint-fourth most popular language in the EU, equal with Spanish on 6 percent. The Russian jump comes mainly from the Baltic States, with about one fifth of Latvians and Estonians citing Russian as their mother tongue while half of all Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians cite Russian as the most important foreign language to learn. Eight percent of Germans quoted non-indigenous languages, mostly Turkish, as their maternal language, with EU candidate Bulgaria also recording 8 percent Turkish mother tongue speakers. Non-indigenous mother tongues account for 5 percent of the British population and 3 percent of the French, with Indian languages and Arabic dominant. The report did not cover Chinese, but European Commission language policy director Jacques Delmoly predicted a "boom" in EU Chinese language learning in the next few years due to China's economic growth. Model Europeans The typical European speaking multiple languages is likely to be young, well-educated and working in a managerial-type position, the study says. The model polyglot is likely to have been born outside his country of residence and to live in a small member state that has more than one official language, such as Belgium, or in a country that has strong ties with neighbours, such as Slovenia. Anglophone and southern European countries came bottom of the class, with 66 percent of the Irish and 62 percent of Brits saying they do not speak any foreign language, while over 55 percent of Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards said the same. The commission itself recently came under fire for shedding Spanish, Italian and French translators in order to take on staff from new member states. With 21 official EU languages and 60 other regional and non-indigenous tongues present in Europe, Tuesday's (21 February) commission press briefing on multilingualism was conducted in English, German and French only. The study said 55 percent of EU citizens believe all EU communication should be handled in just one language, but ducked the sensitive question of "which one?

12,000 native English teachers to teach Spaniards

This story from last year is reminiscent of plans by France's Sarközy (de Nagy-Bocsa) to boost English teaching at French public schools. Zapatero's desire for Spanish children to become fluent in English highlights the spread of English in Europe, a region where French used to be dominant in the second and third language slots but is now increasingly losing out to English in spite of stiff resistance from French institutions and the French government's funding of Lycées Français and Instituts Français throughout the European Union. On the other hand, the kind of Spanglish used in this article would suggest that the Spanish still have some work ahead of them before they can compete with the likes of the Swedes, let alone English native speakers on the global marketplace.

Spanish Prime Minister announces plans to develop English education in Spain
larger | smaller
By h.b. - Feb 19, 2008 - 2:41 PM
Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - Photo EFE
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero set a ten year target for students to dominate what the Spanish often refer to as 'the language of Shakespeare'

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has unveiled ambitious new plans for the teaching of English in Spain. He has given an undertaking that 15% of total classes given in Spanish schools will be in English within four years, with the intention that children who pass through the Spanish education system will be bilingual and dominate the language in ten years.

For the plan to be put into action some 12,000 native English teachers are to be employed, together with a further 8,000 native teachers assistants. 20,000 Spanish teachers of English will meanwhile be given a month’s course in an English speaking country.

Speaking at an institute in Fuenlabrada, Madrid, the Prime Minister said that Spain needed the move to complete economically, and that Spanish youngsters would benefit by being able to compete professionally.
‘There are families who can easily pay for their children to travel or study abroad’, he said, ‘but our priority is for those who cannot’.

Courtesy of Edward J. Cunningham

Speaking French Can Get You Killed

There has been a lot of talk about how French air controllers' poor English skills or refusal to speak the tongue that Shakspere spake endangers people's lives. The following blog post from strategypage.com shows that the French military doesn't do a better job: it doesn't teach its soldiers enough English before sending them to operate in joint international operations. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows France well from the inside: French foreign language learning standards being very low, many French think they speak good English when they don't, while few are conscious that failure to practise will result in loss of fluency. The educated are often the worst as many have the most thwarted notions of what English should be (they revere French grammar rules and refuse to accept that those don't necessarily apply to other tongues).

May 15, 2009: While the French Army has recognized the importance of smart bombs and missiles, they found themselves poorly prepared to make the best use of these weapons when they sent troops to Afghanistan. They had several problems. First, they did not have enough FACs (Forward Air Controllers, teams trained to call in warplanes and smart bombs), and those FACs they had often lacked good enough English to deal with the non-French pilots. NATO pilots, like international commercial aviation pilots, use English as a standard language (for working with ground controllers and each other). Unlike pilots, the French FACs don't practice their English regularly, and have problems communicating with non-French pilots. Another problem was that the French FACs didn't have the Rover terminal (which allows U.S., and most NATO, FACs to see what pilots see via their targeting pods).

Many of these French problems arise from France having left the NATO military organization back in the 1960s. France remained in NATO, but its armed forces did not participate in training and standardization efforts with other NATO troops. There were some problems with this back in 1990, when France sent troops to join the effort to throw Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. But in 1991 the solution was to place the French division out on the western flank, where they did not have to worry about interoperability with other NATO forces. In Afghanistan, everyone shares the same pool of warplanes and helicopters, and many other forms of support as well. Interoperability is essential. Decades of NATO efforts to develop interoperability standards for basic things like communications, air and artillery support, supply and medical evacuation, have paid off. Not perfect, but not a lot of costly confusion either. The French now have to play catch up after decades on their own.

Hat tip: O. Mayer

a seismic event in Man's history

Health issues have prevented yours truly from posting new stories to this blog for these past few weeks. I am getting better and expect this place to be back and running relatively soon. Meanwhile, I would like to thank Edward J. Cunningham for drawing my attention to the below report about the phenomenal rise of English and the failure of all other languages to achieve global status.

Times Online, January 15, 2005:

WHAT WOULD you think was the biggest thing to hit human culture, worldwide, in the past quarter century? To the anthropologist of modern Man, what change would head the list? The explosion of air travel? No, most of those alive today will never fly. HIV-Aids? No, just one of many terrible scourges our species has faced: diarrhoea and malaria still kill more. The collapse of communism and rise of the global free market? The internet? These point the way, but still reach only a minority.

The answer stares us in the face. Like much that does so, it is widely overlooked. But it struck me forcibly in Africa this week (and I bet it will have struck Gordon Brown) as I sat in the back row of the Grade 1 class at Digum Complete Elementary School, by the side of a dirt road nearly 1,000 kilometres north of Addis Ababa in the Tigra region of Ethiopia.

This country, you will recall, was for many centuries a remote and independent African kingdom whose only colonial experience was as an Italian possession for a short period before the Second World War. The British never came here much. Ethiopia is in nobody’s “sphere of influence”.

My class at Digum school were aged between five and seven: 44 boys and girls, some barefoot, some decently dressed, many in rags; some fit and healthy, some with sores or burns, or eye problems. Few would ever have been to Addis Ababa. None had seen another country and few ever will. None will ever have been in a lift or seen an escalator. Some will not have entered a two-storey building. Most will never have made a telephone call and some will never have seen one taking place: a fascinated crowd gathered as I made a satellite call from our campsite to The Times. None will ever have had a television, though some of their parents will have owned a radio and all of them will have listened to one.

The children were divided into a morning shift and an afternoon shift. Thus did their impressive headmaster, Mr Getachew, and his 30 staff, manage to run a school of 1,644 children housed in six long single-storey cabins scattered over an acre of dust.

I had arranged my visit quite by chance. Our guide thought we would be welcome, and we were. Every child stood as we entered a class. “George Bush and Mr Tony Blair will never visit our school,” said the Grade 8 teacher, Mr Hailay, “so you are our most important foreign visitors.” He should invite Mr Brown.

The Grade 1 classroom where I sat had no teaching aids at all, save tiny wooden benches and single-plank desks, dog-eared newspaper-covered exercise books, a blackboard, and a keen and patient young teacher, Mr Hadush. Discipline was absolute.

“Let us sing, children” said Mr Hadush. “Come to the front Abraham.” A tiny boy marched confidently up, all the others rapt. “This is the way I wash my face, wash my face, wash my face,” shrieked Abraham, making face-washing motions with his hand. “This is the way we wash our face,” shrieked all 44 tots, in an ear-splitting chant, “Early in the morning!”

There is no piped water in Digum — just a well with a hand-pump, down by the dried up river.

“This is the way I put on my clothes, put on my clothes, put on my clothes,” shrieked Abraham delightedly, doing the motions. “This is the way we put on our clothes.” Yelled the class, full of excitement at learning and at showing off their learning, “Early in the morning.” Some of them barely had any clothes.

Mr Hadush called a little girl, who looked about five, to the blackboard and handed her a stump of chalk. She wrote out the English alphabet perfectly on the blackboard. Ethiopia’s native script, which she also knew, is composed of the bewildering symbols of Amharic.

The spread of English across the globe is a seismic event in our species’ history. It is one of the biggest things to happen to mankind since the dawn of language. Speech is fundamental not just to communication but to the process of thought itself. No single language has ever before approached universality. English is now doing so. No other language has ever advanced as far, as fast, as ours. This is the first time in history that it has been possible to denote one language as predominant.

Within the lifetimes of Times readers, every other serious contender for that status has been eliminated. French is dying outside France. “Francophone” Africa is turning to English. Portuguese Africa is abandoning Portuguese. German made a small, temporary advance across emergent Eastern Europe but elsewhere outside Germany it is dead. Russian, which we once thought we would all have to learn, is finished. The Japanese are learning English, and developing their own pet variant. China will resist, but Mandarin and Cantonese are not advancing beyond their native speakers. More of the world’s new Muslims are learning English than Arabic. Spanish alone is raising its status and reach — but among Americans, who have English already. India is making an industry out of English speaking, as call-centres daily remind us. A quarter century ago, as the dismemberment of our Empire neared completion, we might have thought that the predominance of our language had passed its zenith. It was only dawn.

It is imponderable what may be the consequences of the advance of this linguistic tide. Within a few generations and for the first time in the story of Homo sapiens, most of our species may be able to communicate in a single language.

The advantage lent to us British by our fluency (and that of the Americans) in this world language should not be exaggerated. The number of native English speakers may not grow much; our relative influence may decline. They know little of us in Ethiopia. Yet all over that country street signs and business billboards are appearing in English, beneath the Amharic. English is cool. The very lettering confers status.

At Digum school I also sat through a Grade 8 class of 56 students. Here in the top form boys and girls aged between 10 and 20 were being coached by the excellent Mr Hailay. He was teaching the uses of “just”, “already” , “up to now”, “yet”, “ever” and “never”, and, astonishingly, most of them had a pretty good grasp. Over the shoulder of the boy in front I read his battered computer-printout English textbook, instructing the reader in the correct tenses to use in reported speech. I asked Mr Hailay if I might ask his pupils a few questions.

Did they want to learn English? Yes, replied everyone. Why? “It is the language of the world, and I want to know the world,” replied one boy.

I asked what other languages they would acquire if they could. Spanish, Chinese and Arabic were cited in reply, but none had any plans to learn these. To my surprise, one of the boys asked me afterwards what language I spoke — was I Italian, he wondered? I saw that knowledge of English was not regarded as an indication of nationality, but as a possession, a philosopher’s stone: one which anyone could get. At Digum they were struggling to get it.

English, I realised, as I left the school while the children chanted “I was a pilot, a pilot was I,” isn’t really ours any more. We are losing ownership of international English. Internet English is already looking unfamiliar. Africans rely heavily on the present continuous, and manage perfectly well. Different parts of the globe will develop their own pidgins.

There will be no point in fighting this or regretting it. We should just take pride in what we have started. It gives us no mastery and nor should it, but it gives us a link. All the world will have an open gate into our story, our culture, our ideas, our literature, our poetry and our song. And we into theirs.

Montreal People See French Losing Ground

Mathieu Turbide
Le Journal de Montréal
18/02/2009 09h10

La langue française perd du terrain à Montréal, et l'économie se dégrade, constatent une majorité des Montréalais interrogés dans le cadre d'un sondage Léger Marketing-Le Journal de Montréal.
Trois Montréalais sur cinq trouvent que l'état de la langue Française dans leur ville se détériore.

L'opinion des Montréalais rejoint donc les conclusions de plusieurs rapports -et d'une récente enquête du Journal de Montréal -qui démontrent que l'utilisation du français recule à Montréal, particulièrement dans les commerces du centre-ville.

Le gouvernement a lancé plus tôt cet hiver une vaste campagne pour promouvoir l'usage du français dans les commerces montréalais.

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Useless Govt Ad Campaigns Try To Halt Decline of French In Quebec

CBC ran a story in October of last year on Quebec's Bonjour campaign:

A new Quebec-funded ad campaign that encourages people to speak more French is getting bad reviews from some English-speaking Montrealers.

The $1.5-million "Bonjour" campaign urges Quebecers to greet each other in French.

The radio version tells listeners that "Bonjour is the best beginning" for every conversation.

Montrealers don't need to hear that, especially when the province has bigger problems at hand, said Ted Duskes, who runs a technology equipment business.

"Don't spend all these kinds of money when you don't have the money to spend," he told CBC News. "You have people lining up in the halls in the emergency rooms, and you haven't got nurses. It's frustrating."

The campaign comes after months of public debate over the vitality of French in Montreal.

Recent provincial studies suggest French is losing favour as the main language of commerce on the island of Montreal, especially among small businesses.

The majority of Quebec francophones feel the French language is threatened in Quebec, but the ad campaign misses the mark, said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies.

"In terms of outcomes, in terms of the degree to which non-francophones are going to say 'bonjour' more, or use more French in retail outlets of downtown Montreal, I doubt this will have any meaningful impact," he said.

Government officials wouldn't comment on the campaign.

But Quebec's Office de la langue francaise, the province's language watchdog, said it expects similar campaigns to be rolled out soon.