4/25/2007

French is going extinct, and the culprit isn't English.

My fellow Frogs are forever fighting English and Frenglish - which they call franglais - but they choose to ignore the fact that a new, home-grown sabir is effectively replacing the French language, just as Muslim culture is gradually ousting the lifestyle of the Gauls.

Said Gauls have reached that terminal stage where, having lost all hopes of preserving a lifestyle of their own, they seize on anything that happens and develops in France and proclaim it a rightful part of French identity, as though it belonged to French heritage as authentically as anything else that France has ever witnessed or produced within its borders, and they will gladly subsidize it and even award it Francophonie prizes if they discern in it the slightest potential to some day rival Anglo-American cultural dominance.
Under such premises, any loan word is OK unless it comes from the Anglosphere, or, God forbid, America (which makes it not OK to say OK, whereas words such as couscous, hidjab, mufti or halal have come to be viewed as perfectly kosher in both writing and speech and are now in common usage throughout France, even among ethnic French).

The French are no purists anymore. They are cultural vitalists with a suicidal hatred of America. They will do anything to keep France a radiating kind of place, even radiate pestilence - they will do anything, short, of course, of ceasing to revile those ideals which make America the strong country that it is, namely faith, free trade, free speech or the right to bear arms.

It is often observed that the French tend to borrow only the worst of what America has to offer and do so quite avidly. The reason for it is ideological: for a French artist to plagiarize the most vulgar and violent US videos is not frowned upon by their fellow French because, in their warped minds, to do so reinforces the image of a barbarous, culture destroying America, one catering to a global audience of primitives still in need of enlightenment by the gift of Cultural Frenchness--the sole and only religion the secularist French allow themselves to have.

Revile America and ignore the bastardization of France and its culture. That's the policy upheld by the French State both within and outside of France. And the French sheeple are too happy to live by those guidelines.

Now I am a Frenchman myself, but I loathe chauvinism. I am not interested in denial and I believe in the benefit of denouncing the many facets of France's rampant Africanization / Islamization; one of them being the ongoing replacement of the French language not by English but by a language that has evolved within unassimilated immigrant communities for the past decades throughout France and has even acquired cultural status.

Now is the time to try and give a name to that emerging tongue.

That language, used by some 12 million Africans in the 800-odd projects that France counts, that Romance-based patois no ethnic French person understands, which doesn't even sound remotely Gallic nor is a continuation of long-dead argot, that language can't be so hard to label.

I suggest either "Eurabian French" or, for the sake of conciseness, "Franchabic", and for the French, let us coin the word "francobicot".


Whence the silence of French mainstream media over "francobicot"?

The French are quick to sneer at their Anglo-American "friends" for indulging in PC euphemisms. Yet someone who uses euphemisms still attempts to name reality. The French however will at times refuse to even name the realities that don't fit into their nationalist worldview. The French fall over themselves to hide and censor inglorious realities, and they sling mud and epithets at any compatriot who forgets for an instant to peddle to the rest of the world the myth of France as a powerful, vital and trend-setting nation. Their deluded chauvinism is so bad that any Frenchman who is repeatedly found in breach of that collectively enforced censorship risks permanently alienating relatives and friends.

They want you to pretend that the Arab-French aren't Arabs, but Beurs who are as French as Monsieur Durand and speak the same genuine and authentic French of France that everybody else in l'hexagone does and always will do.

Beware.

Orgies of chauvinist self-delusion and self-congratulatory talltales are not to be questioned. Close ranks against zee eveel Anglohsaxohns! Arrohgawnce eez uh vir-tyooo.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ce qui est génial avec les conneries que tu écris, ce sont les généralités affligeantes que tu empiles une par une, tout en pensant certainement prêcher la bonne parole.


Une haine suicidaire envers l'Amérique, t'as pas dû beaucoup visiter la France alors tu fais des stéréotypes comme bien d'autres. J'ai remarqué que dans un autre blog- ramassis de stéréotypes et d'idées reçues, tu parlais d'une élite française qui haïssait les USA. Or rien n'est plus faux. Cette dite haine est hors catégorie, elle peut aussi bien "toucher" des membres d'une élite que ceux de la classe populaire. Je précise que tu te prétendais français, dans ce cas tu n'auras aucune difficulté pour comprendre cette réponse.

Sinon, il est vrai que le français est en train de s'éteindre, c'est SEULEMENT la 7ème langue la plus parlée dans la monde. Eh debout mon gars, on est plus au XVIIIe ou au XIXe siècle.

J'ai remarqué tu as une grande tendance à te servir du passé français à ta guise, pour illustrer tes propos. Enfin, on trouve des arguments ou on peut.

Si seulement tu avais un peu de réflexion et que tu t'ouvrais sur le monde, tu saurais certainement que le français se porte bien, même plutôt mieux que ton propos défaitiste le laisse supposer.

Le fait qu'une langue intègre des mots ou des termes d'autres langues ne veut en rien dire qu'elle est en train de mourir. L'anglais, bien avant de devenir la langue mondiale (plus pour longtemps le chinois passera devant un jour et je serai curieux de voir ta réaction béate à ce sujet) a intégré un grand nombre de termes français (les linguistes débattent encore sur le pourcentage). Pourtant je doute fortement que quelqu'un en Europe s'est dit, merde l'anglais est en train de crever dans un caniveau.

Tu ne pouvais être plus dans l'erreur avec ta pseudo réflexion sur l'idéologie de base du français moyen envers la culture américaine Il est vrai que certains français ont cette attitude mais ce que tu oublies plus ou moins volontairement (j'aurais tendance à dire volontairement quand j'ai découvert la suite de ton propos douteux) c'est que certains américains font exactement la même chose envers la France, pourtant là tu restes silencieux. Ton manque d'objectivité est criant de vérité.

On en vient au cœur du sujet, l'africanisation et l'islamisation. Les maux du XXIe siècle pour l'Occident comme tu aurais pu le dire. Donc dans ta crasse borderline, je cite "I suggest either "Eurabian French" or, for the sake of conciseness, "Franchabic", in French "francobicot"."
D'une, ton terme francobicot n'existe pas, serait-il possible que cela soit une invention de ta part ? J'en ai parlé avec des amis linguistes, donc trois étrangers et ils m'ont tous regardé avec des grands yeux interrogateurs.
De Deux, ta théorie sent le pauvre petit occidental complexé qui s'exile pour éviter de se salir en restant en contact avec des noirs et des musulmans.

Il est drôle que tu ne commentes pas que la langue que tu chéries, l'anglais américain incorpore de plus en plus de termes hispaniques via les portoricains et autres mexicains qui arrivent chaque année aux USA.

Allez pauvre tache, Long Life to the White Power comme tu souhaiterais le crier mais t'es trop couard pour même t'en rendre compte.

Unfrench Frenchman said...

Allons bon, l'Anonyme Commentateur, tu sais bien que ce qui se parle à Paris ou à Abidjan n'est pas du francais, mais du sabir. C'est bien pourquoi les voisins européens laissent tomber l'étude du francais en masse: quand ils viennent en France, ils se rendent compte que c'est une autre langue qui est parlée en France, une langue de bougnoules.
Et si la France, notre pays, parle une langue de bougnoules, c'est parce c'est devenu un pays de bougnoules, une république bananière que plus personne ne respecte, si ce n'est pour la qualité de ses bananes.

Certes l'anglais s'enrichit constamment de mots étrangers. Mais ce n'est pas un problème pour l'anglais puisque c'est une langue idéologiquement neutre et qui n'est liée à aucun pays en particulier. C'est bien pour cela que le monde entier apprend l'anglais sans craindre de perdre sa culture ou son identité. La France, en revanche, a toujours veillé à ce que la Francophonie reste monopolaire, centrée à Paris et continue à véhiculer l'idéologie jacobine socialiste qui sévit en France. Le monde n'est pas dupe: il comprend que quand les Franchouilles revendiquent un monde multipolaire, ce n'est que par dépit de n'avoir pu imposer leur centralisme enragé à plus de pays. Quand la France réinvente son identité en s'africanisant, ce n'est que par peur de perdre son petit empire culturel poussiéreux dans son petit pré carré africain merdeux.

Cela t'ennuie bien qu'un compatriote se moque des prétensions culturelles de la France en anglais sur le web. Sache que j'ai longtemps vécu en France, et que j'ai beaucoup voyagé, y compris à Maroc, où je fus surpris de constater que la majorité de la population ne parlait pas le francais. Dieu merci, je parle l'arabe parmi bien d'autres langues, si bien que je pus converser avec à peu près tout le monde là-bas.

La France est un pays de ploucs. Et non, le francais n'est pas la septième langue la plus parlée au monde, il a bien trop peu de locuteurs de langues maternelle pour prétendre á ce titre. Arrête de croire la propagande néogaulliste et voyage un peu, cela te fera du bien.

Unfrench, Francais et cosmopolite.

PS: oui, le terme de francobicot est de mon invention, de même que "franchabic". Il faut bien donner un nom à la langue de nègres que parle la Franchouille moderne, n'est-ce pas ?

Anonymous said...

Ha ha ha, si tu savais le nombre de pays que j'ai visité et dans lesquels j'ai vécu, je pense que tu te serais abstenu de ta pauvre remarque "voyage un peu".

Tes stéréotypes avec bougnoules, république bananière, nègres et j'en passe, reflètent tout simplement la noirceur et l'étroitesse de ton cerveau que tu martyrises bien souvent il me semble.

Ton problème, c'est que tu refuses de regarder la réalité en face sans ôter tes œillères racistes. Oui le français est la septième langue la plus parlée dans le monde. Évidement tu le réfutes puisque ta théorie (à faire pâlir d'envie un Drumont ou un Millevoys quand on y pense) tomberait du coup à l'eau. J'évoque ces deux personnages puisque tu m'apparais très conservateur et très dix-neuvième siècle. C'est vraiment à se fendre la poire d'avoir une conversation avec toi.

Je ne suis pas ennuyé qu'un compatriote puisse dégurgiter de telles âneries, bien au contraire. Le passé a de maintes fois montré que parmi les français, ils y avaient une bonne proportion d'imbéciles aux vues étroites et aux idées poussiéreuses dont il est clair que tu fais partie.

Si tu prenais un peu le temps de t'instruire et de satisfaire une saine curiosité que tu réfrènes avec opiniâtreté, tu saurais que l'anglais est confronté à un problème de premier ordre. Les derniers travaux de linguistes anglophones montrent tout simplement que l'anglais est en train de s'appauvrir, culturellement parlant. Certes, cette langue s'enrichit d'un vocabulaire (plus ou moins contestable selon les opinions), mais c'est pour la majeure partie un vocabulaire éphémère, qui ne dure qu'un temps limité donc qui a une signification culturelle quasi nulle. C'est pour cela que la plupart des linguistes américains et de plus en plus de leurs homologues britanniques prennent comme référant linguistique comparatif, le français et l'allemand, qui à leurs yeux sont bien plus stables culturellement que l'anglais.

Tu te focalises sur le français puisque c'est ta langue maternelle et c'est compréhensible. Alors que tu ne t'es même pas rendu compte qu'il existe une quantité non négligeable de crétins anglophones qui ont exactement la même pensée réductrice que toi envers leur langue maternelle, ce qui est incompréhensible.

L'anglais est une langue tellement idéologiquement neutre que les britanniques et les américains se sentirent obligés d'inclure dans leur dictionnaire une différenciation entre l'anglais américain et l'anglais britannique. Sans oublier ton évidente méconnaissance de la petite guerre intestine qui caractérise ces deux anglais comme l'illustrent si bien les différences entre le Chicago Manual of Style et celui d'Oxford. Même Oscar Wilde et avant lui Bernard Shaw le disaient: "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except of course, the language." Sans doute parles-tu bien anglais, mais il est certain que tu ne connais pas grand chose à son histoire. Autrement dit nada, que dalle.

Cela montre bien que ce n'est lié à aucun pays et ne se réfère à aucune idéologie en particulier, n'est-ce pas ? (Au cas ou tu ne le comprendrais pas, c'est un sarcasme).

Si l'anglais est appris dans le monde entier, c'est parce que c'est la langue du pays actuellement le plus puissant de la planète. L'anglais comme toute langue indo-européenne n'est pas neutre, il faut vraiment être un ignare en linguistique ou un acculturé pour prétendre le contraire.

Finalement, t'es un bon mouton qui bêle comme pas possible sur le net, c'est tellement facile. Mais tu ne serais même pas capable de le dire à haute voix. Il est manifeste que tes motivations sont la peur, la haine, le dégoût, etc et le pire c'est que tu en es convaincu.

Or comme le disait si bien Nietzsche "Les convictions sont des ennemis de la vérité plus dangereux que les mensonges." Tu devrais en prendre de la graine.

Il est vrai que nos voisins européens n'étudient plus le français (c'est un autre sarcasme au fait). Or la réalité est toute autre que ta vision biaisée (j'aurais tendance à ajouter, ça va devenir une habitude d'ici peu). Les études européennes (eurobaromètre en tête et notamment une étude comparée entre 2001 et 2006) montrent clairement un renouveau de l'intérêt des européens dans l'apprentissage du français.

Savais-tu qu'aux États-Unis, il manque de plus en plus de professeurs de français, il n'y a plus assez de profs pour le nombre de classes qui se sont récemment crées? C'est un problème que je connais bien, ayant été assistant de français à l'Université du Nouveau-Mexique et à celle d'Alabama, deux années de suite.

Je ne sais pas ou tu vis, mais il serait peut-être temps que tu sortes de ta grotte. Son humidité et son exigüité te rendent pessimiste. On pourrait aussi dire que son obscurité te rend aveugle.

Mais évidement tu vas me répondre que les instituts européens sont à la botte des néogaulistes de la francophonie ou une autre stupidité du même acabit.

Sur ce, je te laisse dans ta crasse raciste et borderline.

Unfrench Frenchman said...

Your lies are so absurd and unsubstantiated - no URLs whatsoever - that I will not bother to debunk them, especially since you persist in writing them in a language that only few readers can decipher, thus making them almost as irrelevant as if you had chosen to use Latin. Meanwhile, you and others may be interested in reading what international language teachers have to say about the worldwide decline of French:

The French language is in dramatic decline

Why French teachers have the blues

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/posts/7141.htm

The French language is in dramatic decline around the world, including in its traditional foreign heartlands, according to international language teachers recently gathered in Paris. François Buglet reports.

French is disappearing from European classrooms in favour of English

The predominance of English on the internet, the relative ease of learning basic English and the perception that English is "cooler" - thanks in large part to popular music and films - means French is becoming ever more restricted to older generations and the upper classes of many countries where it used to be the second language of choice in schools.

That was the consensus among language teachers from across the globe who gathered in Paris in early February for the Expolangues trade fair, dedicated to language teaching, learning and translating.

"Some among us see a sort of victory in this. But personally, I side with a campaign in the British press against our deficit in learning languages," said Julie Squires, a Briton who teaches French at Oxford House College.

In Britain, she said, much of the problem lies with a recent government decision to make a second language optional for pupils aged 14 years and older.
Twenty years ago everybody spoke French in Spain but in Burgos now French teachers outnumber students!

She pointed to a study which showed that, across British schools, 72 percent registered a decline in the number of students learning French. German studies declined in 70 percent of the schools, while Spanish declined by just 44 percent.

A teacher from Germany's Goethe-Institut, Christina Trojan, said "French remains a beautiful language much appreciated by the upper class" but it was losing ground in curricula, even in areas near the French-German border.

French was still holding up compared to Italian and Spanish, but that may gradually change.

"Given the difficulty of the grammar and spelling, many prefer not to take up French," she said.

Only Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm

A teacher from the Spanish town of Burgos, Julia Martinez, said most of her colleagues agreed that French was "in free fall".

"Twenty years ago, everybody spoke French in Spain. Today, in Burgos, there are more French teachers than students!"

A teacher from Portugal, Teresa Santos, said in her country 70 percent of Portuguese students preferred to take English courses, compared to just 10 percent for French.

"English is magnifique!" a teacher of Ancient Greek at the Aristotle University in Thessalonika, Thalia Stephanidou, said. "Even in poorer neighbourhoods, that language - which replaced French right after the second world war - is taught, even to old people," she said.
There's only one French school in Greece, and that's reserved for the elite

"My grandmother spoke French, my father too. Today though, there is only one French school in Greece, and that's reserved for the elite," she said.

Even in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, English has crowded French out of the classroom, despite French being one of the country's official languages.

In Russia, where speaking French was once a prized talent among the tsars, French is trailing "far behind English" in Moscow and Saint Petersburg schools, Mascha Sveshnikova, of the Russian Cultural Centre, said.

David Fein, the head of the Alliance Française in the US city of San Diego, said French studies was part of the collateral damage suffered in the transatlantic fall-out resulting from the US decision to invade Iraq, but now it looked as though pupils were slowly returning.

Only two Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm, with one of them saying that the luxurious images the language conjured up were its best advertisement.

* Modern French

"Only two Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm, with one of them saying that the luxurious images the language conjured up were its best advertisement.

French, she said, evoked "dreams, fashion, history, cooking and wine."

Anonymous said...

Tu peux écrire en anglais si tu veux et quand ça t'arrange, ça ne changera rien, presque personne ne s'attarde sur ton blog, sauf ma petite personne qui veut voir jusqu'où ta bêtise est capable de s'enfoncer.

Et vu ce que tu viens de poster, tu confirmes cette belle phrase d'Einstein. "Il n'existe que deux choses infinies, l'univers et la bêtise humaine... mais pour l'univers, je n'ai pas de certitude absolue."

Vu que tu veux papoter en anglais, allons-y.

Is your funny link a joke? A forum... What a pity you are.

1- For Pete's sake, could you not find a link more revelant or appropriate? You didn't know everybody can log in then copy and paste everything he would want?

Obviously you didn't.

2- And did you have a look to the answers of this pathetic post you copied and pasted here? Of course not, almost of the answers didn't even agree with the guy who posted it.

Second time in a row, obviously you didn't.

Ironically enough, they were saying just ... the opposite if i remember well. Does that mean they agreed with me ? Goddammit it does!

Let me conclude by saying that i know you tried hard for finding something similar to your POV, dude. But i'm sure you can do better. Don't forget that i believe in your infinite ability to be more than a dumbass.

A free advice: Keep trying as long as you are not exhausted to look like ridiculous.

As I believe in you, another adivice: Have a look at one official websites if it's not two.

Be sure that you already have my sympathy cos i know the big disappointment it would be for you.

Ps: Don't forget to correct your both last posts, lies are yours, not mine plus i dunno how you could claim to be worldwide and at the same time being a patent racist.

Unfrench Frenchman said...

It seems easier for you to type insults than find a good web page to refer to, doesn't it? I guess it what a French education does to you when you don't try to correct it by dint of hard work. Lazy, lazy Frog! I bet you also smell the part.
Anyway, here's one more tidbit of info for you to chew on, maudit Francais:

Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard has set up a working group to do something about the decline of French in Montreal.

The group includes several of Bouchard's cabinet heavyweights. And the group says it will beef up Quebec's French-language charter if it has to.

The group was set up last October, after the Parti Quebecois's national council meetings.

Some Parti Quebecois hardliners called on the government to do something to protect French in Montreal. The group includes Language Minister Louise Beaudoin, Joseph Facal, Louise Harel, as well as Health Minister Pauline Marois.

Marois says the PQ was surprised by how many immigrants to Quebec choose English. "When you have new Quebecers, when they arrive, when they decide to live in Quebec, an important amount of these people choose to live in English. And there are more people than we thought."

Marois says the group is studying the state of French in Montreal. She says the group will strengthen the French-language charter if it has to.

But she says any changes will respect Montreal's English-speaking community. "Anything that we will do about the protection or the development of the French language will not be in opposition with the English community," she said.

Marois says the committee will present a report within the next month.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2000/02/27/french000227.html#skip300x250

Unfrench Frenchman said...

Here is an Agence France Presse story that confirms the decay of French into a sort of colonial creole within France itself:

article on the decline of the French language
Wise men urge campaign to save French language

PARIS : The declining status of French as an international language and the disrespect with which it is increasingly treated at home have prompted two of France's leading linguistic wise men to issue pleas for urgent action to save it for posterity.

In an impassioned denunciation of the neglect into which French has fallen, Maurice Druon, 85-year-old doyen of the prestigious Academie Francaise, said an ubiquitous contempt for the rules of grammar and an insatiable appetite for bastard words from English were a clear sign of national abasement.

"Alas, alas, three times alas. Not only have we lost our linguistic imperium in the fields of diplomacy, science, technology and economy, but we have also descended -- both in the oral and the written -- several linguistic levels," Druon said in an article in the conservative Le Figaro newspaper.

"Vocabulary and syntax are disastrously, ignobly degraded. Just as after the fall of the Roman empire a low-Latin developed, so the disappearance of our colonial empire has encouraged the appearance of a low-French," he said.

Druon, a novelist and historian who served with general Charles de Gaulle's Free French in World War II, said the reason for the decline lay in the souls of French men and women.

"Language is revelatory of a people's general state of mind. The French no longer respect their language because they are no longer proud of themselves or their country. They no longer love themselves, and thus no longer love what was once the instrument of their glory," he said.

Meanwhile the country's most popular wordsmith, television host Bernard Pivot, publishes a book this week entitled "One hundred words to be saved," in which he calls on the public to take up the cause of the language's fast-disappearing vocabulary.

Among the words he wants to be rescued form oblivion are "carabistouille" meaning joke; "derechef" meaning again; "lupanar" for brothel; "argousin" which is an old word for policeman; "petuner" to smoke; and "macache!" -- an exclamation signifying "not at all!."

"The ecology of words is still in its infancy. But if they had wings and a tail, how we would take pity on them if they were under threat!" said Pivot, who is most famous for presenting France's annual dictation competition.

"Why are so many words destined to pass from life to death? Because they have grown old and like the aging employees of a company, they are pensioned off, thanked and then shown off the premises," he said.

- AFP

Everybody knows that French is dying, even the French do. What is left in France itself is a kind of Africanized sabir that no foreigner who has studied French at school can understand let alone speak.

Unfrench Frenchman said...

French language influence has been declining in Africa
By: Ali A. Mazrui
[][Post to BookMarks @ AfroArticles.com]

[ Posted On: 2008-03-05 ]

The end of the Cold War unleashed a debate in France as to whether France should continue with its traditional role of a special relationship with its former African empire, or re-focus its orientation towards east and central Europe, and become a major economic and diplomatic force among former members of the Warsaw Pact.

French Europeanists are still urging a re-orientation towards new opportunities in Russia and Eastern Europe. The Africanists among the French are still insisting that what Africa has to offer France is a cultural and linguistic empire, which can never be realised among former members of the Warsaw Pact. Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia will never adopt French as their official language but Zaire, Senegal, Cote d ivoire, Guinea (Conakry) already have.

Which way should France turn? It is possible to argue that globally the end of the Cold War has partially interrupted the decline of the French language, while in Africa the post-Cold War era may set the stage for a new decline of the language. Look at these two trends more closely.

In what senses, if any, can a world language be declining in influence on the global stage? Before the end of the Cold War the decline of the French language was easier to recognise than the decline of English. This was partly because French was, in some cases, losing ground precisely because of the growing importance of English.

Many smaller European countries had decided since World War II on giving priority to the teaching of English in their schools, often at the expense of French and German. This included Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark), the Netherlands, Greece, and elsewhere.

In the former French Arab colonies (dependencies of the Arab world) Arabic had been gaining ground at the expense of French. This was certainly true of Syria and of some of the former French colonies of North Africa, the Maghreb. While the French language was still strong in Algeria, the Arabicisation policies even before the present Islamic challenge had challenged the supremacy of French.

Earlier than that, the collapse or decline of European aristocracies had already reduced the prestige of French in the cultural stratification of Europe. In the first half of the 20th Century the nobility of most European countries still extensively used French as the language of status and sophistication.

By a strange twist of destiny, the French revolution of 1789 was one of the first catastrophic blows against the aristocracies of the whole of Europe, but France thereby helped to weaken the status of the French in European capitals as well.

Through its revolution of 1789 (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity), France helped to unleash the forces of egalitarianism in Europe. Yet, it was precisely those forces of egalitarianism that subsequently favoured English at the expense of French in much of Europe in the second half of the 20th Century. One of the gaps of scholarship in the world is research into precisely this wider field of linguistic consequences of the French revolution.

The collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact at the end of the 20th Century left the US as the undisputed superpower. This added to the prestige of the English language as a global means of communication. In some cases this was at the expense of French . But was it also opening up new possibilities for French in Eastern and Central Europe?

Promotion of French language

The end of the Cold War may be having complex linguistic consequences. As Eastern Europe opened up with economic possibilities for France, is France likely to invest less and less in promoting its language and culture in Africa? Will the French language and culture in Africa be compromised in the wake of the end of the Cold War?

Also complex are the fortunes of French in Asia in the post-Cold War era. French colonies in Asia were more linguistically homogenous than British colonies in Asia. French colonies in Asia included Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the former French Indo-China. Each of those colonies was linguistically homogenous indigenously.

And so upon the departure of the imperial power, the native national language could more easily assert supremacy, especially when it was accomplished by militant nationalism and radical socialism. What the end of the Cold War has done is reduce the militancy of nationalism in Indo-China and de-radicalise its socialism. French in Vietnam and Cambodia may have a new lease on life but definitely in the shadow of English.

Conversely, the major British colonies in Asia were linguistically heterogeneous. Each of those big colonies needed the imperial language as a lingua franca, a bed among the native populations. This included India and what later became Pakistan. It also included Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and to a much lesser extent Burma (Myanmar). Malaysia is caught between English-proficient Chinese and Baharia proficient Malays.

The greater the indigenous linguistic diversity, the greater the need of the imperial language as a lingua franca. The end of the Cold War made little difference to this equation. And so English has survived better in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka than French did in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos until the post-Cold War era gave it a partial revival.

As the 20th Century came to a close, the story of French globally may have been a case of "Decline and Rise". But as Africa entered the 21st Century, the direction of change may have been the reverse. The story of French in Africa may have been a case of "Rise and Decline".

If France stops fighting for its legacy, French in Africa in the 21st Century will be subject to the challenge of English and indigenous languages. The linguistic heritage of France is therefore bound to experience a downward trend, for better or for worse.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

Unfrench Frenchman said...

The decline of French is everywhere, e.g. in New-England:

""Tragically, the decline of the French language is a reality here in northern Maine, and I know that many people regret that fact. For this reason, I sincerely hope that community members will come out to learn about Julia's work. With her help, we can be a part of the solution in reversing language loss here in the St. John Valley," notes Dr. Harrington."

http://www.umfk.maine.edu/valleyvision/release/default.cfm?release=08069

Unfrench Frenchman said...

Or in Quebec:

"French decline bad news for Quebec, group says

Jason Magder,
The Gazette
Published: Tuesday, December 04

The latest census figures are bad news for French both within Canada and Quebec, says a French-language rights group.

Jean Dorion, the president of Soci騁 St. Jean Baptiste said he is disheartened that French speakers in this province are losing ground both to immigrants and English speakers, in figures released this morning by
Statistics Canada.

In Montreal, for example, the number of francophones fell to below half of the overall population.

"We're not going in the right direction," Dorion said. "The numbers seem to confirm some trends we have seen in daily life in Montreal, where more English is being spoken. In the workforce in particular, we have seen a lot of young people who were obliged to go to school in French are attending CEGEP in English."

Dorion said while most of the decline of the French language in Quebec is due to immigration, he said the Quebec government can have a policy of opening its doors to immigrants while increasing the French profile. He
said Quebec should make it compulsory for those attending French high school to attend a French CEGEP.

"Immigration could play in the favour of the French language," Dorion said.

"But the legislation in place doesn't help."

Dorion said he's also concerned with the census figures that show that French-speakers have once again declined in comparison to the overall Canadian population. That decline has been steady since the 1950s. However,

Dorion said the numbers released today are particularly alarming.

"The decrease is constant," he said.

"When I was a child, the first time I took note of Census, francophones made up 32 per cent of the Canadian population, now it's 22.1 per cent. That means the political weight of francophones will eventually become insignificant. We will soon fall below 20 per cent, that's a psychological barrier."

jmagder@thegazette.canwest.com

http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=2573&MMN_position=92:90

Unfrench Frenchman said...

In West Africa, where native speakers of French are non-existent, except for a few French and Belgian expats and soldiers, French will probably fade away completely within a few generations as French political influence wanes:

THE SUN IS SETTING ON THE FRENCH PRESENCE IN AFRICA

By Dr. Gary K. Busch (*)
(this will be in the next of "Africa Magazine" the successor to West Africa)


The steep decline of French influence in Africa

One of the most significant developments of the early twenty-first century is the steep decline of French influence in Africa. For centuries the French have exercised a degree of power and influence over a broad spectrum of African states, in West and Central Africa, which has left it as the most important colonial and neo-colonial power on the continent. French corporations and banks have long-standing positions of dominance in African economies; the currencies and reserves of most francophone countries are controlled by the French Exchequer through a pattern of dependence and a common currency; French transport and communication companies control access to the African nations; and the French military have bases across Africa ready to intervene in domestic and regional African conflicts.

The loss of French power and influence in world affairs

This is all changing and changing quickly, reflecting the wider loss of French power and influence in world affairs. There are several reasons for this decline. One of the most salient factors in French decline is the French lack of a reliable source of energy. France relies on nuclear power for a large portion of its energy production; the rest is supplied by imported oil and gas from abroad. France (and the French companies) has to compete in the world market with the giants of the petroleum industry (EXXON, SHELL-BP, CHEVRON-TEXACO, etc.) for access to the supplies of crude oil. They do not have the resources to compete in this league so make do with establishing a presence in countries which carry political risks for the majors. That is why they are in Burma, Sudan and why they were among the earliest to break sanctions on Libya. In other nations they used corrupt payments to political leaders, as in ‘Angolagate’, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon, Iraq to name but a few, to retain a commercial dominance. In the last few years, however, as the focus of U.S. energy policies has concentrated on diversifying Middle Eastern supply dependence to West African suppliers, the French have found themselves outgunned and outspent by the U.S. majors. The new oil developments in traditional French strongholds like Chad, Mauritania, Ivory Coast and Mali have been largely U.S.-led. The French presence in Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome is almost non-existent (despite French sponsored dissidence and coup attempts). France doesn’t have the resources to match the expansion in this area.

The Terrorist nightmare of the French police and army

Moreover, the French dependency on nuclear power has created a terrorist nightmare for the French police and army. France moves large quantities of nuclear fuels, spent fuel rods and waste on trains throughout France. Indeed, they even take in German nuclear excess. It is very difficult to maintain security of such movements over such a long distance and these nuclear fuel loads are a ripe target for terrorists. With a large and unruly domestic Muslim population, a substantial portion of whom have identified themselves with extremist political views, this dependence on nuclear energy has made France reliant on support from the international community for anti-terrorist information and co-operation. This has limited France’s ability to offend its allies without risking serious consequences.

The Chinese expansion of its influence in Africa is

By far the most important element in the decline of the French in Africa is the concomitant rise of the Chinese and their overwhelming hunger for raw materials. It is a little ironic that the Chinese are now becoming the saviours of Africa, when it was the Chinese who condemned Africa to a long period of ‘benign neglect’ and decline. Up until the admission of ‘Red China’ into the United Nations, the ‘Afro-Asian Bloc’ would meet with the West before each General Assembly vote and negotiate economic and political concessions in return for their support of the West in the annual vote on the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the UN. The moment that China was voted into the U.N, there was no reason to appease Africa or buy its votes. The Korry Report in the U.S. was indicative of the policy – choose nine countries with which to work and ignore the others. Africa entered a period of neglect and marginalisation, save for the struggle in South Africa and the discovery of large deposits of oil in Gabon, Nigeria and Angola.

Now, the Chinese are everywhere in Africa. Over the past six years China has made a determined effort to strengthen its trading, military and political ties with a broad range of African nations. Forty African countries have trade agreements with China. Current Chinese projects include a railway project in Nigeria; a Sheraton hotel in Algeria; a mobile telephone network in Tunisia; refurbished hotels in Sierra Leone; hotels, supermarkets and boat construction in Liberia; aircraft production in Egypt; and oil drilling and production in Sudan. Despite a slow start in the 1990s, China's trade with the African continent reached $18.5 billion in 2003, an increase of 50 percent since 2000. The trade in 2004 was about 7% higher than that of 2003, or almost $20 billion.

In December 2003 Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attended a China-Africa conference in Addis Ababa and announced that China had cancelled the debts owed to it by 31 African countries; debts totalling $1.27 billion. He also promised that China would open its markets to exports from the 34 least developed African countries on a preferential, duty-free basis. Following his visit, in February 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Africa to emphasise the Chinese desire for closer ties. This visit was followed by the visit of Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). South Africa now has become China's largest trading partner in Africa and bilateral trade has increased from 1.47 billion US dollars in 1990 to over 3.7 billion dollars in 2003. Two-way trade in the first quarter of 2004 totalled $1.67 billion dollars, an increase of 66.6 percent from the same period in 2003.

The Chinese expansion of its influence in Africa is due, primarily, to China’s voracious appetite for raw materials. Its commodity imports cost $140 billion last year, and its trade deficit on them was $100 billion. China’s industries, especially the oil industry, are sucking up the world’s supplies of commodities and creating shortages and raising prices. The impact of China's raw material and food demand on global trade has been so dramatic that shipping rates have quadrupled during the past 18 months.

Although China needs Africa for its supplies of food and raw materials, trade with Africa is a two-way street. China produces large quantities of goods (clothing, white goods, electronics, mobile phones, agricultural equipment, transport machinery, inter alia) which are in high demand in African markets at a reasonable price. China is also a low-cost supplier of pharmaceuticals and immunisation drugs needed in Africa which often bypass Western patent protection and its associated costs.

Chinese expansion has been concentrated, thus far, largely in Anglophone Africa, but inroads are being made throughout Francophone Africa. Chinese trade missions are spreading throughout West and Central Africa offering opportunities for these nations to break their dependencies on France. The direction of trade is no longer via Europe. Transport to the US and the Far East, in terms of tankers, containers and breakbulk carriers are bypassing Europe as an unnecessary diversion and cost. Air routes with the Far East are the dominant destinations in African air cargo operations. Europe, especially France, is becoming marginalised in this growth and its influence is declining with it.

The increasing regionalisation of military relations in the support of stability in Africa

Another reason for the decline in French influence is the increasing regionalisation of military relations in the support of stability. The ECOMOG has a long and distinguished record of intervention in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Africa Union has recently deployed soldiers to Darfur. The French presence as peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast or the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an anachronism. Their record of their failure in Rwanda, the Ivory Coast and the DRC is an object lesson in military incompetence. Most African states recognise that ex-colonial states have no business in peacekeeping. The trend is for specialist Private Military Companies (PMCs) to take on the role of trainers, suppliers of logistics and communications in peacekeeping efforts by multilateral Africa Union forces. In this, France is extraneous.

The will of African people to free themselves from the colonised narrow mind

France’s strength in Africa has always been its ability to project itself as the fount of culture; the yardstick of propriety. French colonial success was primarily in the minds of the colonised. This, too, is passing. In the time of the internet, when young Africans read world news; where they have access to unfiltered information flows (including the blunders of the French in Rwanda and the Ivory Coast); where the ability to read English is a sign of modernity and the ability to retrieve information from the web, the French days of cultural dominance are over. It will go back to being just another country in Europe, like Belgium or Luxembourg and the new horizons of the Far East and North America will beckon the current generation of Africa.

http://www.africa-humanvoice.org/afrique/frenchafrica01.html

Anonymous said...

You dare to play the offended guy while you freely insulted French, Black and Arab people?

You dare to talk about good web page while you are not able to give me only one?

You dare to call me a lazy frog while you just copy and past?

What kind of links did you give me?

- a dubious post which was refuted several times by the forum's others users. (btw it's funny you didn't hear a comment on this embarrasing point)

- an old article of 2000 referring only to Montreal.(flash news: hello we are in 2008 and Montreal does not reflect all the world)

Well I'm already waiting to look at you will copy and paste next time.

Will it be:
- Another forum's refuted post?
- An article of 1944?
- An article of 2253?
- A blog?
- A picture of you?
- A page from an good website?

You want some good web pages (I mean from reliable sources and not too old), here we go:

- Have a look at Page 11 of this pdf

http://www.actfl.org/files/public/ACTFL_Final_2008_completeLOW.pdf


- Have a look at page 8 for the table

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_237.en.pdf


- Have a look at page 5 for the table, plus if you got time look at page 10 too

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_sum_en.pdf


Firstly, I see French language arriving at first place of a survey realized in USA this year.

Then I see a progress of 3% for french language used as a foreign language in EU.

Finally I see that French Language arrived at second place of parents' whishes for their own kids in EU.

So my question is easy, Does it look like to a decline or an extinction of French?

Don't worry, I know you will say yes. I'm just waiting how you will try to prove it.

Anonymous said...

Alors, as-tu fini de consulter mes sources?

Unfrench Frenchman said...

"Finally I see that French Language arrived at second place of
parents' whishes (sic) for their own kids in EU."

When it comes to wishes, I have got to hand it to you, noone can beat
the Frogs for wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, even the French government has conceded defeat in the war
Toubon wars against the English language:

French education minister finally admits defeat in battle against the
English language

By Peter Allen
Last updated at 11:26 PM on 02nd September 2008

* commentsComments (49)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories


Education minister Xavier Darcos

French Education minister Xavier Darcos has admitted the secret to the
French success is speaking English

For generations, the French have fiercely guarded their language
against the horreurs anglais.

But France's education minister yesterday admitted for the first time
that the secret to success is speaking better English.

Xavier Darcos claimed poor English is now a 'handicap' because all
international business is conducted in the language, and said French
schools would offer extra lessons during the holidays.

He also admitted that, because of globalisation, very few people
outside France will being able to speak French in the future.

Mr Darcos said he wanted to make it easier for all French students to
learn English, saying that 'while well-off families pay for study
sessions abroad, I'm offering them to everyone right here.'

The Education Ministry was putting increased funds into English
language teaching in France to ensure that young people would not have
to go abroad to learn the language, he said.

The extraordinary U-turn came just two years after President Jacques
Chirac stormed out of a European Union summit in protest when a French
business leader addressed delegates in English.

Mr Chirac said he was 'deeply shocked' that a Frenchman would choose
to address the summit in English.

The president's attitude was supported enthusiastically by the famous
L'Académie Française (French Academy), set up in 1635 to protect the
purity of French, the language of Molière.

The Academy has hit out at the increasing usage of 'Franglais' words
such as 'le weekend' and 'le parking', as well as towards the
unhealthy influence of Hollywood films on Gallic culture.

French used to be the lingua franca for most EU business, but with the
expansion of the EU to 27 member states, the majority of which
prefer English to French, the former has become by far the most
dominant tongue.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) stands with former president
Jacques Chirac

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy is a self-confessed Anglophile
while former president Jacques Chirac is a firm believer in keeping
things French

It is a far cry from the founding principles of the French Republic,
which has historically seen alternatives to the one and only national
language as tantamount to an attack on its very identity.

Successive presidents have styled France as a small country which
needs to protect itself from international threats to unity.

They have been particularly unhappy about the spread of English,
seeing it as synonymous with tough capitalist values, as opposed to
the more socialist-leaning control of the economy traditionally
favoured in modern France.

Two years ago a French subsidiary of an American company was, for
example, fined the equivalent of £400,000, with an ongoing fine of
£16,000 a day for providing computer software to its employees in
English only.

L'Académie Française has led the rearguard action against the
increasing influence of what it calls the 'Americanisation' of French
life, sometimes bringing about censorship of movies from across the
Atlantic, and ensuring huge subsidies for dubbing firms and the French
film industry.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who succeeded Mr Chirac in 2006, does not
speak much English, but is a confirmed Anglophone who counts
Englishmen like Tony Blair as close personal friends.

Significantly his wife, pop star Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, chose to sing in
English on her latest CD.

A spokesman for the L'Academie Francaise said there would be 'no
specific comment' concerning ministerial pronouncements.

But he added: 'There is clearly a widespread concern that any comment
which undermines the use of the French language.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1051805/French-minister-finally-admits-defeat-battle-English-language-claiming-secret-success.html


Your minister is less disingenuous than you, Froggie. And were he
inclined to fight the rearguard battles of Francophonie, he would be
probably too clever to post a link to a .pdf document showing that in
the EU, French is only the third most widely known language besides
the mother
tongue with 11% behind German (12%) and English (34%). Nothing to
write home about, especially when the numbers of students of Froggish
are dropping precipitously across Europe as THE FRENCH TEACHERS THEMSELVES ARE WITNESSING AROUND THE WORLD. The following is by FRENCH journalist François Buglet:

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?channel_id=4&story_id=16980

Why French teachers have the blues

The French language is in dramatic decline around the world, including in its traditional foreign heartlands, according to international language teachers recently gathered in Paris. François Buglet reports.

French is disappearing from European classrooms in favour of English

The predominance of English on the internet, the relative ease of learning basic English and the perception that English is "cooler" - thanks in large part to popular music and films - means French is becoming ever more restricted to older generations and the upper classes of many countries where it used to be the second language of choice in schools.

That was the consensus among language teachers from across the globe who gathered in Paris in early February for the Expolangues trade fair, dedicated to language teaching, learning and translating.

"Some among us see a sort of victory in this. But personally, I side with a campaign in the British press against our deficit in learning languages," said Julie Squires, a Briton who teaches French at Oxford House College.

In Britain, she said, much of the problem lies with a recent government decision to make a second language optional for pupils aged 14 years and older.
Twenty years ago everybody spoke French in Spain but in Burgos now French teachers outnumber students!

She pointed to a study which showed that, across British schools, 72 percent registered a decline in the number of students learning French. German studies declined in 70 percent of the schools, while Spanish declined by just 44 percent.

A teacher from Germany's Goethe-Institut, Christina Trojan, said "French remains a beautiful language much appreciated by the upper class" but it was losing ground in curricula, even in areas near the French-German border.

French was still holding up compared to Italian and Spanish, but that may gradually change.

"Given the difficulty of the grammar and spelling, many prefer not to take up French," she said.

Only Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm

A teacher from the Spanish town of Burgos, Julia Martinez, said most of her colleagues agreed that French was "in free fall".

"Twenty years ago, everybody spoke French in Spain. Today, in Burgos, there are more French teachers than students!"

A teacher from Portugal, Teresa Santos, said in her country 70 percent of Portuguese students preferred to take English courses, compared to just 10 percent for French.

"English is magnifique!" a teacher of Ancient Greek at the Aristotle University in Thessalonika, Thalia Stephanidou, said. "Even in poorer neighbourhoods, that language - which replaced French right after the second world war - is taught, even to old people," she said.
There's only one French school in Greece, and that's reserved for the elite

"My grandmother spoke French, my father too. Today though, there is only one French school in Greece, and that's reserved for the elite," she said.

Even in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, English has crowded French out of the classroom, despite French being one of the country's official languages.

In Russia, where speaking French was once a prized talent among the tsars, French is trailing "far behind English" in Moscow and Saint Petersburg schools, Mascha Sveshnikova, of the Russian Cultural Centre, said.

David Fein, the head of the Alliance Française in the US city of San Diego, said French studies was part of the collateral damage suffered in the transatlantic fall-out resulting from the US decision to invade Iraq, but now it looked as though pupils were slowly returning.

Only two Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm, with one of them saying that the luxurious images the language conjured up were its best advertisement.

* Modern French

"Only two Japanese teachers talked of the future of French with enthusiasm, with one of them saying that the luxurious images the language

Anonymous said...

Appendice

Si cela ne te dérange pas, je continue en français, étant la seule personne à trainer par ici. Ne prétend pas le contraire, je suis le seul à avoir poster des commentaires. On pourrait parler en mandarin, ça reviendrait au même.


Réponse

Ton lien
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?channel_id=4&story_id=16980
ne marche pas, il faudrait que tu apprennes à copier coller.

Pourquoi tu remets une deuxième fois la même bêtise (cf. ton deuxième post et la deuxième partie de ton dernier post).

Et après, tu dis que c'est moi le fainéant. T'es décidément mal placé pour faire des remarques.

En parlant de cette possible erreur de ta part (mais j'en doute), venons-en à François Buglet. C'est là où on voit que tu es vraiment un naïf.

As-tu fait une recherche sur google ( que ce soit google.fr ou google.com) en tapant "François Buglet"?

Je te souhaite bonne chance mais autant te le dire maintenant, ce journaliste n'existe pas.

Ce que tu postes deux fois, est en fait un faux article que bizarrement on trouve que sur des forums ou des blogs.

Je constate que tu es une belle victime d'intoxication médiatique.

Au fond, il fallait s'y attendre de la part d'un mouton qui passe son temps à bêler son malheur sur un blog dont le monde se contrefout, de se faire piéger par internet.

Peter Allen fait preuve d'un bel engagement pour un journaliste qui est censé être neutre. Ne trouves-tu pas ?

Voyons voir ça de plus près. Ah il est vrai aussi qu'il est journaliste au ... Daily Mail, un tabloïd britannique conservateur qu'on pourrait résumer à "anti-tout ce qui n'est pas britannique". Là, d'un coup je suis moins surpris de la teneur offensive de ses propos.

Petit appendice.

- Savais-tu que le Daily Mail fut le seul journal britannique à soutenir le Nazisme et le Fascisme dans les années 30? Les britanniques le surnommèrent alors le "Daily Heil". Tu peux vérifier si ça te chante.

- Savais-tu que le Daily Mail l'un des rares journaux brits à soutenir l'apartheid en Afrique du Sud? C'est à cette époque que le surnom "Daily Heil" revînt au goût du jour. Tu peux vérifier si ça te chante.

- Savais-tu que Peter Allen avait été l'auteur d'un article complètement absurde sur la maison hantée des Beckham et certains amis britanniques en rigolent encore.

- Savais-tu que Peter Allen est toujours l'un des premiers journalistes britanniques à faire du "french bashing" dés qu'il peut?

Difficile de croire en la crédibilité d'un journal et d'un journaliste pareils après ça. Enfin si tu y crois, c'est que tu es vraiment prêt à tout gober. A moins que tu avoues finalement que tu n'es pas français.

Décidément, il faudrait que tu te penches un peu plus sérieusement sur tes sources, mon cher.

Es-ce étonnant? Non, tu es tellement pris par ta recherche désespérée d'arguments allant dans ton sens que tu bondis comme un cabri dés que tu trouves quelque chose. Et là, paf tu ne vérifies même pas tes sources.

Mais je n'en ai pas terminé avec toi.

- Gary K. Busch et Ali A. Mazrui. Ben autant je suis d'accord sur la politique néocolonialiste déplorable de la France en Afrique, autant sur les fluctuations de la langue française, ils ne peuvent pas étayer leurs propos. Ils ne donnent que leurs avis. De plus, concernant Mazrui, si tu le connaissais un peu au lieu de seulement copier coller tout ce que tu trouves et qui conforte ta pensée, sache qu'il taille en morceau autant la langue française que ... la langue anglaise en tant que support d’un néocolonialisme de mondialisation dans son ouvrage fort intéressant "Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience" édité en 2001 (voir lien ci-dessous).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200110/ai_n8994240/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

Moralité, il faut se renseigner avant de faire du copier coller. Au fait, ton copier coller est un extrait du susnommé livre. Mazrui notamment prône un retour aux langues traditionnelles africaines au dépend de toutes langues non africaines.

- La petite fraction francophone du Maine près de Fort Kent. Ah ben oui, c'est autant probant que ton copier coller de l'article de CBC concernant Montreal en 2000.

Cela ne concerne qu'une petite entité d’environ 60.000 personnes (au cas où tu ne le savais pas, non plus que la francophonie concerne que entre 270 et 280 millions de personnes de par le monde).

Je dois avouer que tu as fait un effort ou eu de la chance, t'as enfin réussi à trouver une source très récente.

Même si tu n'as copié collé que la partie qui t'intéressait (Tss quel manque de fair-play!!! surtout quand on lit le reste de l'article qui n’est pas si pessimiste que ça, Maine Uni se démène pour préserver le français local, quelle honte de la part d'une université américaine, ne trouves-tu pas ?).

- L'article de l'AFP avec notre cher Maurice Druon. Il est vrai que notre cher Maurice, de son fauteuil de secrétaire perpétuel de l'Académie Française s'est plaint de la détérioration de notre belle langue.

Mais tant qu’à faire, notre cher Maurice ne s'arrête pas là.

Notre cher Maurice est un homme résolument offensif.

Notre cher Maurice est tout simplement contre la diversité de la langue française et pour une unicité (complètement loufoque) et une universalité (il vît dans le passé, cet homme là) via l’Académie dont il fait parti (là, on rejoint ta conception toute personnelle du néogaullisme).

En 2006, notre cher Maurice est même allé (pour la perte du peu de crédibilité qui lui restait) jusqu'à fustiger les Québécois de "leur parler pittoresque".

Et c'est là que je constate que tu empiles les infos sans connaître les tenants et les aboutissants ou tout au moins sans les analyser.

Notre cher Maurice se plaint pèle-mêle des problèmes de la langue française en France et du curieux français des Québécois.

De ton côté tu te plains des "sabirs".

Jusque là, vous partagez la même opinion.

Mais à la différence de notre cher Maurice qui prône l’uniformité et le prestige de la langue française, toi tu choisis la facilité, tu fuis et tu écris sur un blog que personne ne lit.

Mais au fait, quand tu te plaignais des "sabirs", en Afrique et dieu sait où, prétendant que cela n’était pas du français, ça ressemble un peu aux propos de notre cher Maurice, non ?

Moralité, dans la catégorie "je me grille tout seul comme un gland", tu viens de remporter une médaille.

A la différence de notre cher Maurice, qui lui assume publiquement ses positions, tu es imprégné d’une conception néogaulliste sauf que tu ne l’assumes pas.

- Jason Magder et son article de 2004. Le recensement de 2006 au Canada montre que proportionnellement le français québécois perd du terrain face à l'anglais.

Les anglophones et les immigrés ont de bien meilleurs taux de natalité que les francophones du Canada (un rapport à peu près de 2.1 pour mille contre 1.4 pour mille si ma mémoire est bonne).

J’espère que tu connais la signification du terme "proportionnellement".

Cela veut dire que malgré ce que tu penses la communauté francophone augmente au Canada, certes moins rapidement que la communauté anglophone.


Conclusion

Tu maintiens ce que je disais dans mes premiers posts. Tes réponses le confirment puisque tu n’as jamais su me donner une réponse venant d’un site officiel, hormis copier et coller
- des articles périmés ou de teneur subjective (CBC et The Gazette, Daily Mail),
- des forums dans lesquels il y avait plus de personnes qui abondaient dans mon sens si tu avais jeté un œil vigilant,
- des propos incomplets pour confirmer ta pensée (Maine, Ali Marzui),
- des opinions que tu ne peux même pas étayer (Busch),
- etc.

Tu te sers d’un blog pour déverser ta logorrhée aux relents racistes et xénophobes sur les bougnoules, les bananes et les nègres et la France… et irrémédiablement montrer ta lâcheté, alors que si tu avais une once de courage et d’abnégation, tu agirais autrement. Mais là, je t’en demande trop, n’est-ce pas ?

Au fait t’as pas répondu à cette question, comment peux-tu te prétendre cosmopolite tout en tenant des propos racistes ?

Visiblement, comme avec ton concept tout personnel du néogaullisme, les contradictions ne te dérangent pas.

Sur ce, je t'abandonne définitivement à tes rêveries sur le déclin du français, qui continuera à exister bien après ta mort malgré tout.

Unfrench Frenchman said...

The expatica link doesn't work because the article is no longer on expatica. Nevertheless a simple Google search shows that the article was first published on expatica under that URL. Francois Buglet IS a French journalist. The fact that you can't Google him up doesn't mean a thing.

A French minister said that French will in future be spoken by very few people outside of France. Most French observers that count are making similar observations including language teachers.
You are denying the decline of the French language. But do you count?
Have you ever been in Vietnam? It used to be a French speaking colony. No about one out of 1000 speaks French there. Similarly, in Lebanon few French speakers are left.
Same story in areas of North America that used to be overwhelmingly French speaking.
West Africa is the only French speaking stronghold of any significance left and even it is threatened and weak as French is nothing more than a second language to the minority of West Africans who can speak it.
Here is the situation in the UK regarding French and it is no different from the predicament of French teaching in other EU countries:

French in decline

The number of entries in subjects defined by the JCQ as "traditional" - English, art, classical studies, economics, geography, history, maths and RE - was 244,707.

The number in "newer" subjects - politics, psychology, law, media and sociology - was 122,461.

These equate to 31.2% and 15.6% of entries respectively.

Foreign languages entries rose overall, with Russian, Italian and Chinese accounting for much of the change.

But French entries fell by 4.4% to 14,484 and German by 7.7% to 5,901.


The fall in numbers taking physics is a concern and we will continue to work closely with employers, schools and experts
Lord Adonis, education minister

Dr Johnson Searle described the situation in French as "stark", adding that it had halved in popularity at A-level over the last 11 years.

Spanish entries, however, increased by 4.4% to 6,230 this year, overtaking German.

Dr Johnson Searle said the figure for physics was an "anomaly" among the general rise in science subjects, but students were basing their choices on their needs for work and gaining a place on a degree course.

Physics was less likely to be taken as a "third A-level" by non-science specialists than biology, for instance.

She added that universities were also less likely to ask for an A-level in physics than in chemistry, which increased 4.3% in popularity to 38,851 entries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4162230.stm


The entire EU is affected by the same phenomenon of student disaffection with French. In Germany for instance, students are dropping French en masse and taking up more useful subject-matters like Spanish instead. Try and apply for a French-teaching position at a German high school these days. Prost, Mahlzeit, mein lieber Landsmann!

Xavier Darcos and Ernest-Antoine Seilliere speak for the French who know that English, not French, is the key to success on international markets whereas Francomaniacs Chirac and Toubon have been swept into the garbage dumps of history. You, just like them, are on the side of history's losers. Enjoy the company!

Anonymous said...

Das Problem mit der französischen Sprache ist, sie ist schwerer zu erlernen als die englische Sprache und man gebraucht sie fast nie, das heißt, sie ist weniger alltagstauglich als Englisch und sogar Lateinisch. Zu lange hat sich Paris darauf ausgeruht, die Sprache des franz. Zentralstaates vielen Menschen zwar als besonders graziöse Errungenschaft zu verkaufen, aber dem Lernenden gegenüber war man dann oft zu arrogant, um ihm die Lernfreude zu erhalten, und auf dem Weltmarkt war man ebenso wenig präsent wie auf der literarischen Ebene.

Anonymous said...

My, your quite the self hating frenchman. How sad.

Unfrench Frenchman said...

"My, your quite the self hating frenchman. How sad."

I happen to hold French citizenship, but I don't define myself as a Frenchman so I needn't loathe myself for being French. What ideas one embraces is up to oneself. Nothing sad about that.