A former Foreign Office minister has branded French a 'useless' modern language.
Chris Bryant, now a shadow Foreign Office minister, told the Commons other languages - such as Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic - were more important.
'Unless we have sufficient numbers of people who speak modern foreign languages - and not just the useless modern foreign languages like French ...,' the Labour MP said.
Amid Tory protests that this was 'insulting' to the French, Mr Bryant, who was minister for the EU before Labour lost power, said: 'I've said this to the French. I think they realise there are problems.'
He defended his remark, insisting that while French had been the 'most useful language to use because it was the diplomatic language', things had changed over the last 30 to 40 years and now 'it certainly isn't.'
He said the most significant languages to speak now, aside from English, were Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
Mr Bryant was advocating the importance of young people taking up languages to win business in the emerging economies.
French was once one of the most popular languages taught in British schools. But in recent years, the education system has shunned it - and Spanish and German - for more 'fashionable' languages.
4 years ago
3 comments:
The Canadian government does everything it can to try and make people think the French language is just so important. But its just not true.
it's true that French is not important to know in north America where it is only dominant in Quebec but in Europe and Africa it is useful. Chinese is only useful in China and not all Chinese even speak the same dialect. Africa looks like a basketcase but about 1 billion people live on the continent and they have a lot of natural resources... Chinas population will stop growing in a decade and is already aging rapidly. They will grow old before they get rich
Dynamics of language spread are important
Sujay Rao Mandavilli
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