1993: French Culture Fanaticism at Work at the Cesars

In the NY times, 15 years ago, one year before the Toubon law was passed at the French parliamentary assembly:

French intellectuals have always loved a good fight. But the latest Parisian cultural brouhaha spoke to something beyond ideas -- to money -- and exposed once again France's fears of being culturally overwhelmed by that internationalist upstart and ogre, the United States.

The crisis, which broke out on Monday and was at least superficially resolved on Thursday, arose almost surreptitiously. On Dec. 17 the French Academy of Cinematic Arts and Technology, which administers the Cesars, or French Oscar equivalents, decided to ban films not in French.
(...)
Advocates of the French language leaped to the academy's defense. The Future of the French Language Association congratulated the academy. "Certain French cineastes, happily a minority, have chosen to betray their language and their culture for reasons of profit," sniffed the association in a statement. The Independent Union of Interpretive Artists also welcomed the decision as a blow against "certain collaborators with American audiovisual interests."

A walk down memory lane. Note how French culture nationalists have come to tone down their rhetoric since that time. They sure didn't expect that their Gallic arrogance would lead la Francophonie to such crushing defeats back then.

Disuse of French Words

In Right Word, Wrong Word By B.V. Verghese:

Right Word, Wrong Word
By B.V. Verghese
Published by Anmol Publications PVT. LTD., 2002
ISBN 8174885617, 9788174885616
216 pages

The Futility of Defending French

The futility of defending languages has been amply demonstrated by France à son corps défendant, as Robin Adamson's The Defence of French: A Language in Crisis? describes in a number of passages. Here is a selection:














The Defence of French: A Language in Crisis?
By Robin Adamson
Published by Multilingual Matters, 2007
ISBN 1853599492, 9781853599491
199 pages

Decline of French in the UN and precariousness of its status in la Francophonie

In Language and National Identity by Leigh Oakes:

Language and National Identity: Comparing France and Sweden
By Leigh Oakes
Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001
ISBN 1588111164, 9781588111166
305 pages

French TV Won't Give Shows French Names

In the noted blog la Petite Anglaise:

The CSA (French broadcasting watchdog), which counts among its missions the responsibility for protecting and regulating the use of French on television and radio, has requested that television channels make more of an effort to give their shows French titles. If an English title is used, the CSA recommends an accompanying translation into French.

This is the latest manifestation of a futile ongoing battle against la surabondance de termes anglais ou anglicisés à la télévision et à la radio. In the firing line are a whole host of mostly Endemol-produced reality TV shows with names like ‘Star Academy’, ‘Loft Story’, ‘Popstars’ and ‘Fear factor’.
(...)
An amusing article in Libération points out that the literal translation of “Loft Story’ would give us the following catchy title: ‘Loft Story: Une histoire de local a usage commercial ou industriel amenage en local d’habitation’.

Probably not. The CSA is not actually planning to use its power to sanction TV production companies who do not toe the line. TF1 have already made a statement to the effect that Star Academy, the show responsible for inflicting Jennifer and Nolwenn on the French pop music scene, will not undergo a name change.
(...)
The CSA is worried that the use of English words in TV programme titles devalues French language and culture, making programmes with French titles seem inferior or old-fashioned in comparison.

Personally, I can’t help thinking that the CSA is missing the point. Perhaps more attention needs to be paid to the quality of French TV production itself, and not simply the language of titles. Why are so many shows and reality TV formats being imported, I wonder? Could it possibly be *whispers* that home-grown productions are actually Not Very Good?

Some comments there:
sra:

I always found it so strange that so much of French television was dubbed (usually from English, but sometimes from German - I would wonder why this show didn’t look familiar until the credits rolled and they were all named Helmut or something). Why don’t they make anything of their own? Actually, I’ve seen Sous le Soleil or whatever it is, so maybe it’s best if they stick with imports.

kim:

I agree though that french programming is just pathetic. There is some series that was on M6 recently called something like “Thom et Léo, flics et jumeaux.” Not only is the premise incredibly stupid, but they couldn’t even be bothered to find a title that could possibly intrigue people to watch it!

Gamera:

With my bilingual friends we used to make up a game where you would try to guess how the French or the Italians would have translated/massacred that movie title. Sometimes we’ve got hillarious title names that had no connection whatsover with the original title. But the scarriest thing was to go back to France and realise that they have been using titles that are even more ridiculous. Same goes for all the dozens of English titles one Japanese or Chinese film can have.

But all in all dubbing, outside of Holand and Scandinavia, is an economical necessity as it is the way local French, German, Italian, etc.. actors make most of their money. UK actors already have it tough unless they leave to the US like Minnie Driver and her sis did. Imagine what it is for German or French actors who are maybe offered one good role in one good film every 5 years. Most of the time they have to do voice over jobs, some can survive by doing theater, and a lot get only jobs for those god awful French or German TV-Dramas.

So without dubbing, there would be no jobs for European actors. They would be like their peers in Blighty forced to immigrate to Hollowood. Except that have you ever heard a French actor speaking English? OUCH!

As for anglicismes. In some fields like marketing or IT the French or the Germans love them, except that these are words which just don’t mean squat in English. So I’m having a very very tough time re-adapting to French professional life and trying to not offend them by pretending to ignore their crap anglicism fade and their god awfull English. I did work for the European Space Agency and Eumetsat. Now, I’m not a yank/brit making fun of the French, I ‘m a European (French) comparing France with the rest of Europe and realising that there is a huge widening gap between France and the rest of Europe (the political and executive Europe). And one of these days France will just be way behind everyone else in Europe that it will have to split away from it to survive unless it adapts.

Ribby:

In the year and a half that I’ve been here, I’ve come to realise that the majority of homegrown French TV is rubbish.

How to Circumvent the Toubon Law

In French Food vs. fast Food, by Rixa Ann Spencer Freeze:

Hypocrisies of French Language Purism

Sonya Lynn Scheel in FRENCH LANGUAGE PURISM: FRENCH LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND CURRENT NATIONAL ATTITUDES:

Lemennicier: "protectionism is detrimental to the very interests of the survival of the French language"

Bertrand Lemennicier, Professor of Economics, University of Paris Panthéon Assas, Head of the Laboratoire d'Economie Publique, (LEP/3DI) University of Paris Panthéon Assas, on the Toubon Law:

The Toubon Law[4] and The theory of the emergence of the State in Public Choice literature or in neo-classical economics[5] are two cases in point.

The first one is a side effect of the typically French protectionism of art and culture. To protect the French language from its "foreign rival" the English language, all conferences held in English on the territory are taxed by the State. The taxation is taking the form of forced Labour[6] or of a fine if we do not respect the law.

Bastiat, if such a law had been passed in his time, would have certainly used his scintillating wit of expression to show how protectionism is detrimental to the very interests of the survival of the French language. Between a Russian, a Peruvian, a French and an English there is an obstacle if they want to communicate to each other: the barrier of language. This obstacle can be reduced by adopting a common language: one of them Russian, Spanish, French or English. Once spontaneously adopted, all people are able to communicate their ideas to others. This is the reason why the French Public Educational system spends a lot of resources to made available to all the French, English as a common language.

At the same time the State have set up at great cost an obstacle to the communication between French and Foreigners: the Toubon's law. By forcing the French to speak French in France, the government enforces a monopoly on the language on the territory like he is doing with money: Euro or French Francs! At the same time Foreign people, if they want to communicate with French people, are forced to learn the French language. This law impedes the communication of ideas "scientific or non scientific" between French and Foreign people. If the exchange of ideas in the long term is an ingredient in the growth of knowledge for everybody, both French and Foreign people are made less wealthy by such an artificial barrier. Fortunately nobody respects the law.

[4] Toubon, one of the leader of a Right wing political party (RPR) was head of the Ministry of Culture when the law has been passed. This fact reveals how the RPR, our conservative party, like the socialist and communist parties, that never repealed the law, is both a nationalist and socialist party.

[6] It is forced labor because the organisers of the conference are forced to present translation in French through resume all communications presented in English if they do not want to be fined.

La Franco Phony - Why the French Won’t Speak English

In ezine, 2005:

What is it with the French and their fear of the English language? Every couple of years or so there is an ugly backlash against l’anglophonie that crops up like a nasty patch of herpes simplex, and everyone starts scratching at it. Official proclamations are made about how they must protect themselves against the insidious encroachments of English on the sacred territory of the French language.

Back in the 80’s it was then Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, who spearheaded an “awareness campaign” to alert French citizens to the dangers of using words like “weekend” and “parking” to substitute perfectly good French words that were already part of their vocabulary. The French language had to be preserved against “impurities” like these that would only most surely bring an end to the august “Language of Moliere”.
Ten years later, under Prime Minister Edouard Baladur, a law was passed making French the required language in all government documents, public billboards and even on menus at restaurants.

Now, just when it seemed that maybe the French were starting to face reality after a government-sponsored report recommended that English be compulsory for ages 8 and up, the same old anglophobia is breaking out in hives. Teachers, unions and some legislators immediately went on the attack, denouncing the report as just one more threat to the sanctity of French.

What I don’t get is why these people haven’t read the writing on the wall yet. In terms of numbers of speakers, French is now ranked 11th in the world, in spite of all the governmental efforts to promote the language outside of France. English is third, behind Mandarin Chinese and Hindi, but is far more world wide in its distribution than all other spoken languages. English now dominates international diplomacy and business, is the language used on over half of the world’s websites, and is by a large margin the foreign language studied by most school children throughout the world. The French, desperate to keep English from entering their mainstream, are already standing under 50 feet of water with their fingers still plugging holes in the dykes.

And really, shouldn’t teachers be the first to recognize the importance of giving children an early start in learning English? I have run a language school in Portugal for 16 years and have seen first hand the benefits derived from starting language learning early. The Portuguese Ministry of Education has recently passed legislation that makes English in schools mandatory from 6 years old. They have embraced the reality of English dominance, and the results are present everywhere. Kids speak and understand English with ease. Any traveling tourist in Portugal will always be able to get by with English because so much of the population can speak it.

But France remains in denial. In Portugal, English language films are never dubbed into Portuguese, so everyone is used to hearing English as it is currently spoken. In France though, films are generally dubbed into French. To see a film in its original language, people have to go to special V.O. (original version) theaters.

I remember going around the peripherique, the huge ring road that circles Paris, when France was hosting the soccer World Cup.
This is a large, international event, bringing people from all over the world, but as I drove around that complicated and confusing stretch of road, with its multiple exits and entrances, I didn’t see a single sign written in English. There wasn’t a word of English on the electronic sign boards that send messages to drivers about road conditions or alterations, and I kept imagining hordes of Japanese soccer fans driving around in endless circles like sinners in Dante’s Inferno.

This is just one example of where this misplaced resistance is hurting the French. Any tourist to Paris can tell his own story about the English-averse waiters and other linguistic nightmares.

I’m not saying they have to speak English. It’s their country. But I think now, at the start of the 21st century when communication and information exchange is facilitated by a common language like English, it might just be time for the French to swallow the bitter pill. English is here to stay, and it’s not by demanding that French citizens use “fin de la semaine” instead of “weekend” that English will go away.

Kurt Stewart

Blamont: US Recipes Needed to Save French Universities

Jessica Montgomery reports on www.aacrao.org:

Following the continuing decline of French universities in global higher education rankings, Jacques Blamont, researcher and professor for 49 years in France and in the United States, offered his suggestions to Le Monde newspaper for improving French higher education.

While applauding the work of higher education minister Valérie Pécresse in giving universities increasing autonomy, he bemoaned the lagging of French universities in the areas of research and teaching behind U.S. institutions. He also pointed to the discrepancies in funding between U.S. and French institutions. While an institution like the University of Michigan receives approximately $320 million from the state of Michigan, it also receives $830 million from tuition, $900 million from contracts and $150 million from real estate revenue, totaling $2.2 billion. In comparison, a French institution receiving $320 million from the government receives $0 from tuition, $0 from contracts and $0 from other revenue, rendering its total budget at 1/7 that of the University of Michigan.

He called on French institutions to start charging students tuition — while offering generous financial aid for needy students — not only to increase funding but also to provide students with a student life that enhances their college experience. Secondly, he argued, France should copy the U.S. admissions process. Currently, at French institutions all students with high school diplomas are accepted into public universities, creating a huge number of students who drop out or start over after their first year. This is costly to both institutions and students and could be avoided by a selective admissions process. Thirdly, institutions should partner with companies to benefit from increased research funding. Currently, half of internal research funding in France is covered by businesses compared to two-thirds in the United States.


Le Monde
Original French language story here

Saskatchewan minister charged with protecting French can't speak a word of it

In the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 2008:

REGINA - In the heart of Quebec, "the cradle of French civilization in North America," Saskatchewan cabinet minister Wayne Elhard is this week dealing with issues of importance to French Canadians.
One catch, though.
How's your French, minister?

"Not very good," he said with a laugh in a telephone interview Tuesday from the Quebec City airport.(...)
The veteran Cypress Hills MLA describes himself as "frankly, unilingual English," but takes some comfort from knowing he's not alone among his provincial counterparts in not speaking French.(...)
In Saskatchewan, the language needs all the protection it can get. There were 16,790 Saskatchewan residents reporting French as their mother tongue in the 2006 Census. Only 4,320 reported French as the language spoken most often in the home.
In recent memory, no bilingual MLA has actually held the oft-overlooked job of looking out the French language in Saskatchewan.

© Saskatoon StarPhoenix 2008

Danish universities are increasingly dominated by English

In Magisterbladet:

Classrooms and lecture halls at Danish universities are increasingly dominated by English. In the media there is a heated debate about the English language invasion of Denmark. Critical voices have raised concern about the survival of the Danish language, and there is fear that the students will get less out of attending classes when university teachers have to give lectures in English. At the University of Aalborg the teachers themselves have said that their proficiency in English is insufficient for teaching at a high academic level. Therefore, the university will now establish a Language Advice Centre to help university teachers teach in English.

"The purpose of establishing the Advice Centre is to raise the quality of instruction in English, so that teachers as well as students feel comfortable about it" says Rita Cancino, who is an associate professor and Vice Dean at the Faculty of Humanities at Aalborg University. She is involved in setting up the Advice Centre which will open this spring.

English Language Invasion of France

Keith Spicer, Citizen Special
Published: Monday, September 08, 2008 in the Ottawa Citizen:

It was bad enough that 17 singers at July's Francofolies festival of "French songs and music" performed in English -- including Sébastien Tellier, France's shades-sporting, caveman-chic choice for last May's huge Eurovision songfest. President Nicolas Sarkozy told education minister Xavier Darcos to "make France a bilingual nation." Now Darcos offers free holiday English courses to French high-school students. French youth must become fluently bilingual, he warns, or be "handicapped."
Mon Dieu! What's happening? History is happening. And six weeks before Quebec City's Francophonie summit of 29 French-speaking countries (plus 26 sympathizers), it's worth asking where history is going.
Why is France prickly about its language? For three centuries (17th to 19th), French was the world language of diplomacy, and a prestigious intellectual and scientific tool. By the early 20th century, English was catching up. Two world wars put English on top, entrenching it ever deeper as the new world language of politics, science and economics -- even (see book translations) literature.

Flashback to Charles de Gaulle. After his humiliating wartime refuge in London, he refused to speak English. As president in 1958, he ordered his ministers to speak publicly only in French. In 1966 he set up a "High Committee for the Defence and Expansion of the French Language," which reported to Prime Minister Georges Pompidou -- a French literature professor and anthologist of French poetry. (In those faraway days, speaking English in a Paris restaurant could earn you a snarl. Today's waiters flaunt their English).
President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing famously used English to talk with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Unilingual bookworm-president François Mitterrand showed his love of French at every turn. So much so that unproven allegations have emerged that he favoured Hutu killers during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Why? Allegedly because they were French-speaking -- while exiled Tutsi leaders were English-speaking.
Gaullist president Jacques Chirac stomped out of a European summit in 2006 -- "profoundly shocked" that France's big-business boss Ernest-Antoine Seillière gave a speech in English "because that is the language of business." Chirac was a fervent partisan of la Francophonie, though proud of his English skills.
La Francophonie -- for which Canada and Quebec show much enthusiasm -- plays a valuable symbolic role for French-speakers. It also runs some useful programs. But its production of grand papers, rhetoric and official banquets leaves room for more concrete action. (Disclosure: somehow I got parachuted into the gloriously-named, 30-member "High Council for la Francophonie." We were so useful that our bosses abolished us after three years.)
On rhetoric and reality: French intellectuals and governments have long argued that French is the world's richest, most precise and most beautiful language. A little home-team vanity. Rich? France has maybe 100,000 non-technical words. English has well over 600,000. Precise? One of French's distinctive merits is rather its allusiveness: think romance, wine, politics, philosophy. Notes Francophile-but-iconoclastic historian Bill Bryson: "The French cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman."
As for beauty, millions of us find French a joy to read and speak. But almost every nation in the world (with the possible exception of those self-deprecating Dutch) finds its language poetic.
Mystique is partly to blame for French's weakness: resistance to change. English is a vacuum-cleaner: it cheerfully steals or invents new words wherever it can. French is a fortress: Its gate-keeping Académie Française fights to keep foreign or too-novel words out of the national tongue. This creates a huge disconnect between purists and people. Ordinary folks find English "modern," "sexy" and "useful," so they welcome handy English words.
This -- plus English's now-dominant place in European Union and world affairs -- shows why France now soft-pedals rearguard linguistic battles. Accepting reasonable Anglo-reality is only a "defeat" to nostalgia-mongers. Even they are coming around: When Sarkozy threatened to make France 24, the "French CNN," kill its English and Arabic channels and broadcast only in French, he had to back off. Killing those channels would have sold French ideas only to a tiny French-speaking audience.

Today's French scientists publish mainly in English. Several French multinationals use English as their "internal" international language. Intellectuals and journalists lard their commentaries with English references -- and, sadly, with so many English words that franglais ("Frenglish") is now more than a fashionable joke.
Bad English is indeed the world's most widely spoken language. Darcos's new English courses can help France talk "Anglo world-speak" better, and thus compete better. It doesn't matter that Sarkozy, as the French expression goes, speaks English like a Spanish cow. His bilingual France meets today's world head-on.
For this, rock-singer Tellier makes a zippy motivator. Francofolies boss Gérard Pont, a militant French promoter, admits: "Banning English at Francofolies would be suicide." De Gaulle spins in his grave. Happily, Sarko and Darcos also plan to teach French much, much better.
Keith Spicer, a former Citizen editor who lives and writes in Paris, was Canada's first Commissioner of Official Languages (1970-77).


© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

Vancouver, Canada: More Speakers of Chinese than of French

In the Vancouver Sun, last Monday:

Vancouver has strong ties to other Pacific Rim communities, with statistics indicating a higher proportion of residents speak Mandarin or Cantonese fluently than speak French.
More than 125,000 Metro Vancouver residents said Cantonese is their native tongue, according to the 2006 census, and roughly 69,000 said it's Mandarin.
Only 24,130 residents said French is their first language.

Lebanon: More English Teaching, Less French

Lebanon's Daiy Star reports about the decline of French teaching and the rise of English in the Lebanese education system.

Under the French Mandate the school system was restructured again, with a French-language requirement.

While French is still the most important second language being taught at Lebanese schools today, it has been losing ground to English, which has become more important as a "language of status" and business.

According to statistics from the Education Ministry, 62.5 percent of all Lebanese schools offered French as a second language in the school year 1999-2000. This number decreased to 55.8 percent in 2005-2006. During the same period, schools offering English increased from 19.7 percent to 21.6 percent.

The number of schools offering both English and French has also increased. In 1999-2000 17.8 percent of the schools offered both languages; by 2005-2006 that figure had grown to 22.6 percent.

With the increased importance of English, the number of children who attend tri- and multilingual schools as well as preschools has also increased, speech therapist Wissam Chidiak tells The Daily Star.

Dima Sinno, who founded lou&lo preschool with her mother, noticed the same trend.

"Parents realize that English is getting more and more important in a globalized world (...)"