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

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

French Language Meets its Waterloo

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

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

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

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

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

(...)

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

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

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

(...)

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

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

(...)

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

French and English in Europe

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

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

Further Erosion of French Teaching in UK

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

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

Morocco and the Rise of English

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

SWITCH AWAY FROM FRENCH TO ENGLISH IS IRREVERSIBLE

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

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

EU Enlargement and Decline of French

Numbers speak for themselves:

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

12,000 native English teachers to teach Spaniards

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

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

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

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

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

Courtesy of Edward J. Cunningham

Speaking French Can Get You Killed

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

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

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

Hat tip: O. Mayer

a seismic event in Man's history

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

Times Online, January 15, 2005:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Montreal People See French Losing Ground

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

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

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

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

Click here to read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government officials wouldn't comment on the campaign.

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

PARIS HAS PLENTY TO READ (IN ENGLISH)

While New-York's French-language bookstores close down, Paris offers a huge choice of books in English:

There are surely as many good English-language bookstores in Paris as in all but a handful of cities in the United States. Whatever that may tell us about relative cultural priorities, it's also an indication of the American (and British) presence in Paris, the importance of American literature to literate Parisians and the large number of Americans visiting and living there.

I discovered 10 bookstores in Paris that specialize, more or less - a few exclusively - in English-language books, four on the Right Bank and six on the Left. One can visit them all in a long day's walk. For a city of its size, compared to New York or London, Paris is readily accessible by foot.

A useful place to start our walking tour would be on the Right Bank, on the Rue de Rivoli where, at Rue Cambon, one finds W. H. Smith (subtitle: The English Bookstore), a larger, more glamorous version of the stationery shops in the notable British chain. The Paris Smith's is a place to get English newspapers and The New York Times, best sellers and a wide range of English paperbacks - Penguin, Pan, Methuen, Virago. There is an imitation English tea shop on the second floor. The books, which are mostly imported from England (Penguin has a terrific list of American titles), cost about half again as much as they do in London, which means they cost about the same as paperbacks in the United States. W. H. Smith is similar to American chains like B. Dalton, a good place to pick up a recent book of no great obscurity but hardly a hangout for book lovers. Still, for a mass market store, Smith's stocks a large number of interesting paperbacks, including American titles generally unavailable in the States. The Louvre is a few minutes' walk from Smith's, though perhaps too great a distraction on this particular tour.

Walking east on the Rue de Rivoli, two blocks or so from W. H. Smith, one comes to the oldest and most elegant English-language bookstore in Paris, the Librairie Galignani. If W. H. Smith has the feel of an upscale Dalton, Galignani is reminiscent of Scribner or Rizzoli in New York. Galignani, lined with dark wood shelves and with a skylight overhead, is easy to move around in, well-stocked, a mix of shelves and tables displaying few if any best sellers. Unlike the chains, it is a store for which books are objects of respect and affection. Galignani has a good selection of poetry and a small though impressive selection of art books. Its prices are generally comparable to Smith's. The staff is knowledgeable and helpful. Browsing is encouraged. Originated in 1805, and at the present address since 1856, Galignani carries 15,000 volumes in English and 15,000 in French. It is a favorite among American writers living in Paris and a place to visit for those who love bookstores as esthetic objects in themselves.

Walking north on the Rue des Pyramides, turning left on Avenue de l'Opera, one comes to the huge, mass market bookstore, Brentano, which appropriately has a golden facade. On entering the store, customers are confronted by records, key chains and souvenirs, as if the absence of books were a selling point. If W. H. Smith is a bit of England on the Continent, Brentano might be perceived as its American counterpart, a bookshop seemingly embarrassed to display books. In the back, however, is a winding blind alley of paperbacks, a first-rate collection hidden away like a secret vice. Brentano's thousands of books in English include a travel shelf comparable to Smith's and a considerably more extensive children's books section. (The other shops on this tour are less rewarding than Smith and Brentano for visitors seeking maps and travel guides in English.) Although disguised as an upscale tourist bazaar, Brentano is, in fact, a fairly substantial store of its kind. Prices are about the same as Smith's and slightly higher than the least expensive of the Left Bank bookstores. Brentano is a short walk from the American Express offices and the Paris Opera.

The one other English-language bookstore on the Right Bank, Librairie Albion, is an anomalous presence. It is a store you are not likely to stumble on unless thoroughly lost. The way to find it is to take Avenue de l'Opera south to Rue de Rivoli, walk east for about 12 blocks along Rivoli until it becomes Rue St. Antoine and then ask directions to Rue Charles V, a street with no other shops but Librairie Albion. From a distance, Albion looks something like an English pub. The front door was locked when my companion and I arrived and an employee let us in through the back. Although Albion exists to serve the University of Paris, which is nearby, stocking French, German and Spanish texts in addition to English, it is a real bookstore - a place of books - cramped, charming, incomplete, eccentric, the expression of a personality. If you are after a particular volume, Brentano and Smith are more likely to have it, but if you are willing to discover what you might want, Albion is a sweet place to browse.

Crossing the Seine to the Left Bank at

Pont Marie and working one's way past Notre Dame, the walker comes to the Rue de la Bucherie and Shakespeare and Company, namesake and self-styled spiritual heir to the legendary Sylvia Beach bookstore of the expatriate 1920's. Shakespeare has stalls in front selling used books, starting at about 60 cents. There may be books of interest among the long forgotten popular novels, mysteries and outdated anthologies, of interest to someone - there are always browsers on display - but I found virtually none. The crowded interior, an olio of old and new books, seems somewhat more promising, though chaos seems to be the shop's reigning principle of organization. Run by George Whitman, a theatrically bohemian septuagenarian with an avowed sense of mission, the store regularly sponsors readings, offers free shelter to young writers (and potential writers) in its apartments upstairs and invites selected visitors to browse in its private library, reputedly totaling 50,000 volumes.

It is, in its own way, a service bookstore, a haven to the errant literary spirit, a place to rub shoulders with literary ghosts. Most of the writers in Paris I talked to thought Shakespeare and Company, for all its good intentions, was of negligible use. Originally called Mistral (one of the celebratory articles I was shown called it Mistrial), Mr. Whitman's shop changed its name to Shakespeare and Company in 1964 to make connection with the original in which, legend says, James Joyce wrote ''Ulysses.'' The 13-room house that Shakespeare occupies, a beautiful building in bohemian disrepair, was, in one of its lives, a monastery and in another an Arab grocery. Today it is a kind of shrine in the guise of a bookstore.

Moving south on Rue St. Jacques, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel, then turning left on Rue des Ecoles, one arrives at Attica, in the Sorbonne district, a former avant-garde bookstore domesticated by the needs of survival. French intellectuals are particularly interested in new American fiction and Attica reflects that interest. There are more books from American publishers here and more small-press books than in the Right Bank supermarkets. Visitors who remember with great affection the haphazard and highly personal collection at Attica's original store will be somewhat disappointed by the relative impersonality of its present quarters. What started out as an obsession of the owner, Stephan Levy, has metamorphosed into a better than average English-language paperback bookstore, a good example of what you might find in an American university town. The difference is that English is not the primary language of Paris. Browsing is welcome. Prices are reasonable. Next on the tour is the Librairie Internationale on the Boulevard St. Germain. To get there, one backtracks on the Rue des Ecoles to Boulevard St. Michel, turns right toward Boulevard Saint Germain, going by the enormous Chez Gibert (a good place to buy inexpensive maps and travel guides - in French), and arrives after a five-minute walk. The elegant Librairie Internationale, which has a high-tech look, specializes in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish books, the English texts making up 40 percent of the stock. The place has achieved a certain notoriety among some writers. Two American poets were evicted from Internationale for having taken books off the shelves to look at the texts. A visit to the shop readily conjures the scene. The manager, a former finance specialist, presides over the store like a grim schoolmaster. Although Internationale has an impressive stock of almost 50,000 books, it is a place without definition or focus or passion. The shop has books on economics (in English) and philosophy that are probably not available elsewhere in Paris. It is, clearly, not a place to browse.

One continues on the Boulevard St. Germain, turning left on the Rue de Rennes, and arrives after about a half-mile at the main branch of the department store FNAC. Among its seemingly endless stock of French books are a half-dozen English-language shelves, broken up into the rubrics: Policiers, Science Fiction and Literature. It is an efficiency bookstore without pretensions, an amusing place to browse and shop. Moreover, it is air-conditioned; it was the only bookstore I visited with the air-conditioning switched on. The selection is smaller than at Smith or Brentano, but in a sampling I took the prices were two to five percent cheaper. FNAC is a part of a chain that sells electronic and photographic equipment and develops film overnight.

Going right on the Rue de Vaugirard, taking the occasion to cross the Jardin du Luxembourg - a particularly pleasant walk - to the Boulevard St. Michel, the stroller turns south and comes to the Nouveau Quartier Latin, a large, sprawling store that, like Attica, serves the students and faculty at the Sorbonne. The Nouveau also distributes English-language texts to most of the other bookstores. An inelegant, spacious shop of some 50,000 volumes, it is particularly good for hardcover cinema books and for coffee-table books on American popular culture. It is neither mass market, like Smith and Brentano, nor literary, like Attica, but something in between, a solid middlebrow way station, an Americanized French-English language bookstore. The service is low key and helpful. Browsing is acceptable and prices are somewhat lower than those of the Right Bank shops.

The last stop on our tour is the cafe-bookstore on the Rue Princesse, a side street off Boulevard St. Germain, a place called the Village Voice, which provides a center for much of the American literary activity in Paris. On my visit, I was shown three recently established literary periodicals, ''Frank,'' ''Paris Exiles'' and ''Moving Letter,'' containing work primarily of American writers living in the city. A reading given by the contributors to ''Paris Exiles'' while I was there - Village Voice sponsors six to eight readings a month - drew a crowd that overflowed the store. The owner and proprietor, Odile Hellier, a translator, has made Village Voice into the kind of place Shakespeare and Company merely imagines itself to be. Although small, the cafe-store has an impressively varied collection of large and small press publications. It carries The Village Voice (no relation) and The New York Times Book Review. In existence less than three years, Village Voice best exemplifies the new literary vitality among Americans in Paris. Alone among English-language bookstores there, it also carries European literature in translation.

It is a telling paradox that the United States is a source of some of the most exciting serious literature available in France. Largely this is thanks to English paperbacks, the intermediary in what is a fairly complex cultural transaction. A further reason to visit this beautiful city - as if one needed one - is to discover the vitality of one's own culture when separated from it by over 3,000 miles and hundreds of years of tradition.

The following is a postscript, a separate tour, a rundown of French-language bookstores of passing interest to the visitor. The Librairie Dupuis on the corner of Rue St. Jacques and Boulevard St. Germain is a shop devoted solely to cartoon books, a hot item in Paris. Some are wonderfully inventive while others seem merely excuses for avoiding the written word. There are two fairly good movie bookstores, Le Minotaure on Rue Beaux Arts (near Rue de Seine) and City Lights, Rue de la Gaite. For chess enthusiasts, the Librairie St. Germain on the boulevard is a place given over to chess books and texts dealing with games of strategy. According to ''Passion,'' the English-language magazine of Paris, Librairie Ulysse on the Ile St. Louis is the best travel bookstore in the city. And for bookstore aficionados I recommend a visit to La Hune or Le Divan, both on the Boulevard St. Germain, to see what a serious French bookshop is like. For the book lover, a browse through the beautiful Hune is a two-star meal. La Hune has a large, perhaps complete, collection of French art magazines and literary journals. I had the feeling, browsing in the hospitable store, that there is not a book on its shelves or tables that is not of some interest to the serious reader. A reader's guide Right Bank W. H. Smith (English Bookstore), 248 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement). Telephone: 42.60.37.97. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Librairie Galignani, 224 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement; 42.60.52.37. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9:30 to 6:30; closed Monday.

Brentano, 37 Avenue de l'Opera, (2d arrondissement); 42.61.52.50. Metro: Pyramides or Opera. Hours: 10 to 7 daily.

Librairie Albion, 13 Rue Charles V (4th arrondissement); 42.72.50.71. Metro: St. Paul or Pont Marie. Hours: 9:30 to 7:30 Sunday to Friday; 10 to 6 Saturday. Left Bank Librairie Internationale, 141 Boulevard St. Germain (6th arrondissement); 43.29.38.20. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Village Voice, 6 Rue Princesse (6th arrondissement); 46.33.36.47. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 11 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Librairie Attica, 34 Rue des Ecoles (5th arrondissement); 43.26.09.53. Metro: Maubert Mutualite. Hours: 2 to 7 P.M. Monday; 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Friday; 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Saturday; closed Sunday.

Shakespeare and Company, 37 Rue de la Bucherie (5th arrondissement); no telephone. Metro: St. Michel. Hours: Open every day, noon to midnight, approximately.

FNAC, 136 Rue de Rennes (6th arrondissement); 45.44.39.12. Metro: Montparnasse. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Nouveau Quartier Latin, 78 Boulevard St.Michel, near Rue Auguste-Comte (6th arrondissement); 43.26.42.70. Metro: Port-Royal or Luxembourg. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Hat tip: Edward J. Cunningham

Bill 101 Has Failed

Even the Angry French Guy has to concede defeat: the unilingual Anglos are back in business in Quebec, especially in Montreal. Enjoy the bitterness of the post:

English is Back in the Québec Workplace

with 233 comments

“I just love Montreal”, I overheard a lady tell her friend in Avenue Video in Montréal. “I’d live here if I spoke French.”

“I don’t speak French”, scoffed a passerby. “Don’t worry about that.”

English is getting stronger in Montreal. I’m not the one saying it. The Montreal Gazette is saying it. There’s just no way around the numbers. Québec’s English-speaking population rose by 5.5% between 2001 and 2006 according to StatsCan.

How did this happen?

“The easy answer to the question of why young anglos aren’t leaving Quebec like they did a generation ago”, writes David Johnston, “is that they speak better French, and aren’t being chased away by political uncertainty.”

You will all remember that the “political uncertainty” started in the 1950’s and 1960’s when francophones started asking why they were paid less than any other nationality in Québec, why no francophones held any management position in Canada’s banking and finance industry and why they were forbidden to use their language to speak to each on the shop floor.

English-Canada’s business elite responded by moving the country’s entire financial sector and 800 000 jobs from Montreal to Ontario where discrimination against French-speakers was allowed.

But a more important reason, according to the Montreal edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, is that it’s getting easier and easier for English-speakers to live and work in Montreal because there has been a “cultural shift” that has made English “acceptable” in the workplace.

“By the 1990s”, continues our man, “speaking English had become more acceptable in Quebec as firms came to see the need to improve the capacity of their workforces to operate in English. This created new opportunities for anglophones.”

As if English had ever disappeared from the Québec workplace! As if the French-speaking majority of Québec that had been forced to work in English for 250 years suddenly found itself unable to communicate with the outside world in the international language of business after bill 101 gave them the right to work in French!

The failure of Bill 101

When I was a truck driver satellites communications between French-speaking drivers and French-speaking dispatchers had to be in English so the English-speaking security team in Toronto could understand what was going on.

In 2005 the Metro chain of grocery stores bought A&P Canada and Christian Haub, the CEO and chairman of the board of A&P got a seat on the Québec company’s board. Thirteen Francophones and one Anglo. Guess what language the board meeting are in now?

Yep. Even when the French businessmen win, they lose.

That’s the way the modern workplace functions. It is entirely structured around the needs of the less qualified people. French-speakers in Québec, and all non-English speaking people around the world, are required to acquire additional language skills so that unilingual Anglos won’t have to.

Québec briefly tried to change that with the Charter of the French language, but the truth is that the rules that were supposed to protect the right of Québec workers to work in their language are broken. They don’t work anymore.

They were designed for businesses that could be contained in a building, to make sure that the 15th floor would communicate in French with the 6th and 2nd floor, all the way down to the shop floor.

But businesses don’t work like that anymore. Management is in Toronto, accounting’s in Alberta and IT is in Bangalore. Toronto’s and New York’s business culture is once again being imposed on the workers of Québec, and the entire world, actually.

Québec’s workforce has always been the most multilingual in Canada, and probably one of the most linguistically versatile in the World. Québec’s business culture did not change, it’s the world’s business structure that changed.

And once again, after only a brief interruption, unilingual Anglos can come back to work in Montreal.

And just in time, as the stellar generation of brilliant financial minds that left Montreal a generation ago have now managed to completely scrap Ontario’s economy and is now ready to come back home.

Hat tip: Edward J. Cunningham

Education Reform in Italy

There wasn't much on this blog yet about the decline of French teaching in Italy, even though this subject deserves this blog's full attention since we're talking about one of France's neighbors. Here is a story documenting an ongoing reform of foreign-language teaching in elementary school and secondary education in Italy. I had begun to translate it into English, but since it's taking me too long, I might as well publish it untranslated before it gets too old.

La récente réforme du système scolaire italien a fait couler beaucoup d’encre. Les projecteurs se sont cependant dirigés davantage vers l’école primaire que vers les nouveautés importantes introduites dans le secondaire, qui mettent en danger l’apprentissage d’une deuxième langue vivante

Pour les élèves italiens, l’heure des inscriptions a sonné. La date limite a été cette année repoussée au 28 février. Ce délai est particulièrement important pour l’inscription dans les collèges car la mise en place de la réforme Gelmini, initialement annoncée pour septembre 2010, aurait été anticipée à la rentrée 2009. Or, les nouveaux formulaires d’inscription ne sont disponibles que depuis le 16 janvier 2009…
Pour bien comprendre les tenants et les aboutissants de la réforme, il faut revenir en arrière au mois de mars 2003, quand Letizia Moratti, ministre du gouvernement Berlusconi, propose une réforme du système scolaire. Au nom de la "loi des trois i", anglais (inglese), informatique et entreprise (impresa), on assiste alors à l’introduction de l’anglais, seule langue autorisée, dans le primaire (alors qu’il était jusque-là théoriquement possible d’y enseigner le français ou une autre langue). En sixième en revanche l’étude d’une deuxième langue (français, allemand ou espagnol) devient obligatoire (et non plus optionnelle, comme elle était proposée dans certains établissements). La réforme respectait donc pleinement les directives européennes en matière d’enseignement des langues étrangères. Cependant, deux ans plus tard, l’article 25 du décret du 17 octobre 2005 relatif à l’enseignement secondaire prévoyait "la possibilité, au niveau du collège, pour les familles qui en feront la demande, d’utiliser, pour l’apprentissage de la langue mentionnée ci-dessus (c’est-à-dire l’anglais, n.d.a), le nombre d’heures consacré à l’apprentissage de la deuxième langue communautaire."

L’article 25 : une épée de Damoclès
Silvia Diegoli est professeur de français au lycée de Carignano, dans les environs de Turin. Elle est présidente de la section turinoise de l’ANILF (photo ANILF)

"C’est l’existence de cet article, suspendu sur nos têtes comme une épée de Damoclès, qui est à l’origine de la création, le 22 décembre 2005 à Cuneo, de l’Associazione Nazionale per l’Insegnamento della Lingua Francese", explique Silvia Diegoli. Au fil des réunions, grâce au travail d’information effectué sur Internet et au bouche à oreille entre collègues, ce petit groupe de professeurs s’est élargi. C’est ainsi qu’il devint nécessaire de créer, le 14 mars 2006, une section turinoise de l’ANILF. Aujourd’hui, l’ANILF compte une centaine de membres au sein de ses deux sections, Cuneo et Turin. C’est l’ANILF qui rencontre en juillet 2007 Giuseppe Fioroni, ministre de l’Education du gouvernement Prodi. Une rencontre rassurante : "Nous avons obtenu la promesse que l’article 25, "congelé" jusqu’en 2009, serait aboli à cette date-là", poursuit Silvia Diegoli. Seulement voilà : la chute du gouvernement Prodi en 2008 change les données du problème et Mariastella Gelmini, dans sa réforme, reprend et applique le texte de l’article 25. Concrètement donc, en septembre 2009, les élèves des collèges auront le choix entre deux possibilités : étudier une deuxième langue étrangère (rappelons que l’anglais première langue est obligatoire pour tous) ou opter pour une section d’"anglais renforcé".

Contre le modèle unique
Pour Silvia Diegoli, ce n’est certes pas l’apprentissage obligatoire de l’anglais en première langue qu’il faut remettre en question. "En revanche, nous considérons que le monolinguisme est une tentative d’imposition d’un modèle culturel unique qui va à l’encontre des besoins de notre temps. Face à cet indéniable appauvrissement culturel, il faut bien voir que ce qui est vraiment grave, c’est que nos élèves présents et futurs vont se trouver dans une position inférieure par rapport aux jeunes européens qui, pour la plupart, connaissent deux sinon trois langues européennes. Alors, pourquoi ne pas proposer cet anglais renforcé comme une option, tout en gardant la deuxième langue pour tous ?" Par ailleurs l’ANILF, qui ne doute pas du succès que risque de rencontrer la section d’anglais renforcé telle qu’elle est proposée aujourd’hui, se bat pour que le français bénéficie du statut de deuxième langue officielle du Piémont en raison de la proximité géographique de la région avec la France. Dans ce combat, l’ANILF devrait pouvoir compter sur un allié important : la Région Piémont, par l’intermédiaire de madame Pentenero, chargée des dossiers relatifs à l’éducation. L’Union européenne, qui a toujours prôné "la maîtrise de plusieurs langues par le plus grand nombre", pourrait également venir à la rescousse…