If only we could... ( no, not an 80's song...)
I would really like to be able to communicate with the native speakers of our host country better. However, my French is at a shockingly poor level.
This is after more than ten years living in France.
So let's let our hair down a little and commence un petite discussion melanging the deux tongues.....
Sorry Brian et al, you're probably going to envoyer moi to the guillotine for this.
Another point I must dire to vous is identity. I feel that lanaguage can be strongly connected to one's sense of identity. I am Irish, and quite proud of my language which dates back to at least 1200 BC (although has gone through many changes since then!).
Ah ah ah, indeed Brian, Vive le Franglais (but "chut", don't tell my children...because at school, they are not allowed :)
Fabienne, I think Ethnologue shows well over 2/3 bilinguality and amongst real minority language groups multi-linguality is very common indeed (all of my Swiss family speak three within that country, out of four national languages and all three of my wife's generation have English and Spanish as well, plus my wife has reasonable Portuguese). The Dutch are well known for their acceptance of the need for other languages, many Nordic people too. In Europe the Anglophone and Francophone populations appear to have the worst record for diversity. Back to the need for Franglais ;-)
Nowadays, most people who speak "old languages" are at least bilingual, if not trilingual or more, so no problem with verbal communication there. What prevents good communication in the world could well be monolinguism...I read somewhere that more than 2/3 of the world population is at least bilingual (may be not completely 100 % well balanced bilinguism, but enough to communicate properly)...what I feel uneasy with is forcing people to talk only one language whatever the language. This comes back to the topic, since sometimes concepts are better described in one language than in another...leading to code switching. It would be a very boring world if everybody talked only English :)
Actually Carol, in 2003 when I spent a miserable while in China, the first thing I found out from one of my research team when asking about our work in distant provinces was that China has nearly 300 languages! Take a look in Ethnologue: Languages of the World and it will confirm that, they also have an extinct language, Jurchen, that historians still read... Putonghua (standard Chinese) serves as the lingua franca within the Mandarin-speaking region including Beijing. It is actually by no means the Chinese standard as Academie approved French is here though. Putonghua is spoken by 12.44%, Spanish 4.85% and English 4.83% just behind as world languages or Spanish by 407 million and English by 359 million which together do not add up to Putonghua's 955 million. French is only 1.12% in 18th position worldwide. Bear in mind that is all with reservations such as the French including Basque, Oc, Italian, Breton, German and Flemish speakers and the various dialects such as the Romande variants in Switzerland... Goes with the profession that I have that data at hand.
Then take a look at IDEA, the International Dialects of English Archive, Martyn Wakelin, 1978, Discovering English Dialects or JC Wells, 1983, Accents of English where you will actually find the variants of the English language that qualify it as separate languages are numerous and that to begin with there are Standard English, American English and Australasian English as three main groups alone. There are, just as random example, people in Argentina and Brazil who are the descendants of groups who settled in particular places who speak English as it was back in the 1600s. In Brazil alone there is a couple of dozen of those.
Pilots use English as the traffic language indeed, but only on civil aircraft crossing international boundaries. A plane that only zooms around in France is unlikely to have a pilot use English. Using Ethnologue's resources you will see that roughly only 5% of all air traffic will be using English at any one time.
There are many myths to be debunked methinks and I was fascinated looking these things up this afternoon and, like many others no doubt, was certainly highly surprised by the air traffic bit. The bottom line is, everybody can dream of a world common language, it is very unlikely ever to happen though. Vive Franglais!
My own feelings are its so much better when the whole world can communicate with eachother verbally. So... in terms of the numbers speaking languages...Chinese top of the list obviously...purely because of the number of bods in China...but I understand having spoken to a language professor friend today, English is the next most common and Spanish following that...if I am incorrect, I apologise. I can understand people wanting to keep old languages alive... for instance Cornish...but the need to accept that these languages are art forms these days, not ways of communicating with the masses. If we all peel off and speak our own dialects and languages, I see that as a means of limiting communications between the majority of people. In terms of flying planes....the language is English amongst all pilots, simplifies things hugely.
Fabienne, France still has minority languages. In fact Corsican is UNESCO listed among the most endangered minority languages in the world, but along with Basque, Oc, Italian, Breton, German and Flemish languages and several dialects of each, they are still very present. However, it is hard to find a European country without. Italy, for instance, has minorities that speak German, Ladin, Rumantsch, Albanian, Greek, and some of the regional versions of 'Italian' are hardly recognisable at all. Spain is the same, Basque and Catalan are not even actually Spanish at all and then there are the rest of them. My own ancestral country Scotland has Gaelic, dialects of English, the northern isles are Old Nordic really and even the north east where my roots are is closer to Norwegian than to standard English as imposed on them after 1707. Europe is far more interesting linguistically than the people who tried to standardise our national identity by enforcing one language ever realised or wanted to allow. Franglais, Spanglish, Fritaliano and all the other ones we enjoy having fun with are far closer to the truth than people realise.
I believe it is, Brian. Ireland is a small country but the Irish language can be divided up roughly along the lines of the four provinces. Someone speaking Irish from the south (i.e., Munster) would be understood by someone from the west, but the different dialects are recognisable.
Carol, may be that is also something to do with the fact that up to 200 years ago, France used to be a multi language country and people were then "forced" to speak French and not their "local" language. On the top of my grand mother's school (countryside), there was engraved: "soyez propre, parlez Français"...and my grand mother (born in 1904) used to be punished very severely when she talked in her local and family language at school...the "problem" is still quite vivid in some regions of France...was it the same in other European countries ?
Theo ich habe la même problemo, je talk Ingleesh, pense Berlinern, et entrar en un embrollo with Francese!
quand quelqu'un demande faire directement spreche ich kein französisch, but write it unabashedly in English. However, sometimes it's funny, in Germany I'm thinking in French and in England in German but in France I don't know because here at home we sometimes talk really kind of potpourri. French is a far too confusing language to fit to all moods.
I doubt that very much John. Did you by any chance watch the great entertainment that is the Eurovision Song Contest this year? if you did...you might have noticed that of all the judges giving their results, only one, out of the entire field, failed to give their results in English...and you guessed...it was the French judge. Now I have no axe to grind over this, and I dont really care, but L'Academie Francaise is not going down without a fight and it will not accept the use of English or Franglais messing up their language.
... but I thought the French were all moving over to English anyway (at least, that's what these two articles from the BBC website led me to believe)..... :-)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22607506
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-22655534
.... I just wish I spoke French well enough to even get to 'Franglais' standard....
I wonder if le petit nicolas ever came top of the class at anything. This he would for sure. 12 out of 10 for this gem Cate.
Brilliant, Cate.
ah ah ah...'Allo 'allo is great fun. Once in England I ordered some food by phone to be delivered. I asked for one margarine and ended up with one mandarin !
My favourite franglais phrase when no 1 daughter was small was ' cherche it mummy' when something was missing. Even though we are Brits and insist on English in the home the majority of our friends are English/French families so totally bi-lingual which leads to amazing Franglais conversations, that no one really notices and we all understand. It's only when we visit family in the UK that the extent of our muddled language really shows up.
Thank you, everyone. Best laugh I've had out of SFN for ages. And how true - especially that bit about losing English words. I have an excellent bricolage vocab in French but never did many of those tasks in UK so haven't the faintest what the English is for - e.g. débroussailleuse, charrette, poteau, ponceuse... etc. And many is the anglicism which slips into my inadequate French - to the amusement of our neighbours.
Aha... I showed my bi-, gradually tri- and hopefully eventually quadri-lingual daughter an episode of 'Allo 'Allo on YouTube last weekend. She now understands why I say 'Good Moaning' so often and soooooo naturally. Since I have had my recent health problems my top deck has been a bit affected and I go off chatting to people unaware of the fact that I am using the wrong language sometimes... It is seriously embarrassing. Now, part of the problem exacerbates because I, like Annie, am losing English words - in speech but not when writing though. So, this morning with my Dutch physiotherapist I had to steer round a couple of things we were chatting about where neither of us knew either English or French words. My children are scornful of my new errors, so I have given up and do some on purpose. It ain't Franglais though because I chuck in what comes first from my whole repertoire. Officer Crabtree, move over and let me in!