Jane, my younger daughter is bilingual and with her mother's native language being Italian and I bilingual in English and German she is picking up both very fast. As it is the teacher whose class she goes into next year visits her class to check with her (!!) if the English she is teaching is right and one of the college teachers who she'll move on to in a couple of years has had some basic pronunciation classes from me. However, I am sympathetic with most of the poor sods because they are told to teach English even if they did not learn it themselves - it's on the curriculum. I am slowly being convinced by a friend that I should stand as a 'parent eleve' having done spells as a governor in the UK and rabble rouse from within. Perhaps, but I am not sure what it would do since the school has reduced funding and personnel to begin with. It is the government and the economic crisis they blame, perhaps true, but it has roots further back in time that are entrenched in education.
So you're disillusioned with France then? Try the UK, enough to put one off and go seeking a new planet...
My friend's son is supposed to be learning German, but he does not know a word. His teacher is so bad!!!
I believe it stems back to the idea that everyone (apart from the stinking rich) are taught from an early age to be conformist, a Frenchman told me quite categorically that the French are xenophobic and proud of it. They will cling to being seen as the same as everyone else, and are happy to do so.
I believe that they are a backward nation in many ways, there seems to be a false belief that they love and adore their children no matter what whereas I see it more as a matter of economy the more children they have the more state benefits they receive. How many times I have seen a local person have a baby when she is just about to lose a child benefit due to them going to work. Now this may seem a reactionary and rude comment but I am a little tired of the romance about France, the reality is that they are the same as anyone else they need to realise that the days of such arrogance as not working within the same time scales as other countries they trade with is ridiculous. They could end up as a nation that can feed itself true but what will it trade with other countries.
The attitude is ridiculous here we have an example: All children over the age of 6 must have English language taught to them as the ministers in the government have said that English is the language of commerce. Very good understood - in local schools there is no money to provide an English teacher so they do not get the lessons. 15000 school teacher placements were lost in France due to government cut backs which of course affected the poorer echalons of society such as independent and catholic day schools. Ah this will make for a workforce for the factories producing the food to feed France at cheap rates in the future methinks.
If people are so happy with their lot here why are there so many alcoholic and depressive problems here. Why do they send children home with books about mummy works as a prostitute in Paris and papa is an alcoholic. Nowhere is perfect but I am rather tired of the arrogance displayed.
To the original question why are there no entreprenaurs - because to be different is to be unacceptable, to step outside of the class structure is not well thought of, to be able to do more than one job is tantamount to a downright offence. By means protect your industries and work the English could and should have done it but not to the point of sheer blindness. There is not enough money being put into the pot for health and pensions in France because they insist on working to 19th century hours and the system will be billions of euros in debt by 2050. Its time for change or the country will become 3rd world.
Answer to our other discussion about French, Italian dialects and so on, came from my friend this morning. He called in for a coffee before going off to Paris to be with family. He was telling me that amongst intellectuals, showbiz and so on the French discuss their divorces rather than marriages. So he was off to see children by both marriages who are grown up but do not talk to each other. They talk about the 'other' divorce and not acceptable family as if it was a perversion of what is morally right. Given that two sons (one in each clan) are divorced, he said that it gets very interesting. However, he was saying that it is a metaphor for France as well. It is how a set of disparate regions and old kingdoms has been pulled together, torn apart and pulled together again several times. Bits come from Italy and Germany, other bits have gone to Belgium and Switzerland and nobody really knows what is what and who is who except that they are all French except the Bretons, Basques, Oc, Savoyard, Alsatiains and so on who are distinctly not! To really see the metaphor in shorthand, he said to pick up Hugo's 'Hunchback' and read Quasimodo as what his name means is 'part formed' and there you have the metaphor and what it is capable of in its entirety. Interesting thesis. He left grinning and saying 'penser...' instead of 'au revoir'!
Ooooh... aren't we all "special" :)
Turkey! You can buy turkey where you are... absolute mission where I live... another "fowl" note for France. AND I've been craving KFC since seeing an ad on TV recently... 3 hour round trip... Pffft!
Bonnes fêtes Jane :)
You got it but Tone Giddens did not make 'sir', after years of supporting his North London local team and some of us joking about him one day being Lord Giddens of Tottenham, he in fact became Baron Southgate!
Spike did indeed. You know who also did anthropology and is roughly one month younger than yours truly so was a contemporary. Said turd. Dull witted, boring wimp. Never had a job to this day, hope he never does and as for his taste in women, either no brain or no looks, Spike was right.
Kenneth Williams had a talent for after dinner speaking with all the oohs and darlings and when I was on our college council conspired with several other people to get him up to Cambridge to do the after term feast speech. Cost roughly half of some far more boring people, such as academics and cricketers (never ever got that one, they were all pants off boring blokes when they did one). The main advocate for him was as gay as a whistle himself, so when Kennie said 'Yes' he was on a trip. We got a whole afternoon of him ("Ooh what a little punt you've got" to the ticket man at Scudamore's punt hire, we rolled around on that guy's misfortune for ages) then the evening feast when his speech caused uproar of the laughter kind. To my dying day I shall never forget an otherwise very austere Indian physics postgrad pleading for help because his sides were splitting with laughter and asking if we could get him off because it was starting to hurt laughing that much. Dose were the thays...
I thought, by the way, as a spontaneous that afternoon, that B'loney Tear (pronounced as in rip or rend) was the best job I ever did on that one... I don't know if it puts me in the class of Spooner or Barker but I was proud of it. It sounded just so 100% precise. Anyway, we shall have to have a series of posts that will have them ocking in the riles...
Derrrr...Third Way?
Sir Anthony and Tony
With you all the way Brian, Bentine Genius, Stanley Unwin clearly unique never to be repeated. I paid Spike £5000 once to do a voice over, he was picked up and taken to London in a Limo not cheap, and phoned half way complaining about the petrol fumes, we had to supply another one. He had suffered for many years with the same condition as I have, but on long term Lithium, dreadful stuff, If I understand it correctly, once weened off he was right as rain. What did he call Prince Charles once 'Grovelling little turd', or something? no one else could get away with it. Intellect of all surely Kenneth Williams?
Happy burning
Work out this one I did to a fmaous academic who is an old mate of my ex-OH and was professor of the department next door when he came to do a guest lecture for us. It went something like this: I would like to welcome Gony Tiddens, adviser and guru to B'loney Tear and originator of the Word They.
Stanley Unwin and Spike Milligan were my childhood/youth heroes and most of my humour draws on either of them, plus I saw lots of the greatest living Peruvian (then) Michael Bentine (very under-rated), Pythons from the word go and all the rest of that generation (in black and white mainly...). The Reverend Spooner's "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" in reference to Queen Victoria in 1879 is one thing that nearly all have said tickled them and I have had a good chuckle at that one too. Let's wive it a girl.
If you cannot figure my one out I'll tell you later. He laughed. Not one student had a clue. Must go to burn some salmon, lack baiter...
The idea is corking
Cor the ear die is king
Ha Ha...hey
Professor Stanley Unwin!
Malt time
Talt Mime
Maybe should be BH - better half!!
Yes, yes, yes, I have even done a few well known academics that favour when introducing them as a guest lecturer to students. Most of my fiends (r missed out on a porpoise) and faminely are know in reversed first letter terms. Must have a post up here one day and see if we can out-Spooner the whole blog... Cor lotta waff!
I find myself doing it all the time, much like yourself, Briann, and even just for my own amusement. Couples names are a must, so much so that they become their alter egos, we know Jes and Lynette, Sent and Brew, Saul and Poo ( poor guys ) and so on.
I love the fact thatRonnie Barker even submitted sketches and jokes to the 'Two Ronnies' under a Nom de Plume....what a Brain, Brian
PS, the Reverend Spooner's great classic was: "The Lord is a shoving leopard" (a loving shepherd) which he apparently said in a speech when he was Warden of New College, Oxford unintentionally. Ronnie Barker is pretty well the living master though, enjoy...
Spoonerisms are my saving grace when 'normal' (?) language goes wrong. Or did I mean 'graving sace when lormal nanguage wroes gong'?
How strange Brian, I am just downloading a piece by Master Spoonerist Mr Barker
Ordinarily Hetrosexual
Offal Hanger-on
Ordinary Help
hhhhm not easy
or is it the 'bog mindles'?