A series of letters were leaked today showing a major breakdown in communication between the French Government and the Irish over the upcoming World Cup qualifying play-off. There's now a full-blown diplomatic row brewing.
FOOTNOTE
Rumours that President Sarkozy will be replacing the injured Franck Ribéry are thought to be unfounded, despite his leading France to victory at the 1998 World Cup.
From The Daily Mail:
They are known for their Gallic froideur and now France's reputation as the most unwelcoming country in Europe has been confirmed.COMMENTOur friends across the Channel have been named and shamed as the most hostile natives on the continent in a poll of 3,000 British tourists.
Germany emerged as the second most unfriendly country and Belgium was third with Spain and Turkey taking fourth and fifth place. [...]
A spokesman for www.OnePoll.com, which carried out the research, said: 'A surprising number of people have experienced rudeness from French people.
'But this could be for a number of reasons. The language barrier is still a major problem as the majority of people who travel to France can't speak the language.
'And our perception of the French not liking us very much is also bound to cause friction from time to time. Full story >>
Gordon Brown may have problems with his handwriting but for French president Nicolas Sarkozy, it's his memory that is being called into question. When Sarko posted the above pic on his Facebook site along with a text claiming that he rushed to Berlin on November 9th 1989 and helped tear down the Wall, sceptics accused him of reinventing history—French press archives suggest he didn't get there until a week later.
All that is amusing enough, but Photoshopped images have now started appearing on the web showing Sarkozy taking part in other major historical events. You can see a selection on the websites of Libération and Le Post. This is one of my favourites.
READ MORE
• Confusion over Sarkozy claim on Berlin Wall (Charles Bremner, TimesOnline)
• In France, a Clash of Memories and Media (New York Times)
• Sarkozy posts Berlin Wall photo (BBC News)
• French Embrace Sarkozy as Zelig Meme (New York Times)
The above headline from an article in today's Guardian contains three words which do not have the same value in English and French: autistic, castrate and pathetic. Charles Bremner analyses these and other translation pitfalls in his TimesOnline blog:
The word autistic has stung most in Britain because sensitivity over the condition has put its metaphoric use beyond the pale. France is less sensitive over using human impairment and physique in invective. Crétin is a more acceptable insult in French than English. Things are however changing. An association called Autisme France has been campaigning in recent years to have the media and politicians stop wielding the condition as an insult. "In colloquial French this designates someone in a bit of a bubble, who is a little dreamy," the association said recently. Full article >>
COMMENTS
1. Political correctness is nowhere near as prevalent in France as it is in the US and UK, especially when it comes to language.
2. See here for a good list of English/French false friends ('faux amis').
"A lot of things in France have changed under globalization in order to keep us competitive, but teaching people English here has remained old-fashioned and inefficient," says Julien Petitpas, one of the 10 young adults who gather for 12 hours a week to improve their English at the Berlitz language school near the Paris Opera. "In school it's all structure, grammar and getting it right on paper and in your head before you ever speak — and even then, you don't do much of that. It just doesn't work." Full story >>
COMMENTS
It's always seemed to me that (generalisation alert) French students are reluctant to take responsibility for their own learning. They're far too dependent on the teacher, and unless they receive a mark for work, it tends not to get done. The flip side is that they're quick to blame the teacher when they fail to make progress. In an age where there have never been so many language-learning resources (podcasts, blogs, video, DVDs, online press, etc., etc.), the teacher should be just another resource not the focal point for learning.
This cartoon by Mike Smith of the Las Vegas Sun needs no explanation. You can find a lot more Halloween cartoons here.
FOOTNOTE
Lexiophiles has a good article about Halloween in France.
From Associated Press:
French children generally spend years learning foreign languages in school, but the results are often dismal. So President Nicolas Sarkozy called Tuesday for an emergency plan to make schools produce more bilingual students.COMMENTSIn a speech outlining wider education reforms, Sarkozy underscored that "a foreign language is meant to be spoken," and suggested that language instruction should be shifted away from written grammar and memorization to emphasize oral skills.
Students in French public schools begin a second language in middle school and often receive up to six years of foreign language instruction. Still, many high school graduates struggle to express even the simplest of thoughts in English, Spanish, German or the other foreign languages on offer. Full article >>
From The Daily Telegraph:
British people have the worst quality of life in Europe, according to a report which highlights the long hours, bad weather, low life expectancy and high price of many consumer goods.In a study of ten of the largest European countries, Britain comes last followed by Ireland, with France and Spain topping the table.
Though British households enjoy the highest income, at £35,730 a year, £10,325 higher than the European average, British families have to contend with a high cost of living, with fuel, food and alcohol all costing more than the European average. Full story >>
RELATED ARTICLES
• Britain is the worst place to live in Europe (MailOnline)
• UK quality of life poor, study says (Guardian)
• Britons Lose Out In Happiness Stakes (Sky News)
LESSON IDEAS
Use this table for practising comparatives and superlatives. You can find the complete study here.
COMMENT
Looks like I'm on the right side of the Channel. I do miss the pubs and the newspapers though.
VOCABULARY
A migrant is a person who moves from one place to another, especially in order to find work. • The government divides asylum-seekers into economic migrants and genuine refugees.
Charles Bremner reports on the latest effort by the French state to fight off the American-English invasion from le web, or rather ... la toile:
The Ministry of Culture's language agency, or police as we Anglo-Saxons usually call them, have issued a glossary of indigenous terms to replace the jargon that French IT people and civilian internautes are so quick to embrace. All employees of the state -- which means over a quarter of the work force -- are legally obliged to use these terms at work and in public communications rather than the English original.You can find the complete 330-page PDF glossary from the language agency here.You must say un fouineur (and presumably also une fouineuse) and not hacker. You are put on hold by un numéro d’assistance or d'urgence and not un hotline. "These new French terms are not yet widespread," says the DGLF, the language directorate. "The more people use them, the more easily they will enter usage and the quicker they will become familiar and seem always to have existed."
COMMENTS
Talk about fighting a losing battle (or swimming against the tide)—I don't know anyone who uses the 'official' terminology. Still, I suppose inventing French equivalents of Anglo-Saxon words keeps someone in a job somewhere. For "spamming", they've come up with arrosage, which translates as "watering" or "spraying".
