France & English . France is very angry about English language in france . So ?

Question

The French Govenment has decided to do something to win the battle between English & French , in france & the world .
Is it possible ?

Answer 1

Normally, I don't think it works very well for governments to try to change the direction of the language that people speak. Artificial pronouncements are pretty weak in the face of a common way of speaking. Languages change, and it isn't government that is changing them...

But the French are different, don't you think? There's a lot of national pride, so they would actually do something artificial just to stick it to their natural enemies, the English. And getting rid of Anglicisms serves a dual purpose - two TWO for the price of one! They can show their displeasure at those other nasty English-speaking people - Americans - at the same time!

So yes, I think it might just be possible for a little while, just because it would suit the people's needs as well as the government's. But eventually words like "le iPod" and "le hard drive" will come creeping back in.

M
E

Answer 2

Just about as common as French in the USA. It would seem that some do not quite get the fact that French happens to be the language of France. Yes some people in France, who deal mostly with English speaking tourists do understand some English

Answer 3

France still has an academy that tries to control which words are admitted to the language; however, this is at an official level. What happens in practice is totally different, with English words happily adopted by the real speakers of the French language, particularly in the (relatively) new and rapidly growing fields of IT and other global phenomena. The academy is fighting a losing battle - their language is no longer in the Top 10 - so they are unlikely to win the day.

Answer 4

France should not complain, since William the Conquerer crossed the English Channel from Normandy in 1066, conquered England, and suffused (a French word) the anglo-saxon language with French, making a new hybrid languge called English. They should adopt this linguistic creation as their own, and discard their antiquated permutation of Latin.

Answer 5

Its true that in France there is a movement to support the use of french language.This has led to laws that a certain number of songs on radio stations need to be in french and so on.
There are several reasons for this :
1.France defines itself as a communitiy of beliefs and opinions.That is, you don't become french by simply living there, but by sharing there opinions on a number of subjects.Thus, it is a very assimilative society that tries to turn foreigners who live there in french, rather than striving for a multicultural society.One key for this is language.
2.The former french colonies,being supported by france now, form something that is somewhat comparable to the british commonwealth.France encourages the use of french there since that helps those people (if people in maroc, algeria so on wrote books in their original language, pretty much nobody outside africa would be able to read them).
3.they are simply proud of their language.Its part of their culture
and dominated european thinking for centuries (mostly in Renaissance)

Answer 6

france is angry about english being spoken in france? bah! humbug! france doesn't mind taking the money the brits are paying to purchase vacation homes there!
more important is why on earth the french language is being pushed in canada? quebec is only what 1/10th of the country and yet they seem to be able to push the rest of canada around.
its an english speaking country much the same as the u.s., britain, etc and us?

Answer 7

The French have such a beautiful accent when they speak English.

I wonder why they even care?

Answer 8

It works in Quebéc.

Answer 9

It's possible that they could just throw in the towel...

Really, they need to get on board with english.