1-
Libération newspaper publishes whole front page in English
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10071025/Liberation-newspaper-publishes-wholefront-page-in-English.html
Row over proposal to allow French universities to teach classes in English takes turn as newspaper publishes
front page in "language of Shakespeare". The left-leaning daily renowned for its arresting headlines and canny
French word play, threw its full weight behind the proposed bill up for debate tomorrow in parliament with the
headline: "Teaching in English. LET'S DO IT."
In a bold move that may have left some non-English speakers in the dark, as it offered no
French translation, the paper wrote: "Tomorrow, the National Assembly will discuss the
government's proposed bill to teach some classes in English at French universities. The
controversy rages on." The paper went further, by even putting other unrelated frontpage headlines in English, including one on a Bill Gates project reading: "Sex and
condoms: the best is yet to come."
Libération was responding to detractors of a bill to be debated in parliament on
Wednesday that would relax a 1994 "Toubon" law, which stipulates that French must be
used in universities while all but banning lessons in another language and visits from
foreign guest teachers.
Education unions have called a strike in protest at the measure that some claim will turn
French into a "dead language".
Geneviève Fioraso, the Minister for Higher Education, claims the measure is aimed at
increasing the number of foreign students at French universities from the current level
of 12 per cent of the total to 15 per cent by 2020.
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Today, she insisted the entire row was "wonderfully hypocritical" as for the past 15
years France's Grandes Ecoles – its Oxbridge-style hothouses for the country's future
elite – have "flouted the Toubon law without anyone saying anything against it." She said
the new law would iron out this "de facto (linguistic) inequality".
But critics, such as journalist Bernard Pivot, a leading figure in French cultural circles,
said it could kill off French.
"If we allow English to be introduced into our universities and for teaching science and
the modern world, French will be vandalised and become poorer," he said.
"It will turn into a commonplace language, or worse, a dead language."
Top Gallic linguist Claude Hagège also declared "war" on the law, saying a battle for "our
identity" was at stake.
The influential Academie Francaise, set up in 1635 and the official guardian of the
language, has also warned it risked "marginalising our language".
"Quite on the contrary," France's education minister, Vincent Peillon told France 2. "It's
the difference between patriots and nationalists: nationalists have always abdicated;
they think France is great when it cuts itself off Patriotism is a France that is sure of
itself." Libération agreed, warning: "Let's stop behaving like the last representatives of a
Gaulish village under siege." Antoine Compagnon, professor at the highly prestigious
Collège de France and at the University of Columbia in the US, said the row confused two
separate issues – improving the English of university teachers and researchers to boost
their international standing and making French universities more attractive for foreign
students. In the first case, he suggested a spell in an English-speaking country would be
best.
As for attracting more foreign students, he said it made sense to offer more lessons in
English. The danger, however, he added, was having foreign graduates complete their
studies "without having mastered French". In English language countries, that would be
"totally unacceptable", he said.
2-
France approves English language classes
France's lower parliament has approved a proposal to allow universities to teach
some classes in English, despite claims that it could turn French into a "dead
language".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10077021/Franceapproves-English-language-classes.html
3- French MPs vote bill for lectures in English at French universities
http://www.english.rfi.fr/visiting-france/20130523-french-mps-vote-bill-lecturesenglish-french-universities
By RFI
France's lower house on Thursday approved a plan to allow more courses to be taught
in English at French universities, despite concerns that such a move might undermine
efforts to promote the French language.
The full bill is expected to be approved in the Assembly and the upper house Senate,
where the ruling Socialists and their allies have majorities.
The vote followed two hours of heated debate, with lawmakers from the main rightwing opposition UMP saying the measure threatens France's identity.
"A people that speaks a foreign language more and more loses its identity piece by
piece," said Jacques Myard of the UMP.
However Socialist MP Thierry Mandon called the controversy "a storm in a teacup."
The aim of the measure is to improve the employability of French young people but also
to increase the number of foreign students at France's universities from 12 percent of
the total to 15 percent by 2020.
Supporters argue that in an increasingly competitive global market for higher education,
if some lectures and teaching take place in English, more foreign students will be
attracted to French universities. They will then inevitably improve their French while
studying in France.
France's prestigious and highly selective Grandes Ecoles, which are separate from the
less selective university system, already deliver strands of their courses in English, as do
many business schools.
30 per cent of students who study outside their home country choose the United States,
while 18 per cent choose Britain. France hopes to improve on its current figure of 11 per
cent.
Several unions, some public figures and the influential Académie Française, set up in
1635 to regulate and protect the French language, condemned the measure.
22 May 2013 Last updated at 09:30 GMT
Franglais row: Is the English language conquering France?
By Agnes Poirier French journalist
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22607506
Continue reading the main story
In today's Magazine
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Are people drinking too much coffee?
In pictures: Kabul kids on wheels
Is fussball coming home?
How religions change their mind
The French parliament is debating a new road map for French universities, which includes the proposal of
allowing courses to be taught in English. For some, this amounts to a betrayal of the national language and, more
specifically, of a particular way at looking at the world - for others it's just accepting the inevitable.
It all started with a faux-pas - to use a French phrase commonly borrowed by English-speakers.
On 20 March, when French higher education minister Genevieve Fioraso unveiled the proposed road map, she
mentioned that there were only 3,000 Indian students in France.
In order to attract more foreign students, she added, French universities would have to start offering courses
taught in English.
"We must teach in English or there will only remain in France a handful of experts discussing Proust around the
table," she said.
But Proust was an unfortunate choice. The author is actually one of France's best literary exports and the reason
why many students in the world take up French at university.
Continue reading the main story
Sacre bleu
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Tuesday's front page of Liberation - one of France's major daily newspapers - was
all in English
It offered no French translation
Parliament is due to debate relaxing 1994's "Toubon" law, which makes French
compulsory in government publications, most workplaces, advertisements, parts
of the media and state-funded schools
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Liberation newspaper
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The influential Academie Francaise, the official authority on the French language founded in 1635, led a chorus
of disapproval of Fioraso's proposals.
Few countries guard their linguistic heritage as jealously as France, and defend it so vigorously from foreign
threats - such as the growing worldwide influence of English. Though, interestingly, the institution was
originally founded by Cardinal Richelieu to fight off the invasion of Italian in the French language. Today, there
are as many Italian as there are English originated words in the French language.
But Fioraso fought back, saying she only meant to be pragmatic.
Elite French business schools, and Grandes Ecoles such as the Institute of Political Studies also known as
Sciences-Po, have been teaching in English for the last 15 years. Why, she asks, shouldn't other less prestigious
universities follow suit?
According to the left-leaning daily newspaper Liberation, 790 higher education courses in France are already
taught in English, and like Fioraso it sees nothing wrong with the idea.
Its all-English front page on Tuesday featured the words "Let's do it" in bold capital letters.
Liberation represents a growing fringe of the French population - young, urban, trendy, the kind which, in the
last 20 years, has adopted franglais in their daily life.
For them, the work of the Academie Francaise - which offers grammatical advice and alternatives to new foreign
words - now feels irrelevant and obsolete. They like nothing more than adding English sounding suffixes to
French words, or combining English words into new terms such as "fooding" (made out of "food" and "feeling").
The result is a fantasy English that exists nowhere else; this, many think in France, is an inverted snobbery.
"Why speak French well when you can speak English badly?" asks with irony the literary critic Bernard Pivot.
Continue reading the main story
Languages in numbers
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The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, which represents Frenchspeaking nations and regions, has 56 member states, three associate members
and 20 observers
According to Ethnologue, the most widely-spoken language in the world is
Mandarin Chinese with 1,026m speakers, followed by English with 765m and
Spanish with 466m. According to Francophonie.org, French has 220m
An April 2013 study by W3Techs.com suggested that English was the most
widely-used language on the internet, accounting for 54.9% of web content, with
Russian in second place with 6.1% and French in sixth on 4.3%
These people present themselves as pure pragmatists. English is conquering the world, they say, and it would be
foolish to resist an inevitable evolution.
Once the language of the world's elite, French now ranks as only the eighth most-spoken language in the world
and its influence is clearly receding. Even within Europe, if one takes a look at the European Union, there is no
doubt that since the addition of 10 new member states in 2004 French has lost its appeal.
Once the lingua franca around the negotiating tables in Brussels and Strasbourg, French has given way to
English. Though, if the UK were to leave the EU, there would be no reason for this to continue - English would
remain the joint official language only of Malta, as well as widely-spoken in the Republic of Ireland (where Irish
is the "national language") and Cyprus.
Those who oppose the introduction of English in French universities are attached not only to the national
language, however, but more importantly, to the vision of the world it carries. A vision that differs from the
English or American world view.
This is the crux of the matter, and, for a majority in France, the strongest argument in favour of rejecting the
government's bill.
Teaching English is very different, they argue, from teaching in English. They support the teaching of foreign
languages, and suggest starting it even earlier - in nursery schools - but they oppose the teaching of subjects such
as mathematics, history and literature in any language but French.
Continue reading the main story
English words (some made up) used by French youth
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Bug
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Buzz
Fashion
Fooding (love of food)
People (celebrities)
Standing ovation
...and another 10,000 English-derived words
Antoine Compagnon, a distinguished French scholar who taught at Columbia University and is a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Science, maintained in a public letter that it would be better to teach foreign
students French than tolerate "Globish" (the primitive English of non-English-speakers) and the dumbing down
of teaching that would inevitably follow.
Foreign students who choose France over Britain, Compagnon says, are not only choosing the French lifestyle
but also its culture and language. Teaching them Proust in English, in France, would be a travesty.
French MP Pouria Amirshahi, who represents French expats in North and West Africa, backed him up. "The
signal given out to those everywhere who learn French abroad and in francophone countries throughout the
world is not reassuring," told The Daily Telegraph.
It looks as though, in France, if you want to teach students in English, you have to do it quietly like the elite
universities which never asked permission but never boasted about it either.
What are your favourite examples of Englishisms in French, and Frenchisms in English? Send your suggestions
using the form below.