December 11, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Another good reason to get rid of the French . . .
Okay, so he's talking about the language classes, not the people. But I have to keep up my warblogger street cred somehow.
Posted by Jane Galt at December 11, 2006 7:54 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>I took 2 years of French in Jr. High, another 4 in high school and a year in college. I have never used it again sicne graduating 24 years ago. French is asicaly spoken on ly in France, Quebec, a little bit around the borders of France and a collection of third-world hellholes I really have no desire to go to.
Much to my chagrin, my daughter decided to take French to fulfill her high school language requirement. She realized her mistake when the French teacher up and quit (surrendered?) two weeks into the school year. My daughter is switching to Japanese now. There are more opportunities for a Japanes speaker than a French speaker any day.
First/Premier?
Posted by: Jonathan Bailey on December 11, 2006 8:57 PMI must remember, preview is my friend. That should have read: French is basically spoken only in.....
Posted by: Jonathan Bailey on December 11, 2006 9:00 PMLongtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire: «Je m’endors.» Et, une demi-heure après, la pensée qu’il était temps de chercher le sommeil m’éveillait; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souffler ma lumière; je n’avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier; il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage: une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François Ier et de Charles Quint. Cette croyance survivait pendant quelques secondes à mon réveil; elle ne choquait pas ma raison mais pesait comme des écailles sur mes yeux et les empêchait de se rendre compte que le bougeoir n’était plus allumé. Puis elle commençait à me devenir inintelligible, comme après la métempsycose les pensées d’une existence antérieure; le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j’étais libre de m’y appliquer ou non; aussitôt je recouvrais la vue et j’étais bien étonné de trouver autour de moi une obscurité, douce et reposante pour mes yeux, mais peut-être plus encore pour mon esprit, à qui elle apparaissait comme une chose sans cause, incompréhensible, comme une chose vraiment obscure. Je me demandais quelle heure il pouvait être; j’entendais le sifflement des trains qui, plus ou moins éloigné, comme le chant d’un oiseau dans une forêt, relevant les distances, me décrivait l’étendue de la campagne déserte où le voyageur se hâte vers la station prochaine; et le petit chemin qu’il suit va être gravé dans son souvenir par l’excitation qu’il doit à des lieux nouveaux, à des actes inaccoutumés, à la causerie récente et aux adieux sous la lampe étrangère qui le suivent encore dans le silence de la nuit, à la douceur prochaine du retour.
'nuff said.
Posted by: marcel on December 11, 2006 9:53 PMBut without French, we wouldn't have Un petit d'un petit...
Posted by: anony-mouse on December 11, 2006 10:36 PMHow else can one learn to pronounce "croissant" properly?
Posted by: Joe Schmoe on December 12, 2006 8:14 AMAs someone who has negative ability with languages (seriously, five years of Spanish and I barely managed past the 3rd year level) I do feel that the act of learning a language is valuable, regardless of what that is. For me it never took, but most of the people I know for whom it clicked were, later, able to pick up another language. In fact I know almost no one who can ONLY speak one other language. Either they can't speak anything but their native tongue or they can pick-up other languages easily. To wit: My mother learned French in high school and has taken to learning Italian and Chinese; my best friend learned French and then learned Chinese and Turkish; Another friend learned Hebrew and then learned Russian; my Husband learned Latvian, then Russian, then French;
And then there is my Friend Judit. She started off with Hungarian, then learned French, then learned English, then took Japanese (because she read an article about how the three hardest languages to know simultaniously were Hungarian, English and Japanese), then took Russian and Romanian, then took Spanish, Italian and German, then decided to pick up Portuguese because it was the only romance language she didn't know, picked up Switzerdeutche (sp?) on a trip to Switzerland and then decided to try Finnish since it's kinda like Hungarian. Her Hungarian, French and English are unaccented.
So, while I love the point, I think there is some value to learning any language, even if it is French.
Posted by: Kate on December 12, 2006 1:03 PMI learned French in high school and achieved fluency. It made it easier to learn Spanish and German in college, although I never got very good at either one and have forgotten most of what I know. It's been useful to this day when I travel or meet people visiting the U.S. Also, I love reading literature in the original language when I can.
Is this useful to American foreign policy or business? Probably not. Have I made it pay off at work? Not really. Has it enriched my life? More than most of the other courses I took in high school, no doubt, and I have no regrets about not taking another choice, available or not.
Posted by: Brittain33 on December 12, 2006 3:34 PMCoolest thing I recently discovered: the French for "food processor" is "robot culinaire."
Posted by: Les Jones on December 12, 2006 3:35 PMYeah, your "warblogger street cred". I like how nowadays you can't be bothered even to mention the war you so loudly championed, except to make a cutesy-pie joke.
We'll never know how many tens or hundreds of thousands of people died so you and your fellow travelers could have your precious war. I would say that you should be ashamed of yourself, but it's pretty clear by now that you have no shame.
Posted by: purple on December 12, 2006 4:43 PMUh, I don't recall Jane "championing" the war. I recall her being fairly conflicted and, given the evidence that was presented, making a judgment call. I believe that many of us made different judgment calls but we could have easily been wrong.
Posted by: Kate on December 12, 2006 11:32 PMI'm surprised by his assertion that Americans learn "the type of Spanish spoken in Spain". Except for memorizing vosotros forms along with the rest, don't almost all Americans learn either Mexican or Puerto Rican Spanish?
Kate, if you call advocating unprovoked assault on anti-war protesters a symptom of being "conflicted" about invading Iraq, then Jane was conflicted.
Purple: It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure that Jane's "Hit 'em with a 2x4" post referred to violent rioters. I wouldn't call clobbering them "unprovoked", and it's certainly reasonable to be conflicted or even antiwar while opposing rioting and violence from so-called "pacifists".
Posted by: markm on December 13, 2006 5:16 PM"I'm pretty sure that Jane's "Hit 'em with a 2x4" post referred to violent rioters"
And I'm also pretty sure she wasn't "advocating" it any serious sense, which should have been obvious to anyone without an axe to grind.
"I do feel that the act of learning a language is valuable, regardless of what that is."
I don't think anyone is arguing against that. All the linked post said was, if we're teaching languages in school why don't we focus on the ones most likely to be useful in and of themselves?
Posted by: Sean E on December 14, 2006 10:22 AMIch studierte Deutsch seit zwei Jahre im Gymnasium und Universitat. (I studied German two years in high school and two years in college, and even took a class in German Heroic and Erotic Literature of the Middle Ages reading in the original language...got an A! And that's why I had to go to grad school. To learn something that would actually gain me some employment. LOL)
Why did I choose German? My English family spoke French frequently, even at the dinner table. We punned in French. My English parents had French all through school, and so did my brother and sister as long as we lived in Canada. However, we moved to the USA (to steal American jobs--"frostbacks") before I was in school, so I didn't get the Canadian bilingual education.
Since in the USA foreign language was (stupidly) mostly put off until high school, I was a rebellious teenager when I picked my language. My parents were World War II generation English! So of course I picked German to stick it to 'em. They nicknamed me "Kraut."
Ah! Such a rebellious choice I would pay for many years later.
After graduating, I went to England and looked for work. (Their high unemployment rate at the time should have been a clue that this wasn't a very good idea...but I took German Heroic Erotic Literature of the Middle Ages, not economics!) I could not get citizenship, dual citizenship, or a work permit. I didn't really want to wash dishes for cash under the table. So I thought I would check out the Canadian Embassy. They actually quite liked me and my skills (obviously gained from work and not my useless college classes)...and they verbally hired me, shaking my hand walking me out the door, then as an afterthought, asked me, "Of course, you speak fluent French, right?" Non! The damned Quebecois refuse to speak English. The offer was revoked.
That would have been a great situation. I could have lived with my aunt and uncle, who ran the Rose and Crown pub on Old Hyde Park Lane, just across from Hyde Park and the Hard Rock Cafe. Grosvenor Square was a brief walk away. I would have been living in London.
Damn the Germans! Damn the War! Damn my teen rebelliousness! Damn the Quebecois!
I don't speak German any more, I have never visited Germany and don't plan to, I don't like German food, and I no longer live in a culturally German area.
Other than a lost job opportunity, French wouldn't have done me any good, either. My family doesn't even speak French any more.
Public services--Spanish is the way to go.
If I wanted to learn a language, it would be Italian. I think it's really beautiful.
Latin is not a dead language. The Vatican has an office that creates Latin words for new things...like internets, for example. (The church still uses Latin to communicate worldwide, and each national church translates into the vernacular.) I like praying and singing in Latin. The language that will not die!
Posted by: kentuckyliz on December 15, 2006 6:53 PM