He was so SHOCKED, SHOCKED to hear another Frenchman speaking the disgusting foreign tongue of English, that he had to leave the room. If only President Jacques Chirac could be as shocked to hear himself use his own forked French tongue to lash out at leaders of non-Francophone lands, perhaps he would leave the world stage - for once and for all!
“The Hindu”, Brussels: French President Jacques Chirac led a French walkout from the opening session of the E.U.’s annual spring summit on Thursday night when a fellow Frenchman committed the grave offence of speaking English.
Highlighting France’s acute sensitivity towards the decline of the language which once dominated the E.U., Mr. Chirac led three Senior Ministers out of the talks when Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, French head of the European employers’ group Unice, abandoned his mother tongue on the ground that English is “the language of business.'’
Mr. Chirac quickly packed up his paper airplanes and spitballs and ceremoniously fled the chamber, dragging both his Foreign Minister and Finance Minister by the scruffs of their still intact necks. Gallic pride was soon restored when the Chiracistas finally found a French businessman who had never learned English, nor any other foul and foreign tongue, and they commanded this particular ignoramus to address the meeting in pure and unadulterated French or face the guillotine. At the restoration of his most favored lingo, Mr. Chirac haughtily returned, accompanied by his lackey Ministers.
The meeting had been between France and Germany who are at loggerheads over the economic future of Europe, and no English speaking states were present. Besides, the British who do not consider themselves to be European, could not care less about the economic future of Europe. Recollecting that the Germans and French used to constantly fight, with the Germans always victorious, it was believed that English would be a more neutral and less offensive language in which to communicate. Everyone would be able to understand each other, because, after all, everyone understands English. However, the French saw communication as a one way street - if one is not a Francophone, one has nothing of value to communicate. It came to pass, because few other than the French could really understand what was being said, that the infamous French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, pledged to support “economic patriotism” and named eleven French business sectors which would henceforth and forevermore be protected from any foreign bidders who speak with foreign tongues.
French is NOT the Lingua Franca - English is!
Dymphna at “Gates of Vienna” reports that in response to Chirac, other European leaders shrugged off his attempt to defend French pride. Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, a staunch Francophile, said “Europe has other worries and it’s a waste of time to have responded to such questions“.
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Hi, Chirac did not walked away because M.Seilliere spoke english (Chirac is fluent in english and has certainly no problem with the language!), but because M.Seilliere, who started his speech in french, suddendly turned to english because he said “english is the language for business”. English is no more the language of business than french is the language of poetry, or italian the language of arts. Any speech can be given in any language, in other words, a language is not used according to the content of a speech but according to your audience. In this case, the audience was the european council and as far as I know, the very vast majority of attendants don’t have english as their mother tongue. All speeches are translated anyway and english was absolutely not necessary. M. Chirac was right to point out this anomaly, but wrong to walk out, he should have said to the audience “Et maintenant, mesdames et messieurs, we are going to hear M.Seilliere speech”. That would have had much more impact…
Comment by Patrick EMIN — March 25, 2006 @ 5:01 am
Patrick - English is indeed the language of business and quite deserving I might add. The French had their Lingua Franca which served them well for hundreds of years, but English speakers, who have no disdain for the enterprising, have come to the forefront of the business world. French is a beautiful language and efforts to preserve it are to be applauded. But efforts to force the language to be something it is not - the world’s lingua franca, are quite silly indeed, as is M. Jacques Chirac.
Wikipedia proclaims under the heading ‘Lingua Franca’ that: “English is the current lingua franca of Western international business, having displaced French in diplomacy since World War II. It arguably was advanced by the role of English-speaking countries in the outcome of the war.” Wikipedia also proclaims much more that will be at odds with your views.
Patrick you wrote: the very vast majority of attendants don’t have english as their mother tongue. That is probably quite true as in fact, for the majority of English speakers, English is not their native tongue. Those who are native speakers of English today are a minority of the world’s Anglophones. English is constantly in transition; because change is verboten in French it cannot be a lingua franca.
See my post: Lingua Franca. English is, as was Lingua Franca, an easy language to learn and to speak, in great contrast to French. In fact, in almost any English-speaking country, foreign-accented English is so common that no one even raises an eyebrow, much less berates the foreign-sounding speaker for massacring the language. Just ask Mr. Jacques Chirac, as when a youth he travelled all over the U.S. doing just such a thing. Thanks for commenting.
Comment by Kerfuffles — March 25, 2006 @ 7:38 am
According to Wikipedia, English and German rank higher than French as second languages for the EU, so Chirac was just being an a$$.
“Chirac quickly packed up his paper airplanes and spitballs”
Heh!
Comment by Barb — March 26, 2006 @ 8:10 pm