French vs. English as World/Global Languages

[JIM.WALKER]

  My impression is that things have been changing in France. I have come across more and more French citizens outside Paris who speak English, more of them in the 1990s than in the 1980s. The internet world, among other aspects of the business world, is enticing more and more people to speak English. I think a lot of French citizens are following the model of other western Europeans in multilingualism.

  ** This is partly true (I have lived for the last ten years in various places outside Paris), but it all hinges on what you mean by "speak English". Other notes in this discussion have referred to the relative difficulties of learning a "smattering" of English - the kind of English that your Parisian barman might use to ask you what kind of sandwich you wish to order, or a guy selling trinkets on the beach in Nice would use. I don't know whether English is easier than any other language to pick up in this way. I think it would be extremely hard to verify empirically, and I get the impression that we are fooled into thinking it's easier because more people do it than for any other language. But as we all know, that's not because it's easy, it's because it makes more sense in our modern world to pick up the rudiments of English than, say, Icelandic. This type of mastery of English is certainly spreading, and you will find millions of people in France able to do it. It would be a disaster if it were otherwise, given that practically all kids doing the baccalaureate do some English, and that's around three quarters of any given age group. But I remain sceptical about the claim that French citizens, in any significant numbers, are following their European counterparts along the track of multilingualism (which isn't really multilingualism, anyway, it's "learning English"). I *shouldn't* think that - after all, I teach English, among other things, at University here, but I don't see any evidence of an increase in the quality of the English learnt, which is not to say there isn't an increase in numbers wanting to try.

  Is English easier to learn than other languages? Don't know, but I do remember having read somewhere the pithy remark, to which I subscribe, that English is an easy language to learn badly.

  A final word. One of the participants in the discussion (my apologies for not knowing who - I've been trigger-happy with the DELETE button) mentioned his/her scepticism about claims made by linguists about all languages being equally easy to learn. Linguists tend to make this claim about learning first languages - based on the observation that kids around the world, regardless of the language they're learning, take a broadly similar time to develop full competence. I don't think it should be extrapolated to second-language learning.

  Regards

  Jim

  Dr. Jim Walker
  Departement d'anglais
  Universite Lumiere - Lyon 2
  86 rue Pasteur
  69365 Lyon Cedex 07
  FRANCE

  Jim.Walker at univ-lyon2.fr
  Jim.Walker at wanadoo.fr

  Tel/fax (pers.) +44 4 74 62 08 48


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