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<DIV><?bigger>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.<BR><BR><FONT size=2>** 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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Regards</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Jim</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Dr. Jim Walker<BR>Departement d'anglais<BR>Universite
Lumiere - Lyon 2<BR>86 rue Pasteur<BR>69365 Lyon Cedex
07<BR>FRANCE</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><A
href="mailto:Jim.Walker@univ-lyon2.fr">Jim.Walker@univ-lyon2.fr</A><BR><A
href="mailto:Jim.Walker@wanadoo.fr">Jim.Walker@wanadoo.fr</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Tel/fax (pers.) +44 4 74 62 08 48</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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