Are the French proud of France?

[SaligoBay]

Apparently not, according to this article:

"The French no longer respect their language," said Mr Druon, "because they are no longer proud of themselves or of their country. They no longer love themselves, and, no longer loving themselves, they no longer love what was the instrument of their glory - their language."

And this sounds positively Soviet:

"Politicians must make the protection of the language a plank of their electoral campaigns, Mr Druon wrote. Local and regional defence committees must be formed. Lax teaching methods must be overhauled, incompetent newspaper subeditors sacked, a television language watchdog formed, Anglicisms mercilessly rooted out and destroyed."

I think these people should get out more!

The full thing is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1163543,00.html
you may have to copy and paste to reach it.

[Chantale]

I saw this too. I really wasn't sure what to make of it!!

Chantale

[Iceni]

OK, Di the dyslexic here but from my days as a teacher it seemed to me that languages that evolved and grew with the times lived (look at the way English has evolved from Chaucers times and how the spelling has changed - the US uses mostly our original spellings we use the 'improved version' which came in later). Languages that did not have died - Latin etc.

The strange thing is that those who were taught Latin find learning other languages easier - so perhaps we need to accept change and also to learn and respect the basis of our current languages - the ancient ones.

I found reading easy - I could almost memorise as I went along, speeling still takes me ages to get right and I often put my diatribes into Word to do a speel chock Sometimes this makes my writing short and far too pointed in nature.

Stopping the language from growing is like stopping the country from growing, you can try but you will never succeed. With the amount of foreign nationals living in France, some word migration must happen and I am not just referring to English/French when I write this.

Di

http://www.iceni-it.co.uk