November 09, 2008

Rwanda ditches French .
posted by polychrome 15 years ago
  • I'm surprised French textbooks are more expensive than English ones - I would have thought the French would subsidise them. I wonder if other Francophone states are thinking about this.
  • I am glad they are dropping French for a freshly made vinaigrette. It makes all the difference in a salad. Oh. Well English is the global lingua franca right now. Good to see them hopping on board.
  • It's not terribly surprising, given their recent history, and the vestiges of colonialism. Still, it's a bit sad. French was the international language not all that long ago. Its decline in the face of American dominance was one thing, but the rise of the internet was another. But -- langauge is a living thing, and to some extent cannot be legislated. I think it more likely that that, and not emphemeral politics is behind the move, and perhaps is the same reason why it may yet stick around. Win some, lose some, I suppose -- Romania joined la Francophonie not too long ago, though its historical connections to France as a state were pretty slim.
  • That's a good point Plegmund; I hadn't thought of that. I wonder how much more expensive...
  • Yeah, I must admit I don't know much about this, but I thought the French took a very active role in promoting their culture whereas English was pretty much left to fend for itself (as it well can do, of course). I didn't know about Romania: I expect that's not about France or French so much as reasserting their claim to being a Romance, not a Slav, culture. Is there a double whammy going on here? It seems it's not just that English continues to consolidate its position as the world's preferred second language; French also seems to me to have declined in international importance relative to, say, Spanish or German. Just an impression and perhaps just a UK perspective - I think our conception of European culture is not so exclusively based on France since we joined the EC. But it might be the reassertion of reality after French sort of punching above its weight up to about a hundred years ago. French-speakers never created big colonies on the scale that the English and Spanish did, and it never had the sheer numbers within Europe that German speakers can call on. When you look at the fundamentals, maybe the importance of French has just been over-rated historically?
  • The textbook industry in the States is Huge. And with the weak dollar, they're probably cutting deals left and right.
  • Given China's growing investment and influence in (some would even say colonization of) Africa, Mandarin may soon become a useful language there as well. Although many of the Chinese diplomats, managers and advisors probably speak some English as well.
  • I spent some time in Romania in the '80s and French was the de facto second language back then. German was a distant third and English hardly at all. So whatever the connection with France, I suspect it isn't anything new.
  • C'est la vie.