FRENCH REDUNDANT? - Courrier des lecteurs/rices: THE IRISH TIMES 19/08/05

a bientot

If any ireland.com subscribers saw a reaction to the letter below in The Irish Times since Monday 23/08 perhaps they might post it (them) here
Merci d'avance.
__________________________________________________
Votre réaction...............Editor, letters, The Irish Times.
et peut être quelqu’un pourrait parler (écrire) de la manque de TV5..........
donc à vos claviers....................
Et oui, il faut encourager l’apprentissage et la pratique de toutes nos langues européennes..........
______________________________________________

The Status of Spanish
Madam,
I note with interest that only 1,972 students sat a Leaving Certificate Spanish paper this year while 30,592 students sat French. Is it not odd that so many students still undertake to study an increasingly redundant language?

With a campaign in the US (sic) to give Spanish language the same status as English, is it not time our schools and the Department of Education impressed on young people the importance of this language?
-Yours etc,
Michelle Lee
Dublin 12

from The Irish Times, vendredi, le 19 août 2005.

Calina

TV5 est disponible sur le service digital de NTL a Dublin, et sur le service analogue de Chorus dans des certains zones. La situation n'est pas ideal en ce qui concerne Chorus, mais pour NTL, la disponibilité s'est ameliorée depuis peu de temps. Je crois que LCI est disponible par ADSL mais pour l'instant, je n'ai pas essayé de faire fonctionner le service.

En ce qui concerne la lettre ci-joint, je n'ai pas trop l'habitude de lire le Irish Times, mais je viens de leur addresser une reponse. On va voir comment cela va s'en sortir.

Je ne suis pas d'accord avec la suggestion que l'espagnol devrait remplacer le francais pour des raisons diverses, y compris le fait que sur l'echelle européen, le francais reste toujours plus utile et utilisé que l'espagnol, et d'ailleurs, les manques au niveau de la didaction des langues ici reste avec le pratique et ne pas autant avec la choix. Je suis contre une politique ou une langue devrait faire progres en en deplacant une autre. En plus, que notre systeme d'education soit dirigé par des mouvements populaires aux E-U me semble plutot bete.

Victor

a bientot wrote:

With a campaign in the US (sic) to give Spanish language the same status as English, is it not time our schools and the Department of Education impressed on young people the importance of this language?

This would of course be igorant of the ratios of Spanish and English speakers in the two countries.

penexpers

a bientot wrote:

If any ireland.com subscribers saw a reaction to the letter below in The Irish Times since Monday 23/08 perhaps they might post it (them) here
Merci d'avance.
__________________________________________________
Votre réaction...............Editor, letters, The Irish Times.
et peut être quelqu’un pourrait parler (écrire) de la manque de TV5..........
donc à vos claviers....................
Et oui, il faut encourager l’apprentissage et la pratique de toutes nos langues européennes..........
______________________________________________

The Status of Spanish
Madam,
I note with interest that only 1,972 students sat a Leaving Certificate Spanish paper this year while 30,592 students sat French. Is it not odd that so many students still undertake to study an increasingly redundant language?

With a campaign in the US (sic) to give Spanish language the same status as English, is it not time our schools and the Department of Education impressed on young people the importance of this language?
-Yours etc,
Michelle Lee
Dublin 12

from The Irish Times, vendredi, le 19 août 2005.

Madam, - In response to Michelle Lee's assertion (August 19th) that French is "an increasingly redundant language", I would like to draw her attention to the following.

There are 113 million Francophones in the world (those who speak French as a native or adopted language) and French is the official language in more than 17 countries as well as being a co-official language in 14 others. Furthermore, French and English are the only two languages spoken as a native language in five continents. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world.

Spanish is undoubtedly spoken by more people - about 330 million - but I fail to see how this means French is a language in terminal decline. The US model which Ms Lee uses to illustrate her point is wholly irrelevant in Ireland because our Spanish-speaking population cannot be compared with that of the United States. Interestingly, many members of Ireland's African population speak French fluently.

Ms Lee is to be commended for her efforts to promote the learning of Spanish, but I am puzzled as to why she seeks to do so by attacking French. As a language teacher myself, I notice that students benefit from learning more than one foreign language as the skills acquired by the learner transfer between languages.

It is not a case of either/or - more a case of embracing the rich linguistic cultures open to us all. Why, Ms Lee even has a French Christian name. Vive la différence! - Yours, etc,

LOUISE CURTIN, Cabra, Dublin 7.

Gazza22

C'est ridicule ! La langue française est répandue

simu

Oh, I saw that in the paper. What a ridiculous statement! That woman is a complete idiot or she's just trolling for attention. Where are the IT mods?

(post written in English with the hope that she will stumble upon this and reconsider her statements)!

JZF

Hello,

US have to deal with a fast growing population of spanish speakers & illegal mexican imigrants. A huge percentage of them are not speaking english and won't in the future because they simply don't have to. But most of them are or will become voters !

Vive la difference !

A+

pickarooney

How many students do German for the leaving, as a matter of interest?

Gazza22

pickarooney wrote:

How many students do German for the leaving, as a matter of interest?

En 2004, 8500 étudiants

esperanza

This Lee woman obviously has no idea what she is talking about. How can French be redundant? It may true that French is the most popular language, which is a real shame because we also need German speakers and Italian speakers, for example. And German pronunciation is so much easier than French pronunciation for English speakers, as is Italian. Why don't the Board of Education hire more German teachers?
Any idea on where it is possible to get those statistics on the LC exams?

Sarsfield

Russian and Chinese might be more important than any Western European language in the coming years.

But French is still a big language (and we Irish like to visit France a lot) which is why I'm trying to revive what I learned in school.