View Full Version : Outraged by English, Chirac storms out of summit
Kilgor
03-23-2006, 09:23 PM
Sorry to beat blackrain to this one.
Under mounting political pressure at home, the French President, Jacques Chirac, yesterday stormed out of an EU summit in a fit of pique over a fellow Frenchman's decision to speak in English.
Already at the heart of a row over economic protectionism in Europe, M. Chirac gave the EU's spring summit a combustible start, quitting the opening session in protest at a perceived insult to the French language.
M. Chirac walked out of the meeting as it was being addressed by Ernest-Antoine Seillière, the president of the EU employers' federation, Unice. M. Seillière had been invited to address all 25 heads of government on economic reform.
After a brief introduction in French, M. Seillière said he would speak in English because it was the international business language. Without saying a word, the French President left with the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy and finance minister, Thierry Breton. He only returned when the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, began speaking in French. Tony Blair and other heads of government remained to hear M. Seillière urge EU leaders to resist national protectionism to avoid a negative domino effect on the single market.
Maria-Fernanda Fau, spokeswoman for Unice, said: "M. Seillière started in French and then moved into English. He uses English because he represents 20 million companies in 33 countries and this is the language of business."
M. Chirac's walkout was greeted with embarrassment by diplomats, who had hoped yesterday's summit would dispel the impression that economic nationalism is on the rise in Europe.
Once the predominant language of the EU, French is waning in Brussels, with English spoken more widely and used in many more EU documents. The rise of English has been unstoppable since Sweden and Finland joined the EU in 1995, followed by 10 more countries in 2004, most of them in eastern Europe, where English is by far the most common second language.
Though the French president speaks good English, and worked in the US in his youth, he has fought hard to defend France's linguistic status. M. Chirac has also criticised several aspects of English life including, last year, its food.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article353296.ece
EsoognomEhT
03-23-2006, 11:10 PM
hehehehehehehehehehehe
h22chen
03-23-2006, 11:19 PM
hm... how about this, let's choose a language that no European country is using (in a mass scale, legally, officially, etc...) and that everyone could agree on (and accept). Let's standardize Europe. :p
Let's say Latin, let's make every European speak Latin. rofl
novus Roma! (I don't know Latin btw)
Holmer
03-23-2006, 11:43 PM
Or even better...make him speak Pig-latin.
Erik2a4
03-23-2006, 11:47 PM
Esperanto.
The watch manufacturer Molvado takes it's name from it.
Ah, **** it. Use that African language where you have to make the "click" noises with your tongue. Seems fair.
bubkusjones
03-23-2006, 11:57 PM
Esperanto.
The watch manufacturer Molvado takes it's name from it.
Ah, **** it. Use that African language where you have to make the "click" noises with your tongue. Seems fair.
Click click bloody click Pancakes!
BarkingSquirrel
03-24-2006, 12:05 AM
I have no idea why, but when reading this the scene from EuroTrip about the french robot man popped in my mind.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Parasaur/frenchrobotman.jpg
Lazy Lob
03-24-2006, 03:11 AM
We should have one day a month when we all speak French on MP.net. No excuses. D'accord?
daily666
03-24-2006, 04:16 AM
Yes, and the forums censorship mode won't work. Merde!
What a silly story.
Under mounting political pressure at home, the French President, Jacques Chirac, yesterday stormed out of an EU summit in a fit of pique over a fellow Frenchman's decision to speak in English.
What was general reaction of French citizens... I myself thought it inappropriate behaviour for a person of his position.
BLAIR MAKES LIGHT OF CHIRAC ENGLISH PROTEST
http://www.ttc.org/200603241130.k2obusr22343.htm (http://www.ttc.org/200603241130.k2obusr22343.htm)
BRUSSELS, March 24, 2006 (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair made light Friday of French President Jacques Chirac's decision to walk out of EU summit talks to protest at a fellow Frenchman speaking English.
"People do get up and go for all sorts of reasons," said Blair with a smile, referring to the incident which raised eyebrows at the first session Thursday evening of a two-day EU summit in Brussels.
Chirac walked out, taking with him his foreign and finance ministers, after Frenchman Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, head of the UNICE European employers federation, started his speech to the EU's 25 leaders in English.
Seilliere explained his decision by saying that English is the language of business.
Blair added: "Obviously a lot of business is conducted in English, but I mean I don't want to comment on the stories about President Chirac because I simply don't know about them."
But asked whether he had seen the incident, he admitted: "I did," adding: "People speak both French and English around the table at the European Council." Chirac, 73, an ardent defender of the Gallic tongue, and his ministers returned after Seilliere finished his address.
English has overtaken French as the European Union's lingua franca, especially since it welcomed 10 new member states, mostly former Soviet communist bloc states in eastern Europe, in May 2004.
Durandal
03-24-2006, 09:09 AM
Chirac, 73, an ardent defender of the Gallic tongue, and his ministers returned after Seilliere finished his address.
What a ƒucking baby.
Defender of the Gallic tongue? Maybe he should focus on the riots in his streets and the increasing unemployment.
fargo
03-24-2006, 10:13 AM
What a ƒucking baby.
Defender of the Gallic tongue? Maybe he should focus on the riots in his streets and the increasing unemployment.
Lol. That sums the whole thing up nicely for me too !
joe mama
03-24-2006, 10:30 AM
Click click bloody click Pancakes!
good news bubkus! now i shan't have to kill you!
Digital Marine
03-24-2006, 11:12 AM
What an arrogant ass:cantbeli:
ed316
03-24-2006, 11:14 AM
What an arrogant ass:cantbeli:
x2. Acting like a little bitch
haschmich
03-24-2006, 11:25 AM
hm... how about this, let's choose a language that no European country is using (in a mass scale, legally, officially, etc...) and that everyone could agree on (and accept). Let's standardize Europe. :p
Let's say Latin, let's make every European speak Latin. rofl
novus Roma! (I don't know Latin btw)
i guess you ment it as a joke but i think this would be really good! because as long as lingua france also is the native language of two important countries, there will be no peace about this topic. i dont know much about latin and if it would be able to fulfill this part, but latin always was THE language of western civilization. maybe in many decades, when there will be multiple superpowers (usa/eu/china/..), the need for a different lingua franca than english will arise again and then the time for latin has come, thats what im hoping for at least!
woot
Once the Catholic church gave up Latin then what hope is there for it
i guess you ment it as a joke but i think this would be really good! because as long as lingua france also is the native language of two important countries, there will be no peace about this topic. i dont know much about latin and if it would be able to fulfill this part, but latin always was THE language of western civilization. maybe in many decades, when there will be multiple superpowers (usa/eu/china/..), the need for a different lingua franca than english will arise again and then the time for latin has come, thats what im hoping for at least!
woot
I had it 9 years in school. And it is not really meant to be spoken. One reason is that it didn't grow into the modern world. A spoken language changes. Latin is not dead, but it missed 2000 years of evolution. It's a very theoretical language and not even the regular roman spoke it. As i learned the regular roman guy back then spoke greek(not kidding) or some twisted form of the latin we know. Call it "street latin", the later italian :lol: If you need another lingua franca take the only real invented lingua franca: Esperanto.
haschmich
03-24-2006, 12:47 PM
toki no no no, thats not really true what youre saying here.
how can you make a decision what language *can* adept to new circumstances, add new words etc, and which language cant. this is not a valid statement. its like saying: "the many english in german advertisement is all because german language cannot find new words itself and needs the very dynamic english language!" - that is not very intelligent.
of course to little pupils in school or even normal people of our days, latin looks "oooold" and impractical. but i bet if you teach young childrin from the kindergarten only latin, they will think its just as good as any other language. it all depends on habit and the creativity of the speakers!
'Deeply shocked' Chirac defends summit snub of English speech
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060324/1/3zm8h.html
French President Jacques Chirac defended his eye-brow-raising exit from an EU summit session, accusing the French head of Europe's employer union of piquing French pride by daring to speak in English.
An ardent defender of the French tongue, Chirac said he had been "deeply shocked" to hear English on the lips of the Frenchman in a speech at the two-day European summit.
"I was deeply shocked that a Frenchman would speak at the council table in English," he told journalists, explaining for the first time his abrupt walkout when the summit opened on Thursday.
"That's the reason why the French delegation and myself left so as not to have to listen to that," he added...
Violet Fashion by Mindy
03-24-2006, 05:42 PM
Once again the English get one over the French!!!!!
For EMPIRE!
French 'useful', English 'essential': EU officials
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=28764&name=French+%27useful%27%2C+English+%27essential%27%3A+EU+officials
BRUSSELS, March 26, 2006 (AFP) - When President Jacques Chirac stormed out of an EU summit last week, furious that a fellow Frenchman had spoken English, he may as well have been railing at the tide coming in, EU newcomer states say.
Whether France likes it or not, the dominance of the English language has grown and continues to grow in the European Union, bolstered notably by the arrival of 10 mostly ex-communist countries to the bloc in 2004...
Durandal
03-28-2006, 07:49 PM
...bolstered notably by the arrival of 10 mostly ex-communist countries to the bloc in 2004...
And we all know how he LOOOOOVES those East European nations. rofl
Dude is WAAAAY out there and going further...
What a ƒucking baby.
Defender of the Gallic tongue? Maybe he should focus on the riots in his streets and the increasing unemployment.
nah he's got the prime minister to do that, leaving him plenty of time to concentrate his efforts on the important role of "Defender of the Gallic tongue".
Mastermind
03-28-2006, 09:50 PM
Perhaps when he finds out his French pilot is speaking English to the French controller as he asks permission to descend for entering the landing pattern and is being answered in English, the great "Defender of the French language' will immediately walk out and take his cabinet with him...that should prove entertaining.
little fatso
03-28-2006, 10:57 PM
jebus! what in gods name man...i thought only the frenh here in quebec hated english...i hate that man sooo much.
Greek soldier
03-29-2006, 01:07 AM
I had it 9 years in school. And it is not really meant to be spoken. One reason is that it didn't grow into the modern world. A spoken language changes. Latin is not dead, but it missed 2000 years of evolution. It's a very theoretical language and not even the regular roman spoke it. As i learned the regular roman guy back then spoke greek(not kidding) or some twisted form of the latin we know. Call it "street latin", the later italian :lol: If you need another lingua franca take the only real invented lingua franca: Esperanto.
Greek during Hellenistic and Roman period was the language of trade and one of the official ones of the Roman Empire. The Italian evolved during Dante's times (lingua volgare).
And Esperanto is BS. Why you think there aren't so many speakers of Esperanto.
XShipRider
03-29-2006, 06:13 AM
And people call Americans arrogant? Hmphhhh!:roll:
toki no no no, thats not really true what youre saying here.
how can you make a decision what language *can* adept to new circumstances, add new words etc, and which language cant. this is not a valid statement. its like saying: "the many english in german advertisement is all because german language cannot find new words itself and needs the very dynamic english language!" - that is not very intelligent.
of course to little pupils in school or even normal people of our days, latin looks "oooold" and impractical. but i bet if you teach young childrin from the kindergarten only latin, they will think its just as good as any other language. it all depends on habit and the creativity of the speakers!
This is a late answer to your post, but still: I don't say latin couldn't adapt, but it already missed a linguistic evolution that every other language got through. Latin was kept even when it's successors developed. If you want spoken latin then take italian or spanish etc. You cannot switch it into a spoken language in a second or even a whole generation. Did you ever try to speak it even after years of grammatic and vocabulary? It's good learning it, but it's not supposed ot replace spooken language. And the comparison of english and german has nothing to do with it.
Zarathustra
03-29-2006, 06:53 AM
The EU has 2 official language : French and English. Period. Therefore a french doesn't have to use the second official language. About the countries neither french speaking nor english speaking, they choose the language they want. Their own, English or French.
Chirac was right !
Mastermind
03-29-2006, 08:54 AM
He may have been right (that is debatable)...but he was also foolish and childish...he reinforced my opinion of the French..
Vandervahn
03-29-2006, 02:59 PM
The EU has 2 official language : French and English. Period. Therefore a french doesn't have to use the second official language. About the countries neither french speaking nor english speaking, they choose the language they want. Their own, English or French.
No, the EU has 20 official languages (+3 in 2007). Every official majority language of the member states is also recognized as official EU language equally, with the exception of languages like "Lëtzebuergesch" (Luxembourg), which are direct dialects of a major language; all of these languages may be used within the Parliament.
There are however 3 WORKING languages: German (25% - 34%); French (16% - 31%) and English (15%-41%). The first percentage figure is the ratio of native speakers of these languages, the second figure the ratio of EU citizens with those languages as 2nd languages. The term "working language" already indicates that these languages are used during the normal interaction on the EU level.
They are however equal in their employment during talks, and Interpreters are present.
Chirac was right !
No he wasn´t right in the sense of "acting justified", because that speaker could have chosen any of the three working languages - the speaker´s nationality has no bearing in this. I also doubt that he left because the french speaker did not speak French, as this is quite a common occurance during EU talks (with Chirac himself often enough speaking English - not on the Podium though). My personal impression is that Chirac left because the speaker stated that he considered English to be the better language to get his point across and that English would be, above the other 2 working languages, the representative language of business - which is quite a faux-pas in a diplomatic setting.
In the light of this analysation Chiracs "outrage" is understandable, his reaction however was way over the top and not fitting his status.
Omaha
03-29-2006, 03:44 PM
So the French guy threw a hissy fit?
Doesn't sound like anything new...
http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/
Sharp
03-29-2006, 04:23 PM
So the French guy threw a hissy fit?
Doesn't sound like anything new...
http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/
are you already come to what we call omaha beach?
He may have been right (that is debatable)...but he was also foolish and childish...he reinforced my opinion of the French.. And does this video reinforce what everybody thinks of the red...um...americans? :bash: :bash: Generalization are easy but you are not going to win this petty game. http://militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76625
little fatso
03-29-2006, 05:58 PM
Greek during Hellenistic and Roman period was the language of trade and one of the official ones of the Roman Empire. The Italian evolved during Dante's times (lingua volgare).
And Esperanto is BS. Why you think there aren't so many speakers of Esperanto.
we greeks rock hard woot
Omaha
03-29-2006, 08:41 PM
are you already come to what we call omaha beach?
Umm...I don't understand what you are saying. Please rephrase your statement, so I can properly respond. Thank you.
h22chen
03-29-2006, 09:27 PM
The EU has 2 official language : French and English. Period. Therefore a french doesn't have to use the second official language. About the countries neither french speaking nor english speaking, they choose the language they want. Their own, English or French.
Chirac was right !
What happens when the Slavs begin joining the EU? Are they going to make an official Slav language?
h22chen
03-29-2006, 11:30 PM
What I'm getting is: when more European regionals join the EU, there's going to be the need for a standard and not everyone is going to like it.
I believe that Europe haven't been unified for the last millenia was due to (I'm generalizing here):
1. no standard oral language
2. no standard written language
3. no regional power that can overwhelm the other regional powers, or if it can, did not remain in power long enough to leave a mark.
Vandervahn
03-30-2006, 02:02 AM
What happens when the Slavs begin joining the EU? Are they going to make an official Slav language?
Interesting question. I am not aware of any discussion into this as of now, but who knows, maybe in a few years the slavish nations might push into that direction once their position is consolidated. There might however be a problem WHICH slavish language to use, as it is my understanding that the regional dialects have partly evolved to indigenous languages; but I am far from an expert in this. Who knows, we might have to face the funny situation that Russian as the most "common" slavic language might be proposed as the logical representative for East Europe without Russia actually being an EU member ;)
OTOH I do not think that it is feasible to introduce a fourth working language, especially one with such a different background. German as the most-spoken language has to stay. French has a good cause being spoken by several founding members of the Montane and European Union, as well as (partly) french-speaking countries hosting most of the EU institutions. English however is the international lingua franca of our time, as well as being rather easy to learn.
So in the end, I dont think that any slavish language has a chance of becoming working language.
What I'm getting is: when more European regionals join the EU, there's going to be the need for a standard and not everyone is going to like it.
I believe that Europe haven't been unified for the last millenia was due to (I'm generalizing here):
1. no standard oral language
2. no standard written language
3. no regional power that can overwhelm the other regional powers, or if it can, did not remain in power long enough to leave a mark.
You forgot the single most-important reason: distance. Nowadays we dont mind driving the 30km to the next cheapest retail store. In the middle ages up until the steam machine 30km was a whole day´s trip, a journey through Europe on land took months, if not years. Still there were reasonable "unified" masses of Europe in history, for example the Frankish Empire or the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations.
Telecommunications took even longer to develop. So language was not an issue, as those that really cared for the inter-"national" relations were those that had a common language: the high noblety, the clerics and later the scientists. Latin was the common written language up until the 17th century and then got replaced by French (and German to an extent).
Durandal
03-30-2006, 07:01 AM
What I'm getting is: when more European regionals join the EU, there's going to be the need for a standard and not everyone is going to like it.
I believe that Europe haven't been unified for the last millenia was due to (I'm generalizing here):
1. no standard oral language
2. no standard written language
3. no regional power that can overwhelm the other regional powers, or if it can, did not remain in power long enough to leave a mark.
You forgot:
4. Nationalism.
5. Football.
6. French hygiene.
p-)
Mastermind
03-30-2006, 09:08 AM
Might be what the world needs is more generalizations. Relativisims just don't seem to be working now days, do they?
h22chen
03-30-2006, 09:23 AM
You forgot:
4. Nationalism.
5. Football.
6. French hygiene.
p-)
rofl
LOL
Sharp
03-30-2006, 12:51 PM
You forgot the single most-important reason: distance.
a second reason, maybe : history.
Europe is not America, we are not *200* poor years old, but more than 2000 for some countries.... would their people agreed with the fact to lost their past and their glory ? to lost their language and have to speak a one and only language for the unite?
Change money for Euro was a great thing, but also for now a red line, i'm not sure we could do/would accept more.
i have an idea for our politicians : why do not let all peoples speak in their first born language like it's actually the case, but in second *bisness* language, speak a REAL alternative as European language, like Esperanto...? or something else.. Latin ... (two very easy language to speak..)
Durandal
03-30-2006, 09:02 PM
i have an idea for our politicians : why do not let all peoples speak in their first born language like it's actually the case, but in second *bisness* language, speak a REAL alternative as European language, like Esperanto...? or something else.. Latin ... (two very easy language to speak..)
I have an even better idea.
Can the EU and do it like the rest of the world does.
Then we wouldn't hear so much bitching. p-)
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.