LISTEN very carefully, ’e shall say zis only once...French is a “useless” modern language.
It might not go down well with Francophile fans of cult sitcom ’Allo ’Allo!, but in a blast against the language – dismissed as “insulting” by opponents – Rhondda MP Chris Bryant has claimed that French is no longer an important economic language for children to learn.
Labour’s Mr Bryant, now a Shadow Foreign Office minister, was advocating the importance of young people taking up languages to win business in today’s global economy.
Mr Bryant told the Commons: “Unless we have sufficient numbers of people who speak modern foreign languages – and not just the useless modern foreign languages like French...”
Amid Tory protests that this was “insulting” to the French, Mr Bryant, who was Minister for the EU before Labour lost power, said: “I’ve said this to the French. I think they realise there are problems.”
He defended his remark, insisting that while French had been the “most useful language to use because it was the diplomatic language”, things had changed over the past 30 to 40 years and now “it certainly isn’t”.
He said the most significant languages to speak now, aside from English, were Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
However Mr Bryant’s comments were last night criticised as “ridiculous”, with Wales already lagging behind European competitors in language learning.
Ceri James, director of language centre Cilt Cymru, established by the Assembly Government to drum up interest in foreign languages in schools, said France remains a crucial economic partner.
Mr James admitted that the status of French has changed in recent times.
But he said: “It is still important. Russian and the languages of the Indian sub-continent are growing in economic importance.
“But there is a list as long as your arm of such languages and French is far from being a useless language, it is one which is widely spoken around the world.
“There is still inward investment from there and we do a lot of trade with France, so it’s a bit ridiculous to describe it as a useless language.”
Taught to generations of schoolchildren, French lessons became synonymous with school exchange programmes and the kind of affectionate parodying of pidgin French – or Franglais – and pidgin French- accented English sent up in wartime-set BBC comedy ’Allo ’Allo!, which ran from 1982 to 1992.
Mr James is battling to encourage more school pupils to take up French and other modern languages, with German and Spanish also seeing a decline in numbers at GCSE level.
A report in 2007 by Professor James Foreman-Peck, of Cardiff Business School, said that investing more in teaching foreign languages to improve people’s ability to speak French, Spanish or German would save businesses £9bn a year.
Language skills are shown to be closely related to the export ability of firms and national economies. And Prof Foreman- Peck’s study said under-investment in languages is leaving the UK and its businesses at a significant disadvantage.
Prof Forman-Peck said yesterday: “Traditionally, French was taught as the language of culture, anybody who was anybody spoke it.
“German seems to be a good language because it is such a powerful economy and is so much admired in Europe.
“I am sure it’s always helpful to be able to speak the language of a country you are interested in and to know some of the customs and culture.
“But you have to consider the costs as well as benefits when considering teaching a language such as Mandarin, or Cantonese in schools.
“While China is a big market, these are very difficult languages to learn for Europeans. Getting children interested in languages when they are under 11 is a good investment because they pick things up like parrots and can generally recover them if needed later in life.”
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/2010/06/17/french-a-useless-language-says-former-minister-91466-26668346/
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