“la parole exportée”

Just back to see the fireworks for the Bastille Day celebration, in a park nearby (and take pictures, not easy with my little Fuji FinePix). Hundreds and hundreds of people watching the display to opera music. Nowadays, this happens in the night from the 13th to the 14th. There is a ball here, too, but I wonder how many people will really go.

France is celebrating today the storming of the Bastille prison, 219 years ago. The people of France were rebelling against the monarchy, with a king who was seen as more preoccupied with his own comfort and pleasure, and aristocrats that were desperately clinging to their privileges. The political landscape was just about to change, and Louis XVI was perhaps unlucky to be the wrong man at the wrong time.

The First Republic was not proclaimed until 1792, when the king was deposed and monarchy officially ended. The French Revolution ended in 1799, after ten terrible years that ushered France into the 19th century.

In a similar vein to my previous post, I’d like to share my experience in the Netherlands a few months ago.

I had a problem with my car in a small town close to the German border (not in Amsterdam). I called my insurance company in France and about 20 minutes later, I got a phone call from the tow truck driver, who was looking for me. I tried to read the name of the street, but… although I’m a linguist, I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to pronounce it in Dutch. Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be a language problem. I know the Dutch speak three or four languages, but as I answered, I realized he spoke perfect English, and I couldn’t speak a word of Dutch, not even tell the name of the street in a recognizable manner.

He found me in the end, despite my funny pronunciation, and fixed the car. Before leaving, he told me that he was learning French, but wasn’t quite up to speaking it yet. He had a girlfriend in France, so he wanted to speak the language.

Of course.

So this is a guy who is a tow truck driver by profession, and speaks Dutch and English, is learning French, and since we were so close to Germany, I bet he knows some German too.

How’s that for multilingualism? I’ve still to find the French tow truck driver who speaks English, to begin with, let alone Dutch or Italian, or even German! Correct me if I’m wrong.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but the blog name ‘Certain Ideas of Europe‘ (on the Economist.com website) brings to mind the ‘certain idea of France’ that has informed so much of France’s foreign policy in the past decades.

But the post I found, a fairly old one for this day and age, since it was written in January, has this heading: ‘Five months left to learn French‘. It’s interesting and funny, as I’m reading it just after France started its 6-month turn at leading the European Union. I have written somewhere that this made for a very lively Spring season in the conference interpretation community. My bet is that the Fall season is going to be busy too, and I am already predicting an incredibly crazy month of December, with -as is always the case, but probably even more so with this Presidency- the outgoing country desperately trying to finish off jobs, putting together last-minute agreements, in the hope of leaving a remarkable legacy. Hmmm.

The post concludes with a quote from the French European Affairs Minister, saying:

“Also, a European presidency in which we will be using French to communicate, a great deal.”

Ha. Indeed. As a professional translator, I can only applaud. More business. This is one of the favorite themes of this Presidency. We’ll see. However, what I found really funny, were the comments. Same old stories. Same old rivalry. Same old tally of who in Europe wants to speak English, not French. (What about German? Spanish?) Same old accounting of how much French the English language has absorbed over the centuries (and vice versa?). Same old squabbling: ‘French is a dead language.’ No, it’s not.’ ‘Yes it is.’ One could have argued: ‘What about British English?’

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Do we care?