The views presented on this site in no way reflects those of my employer, family, friends, acquaintances or distant cousins as these generally fall into three categories: the smart ones that agree with me, those that tolerate me because of my wit, charm, great intellect and modesty, and those who think that I'm a raving wingnut who's one Kennedy away from going medieval on the next vegan moonbat that barks.
I do not do links for the sake of reciprocity. I link only to those sites that I read and I only read RSS feeds. Feel free to send me a link to your site and I'll take a look. If I like it, and if you have a feed, I'll add you to my blogroll.
Copyright Statement
Any original material is the intellectual property of the author and is not to be used without permission, other than normal Internet journalistic practices of extracting portions of a post, acknowledging the author and providing link-backs to the source post.
France is launching a scheme to maintain the importance of French as a working language in the European Union (EU), in the face of a tide of new eastern European members who prefer to speak English.
Paris, which will celebrate International Francophone Day tomorrow, is backing an ambitious plan to hold nearly 200 cultural and linguistic events in the 10 new EU member states. . . .
The move reflects concern that the EU - essentially a French creation, run along French administrative lines and with French as its main language - loses more of its Gallic flavour with each wave of entrants. . . .
Until 1995, French was the only language allowed at Commission press briefings, but today, signs of the dominance of English are everywhere. In 2002, 57 per cent of documents were first written in English, double the number drafted in French.
French diplomats in Barcelona in 2002 were dismayed when leaders from all the new member states spoke English at a summit dinner.
Blog post #2488 in category
International
posted 19 March 04
