It looks like the French are angry that the French language is . Everyone doesn't want to speak French? Oh no! France had better form a government committee to study the reasons why French entertainment and language isn't popular! They should enact legislation to subsidize the spread French culture around the world! They should create a government agency that makes sure the French language isn't sullied by foreign words and concepts! They should restrict the importation and broadcast of non-French movies and music!
Oh wait... they've already done all that. Thanks to Vichy France and Uncle Adolph, it would seem. You have to be at least a little suspicious of a country whose citizens rely on a government solution for everything -- even if that government doesn't have Nazi roots.
But why would an isolationist country with 71% of it's workforce employed in services industries expect to be able to export anything culturally? Why would they think their language would be internationally prevalent if their major contribution to the world economy is tourism and government employees? I'll be the first to admit that putting the adjective "American" in front of words like "cuisine" and "culture" can make for some wonderful oxymorons, but face facts: if your country researches and invents and produces things which the world needs and wants, then your country is bound to have some global influence. Now with the Internet genie out of the bottle, the English language will only get more popular, regardless of what the French government does. And that's how it should be. You can't legislate everything into being the way you want it to be. The world is getting smaller. Expect shrinkage.
Sounds like a pile of merde to me...
Don't know if you noticed, but in that same factbook, it lists the US workforce at 80% in service jobs.
Posted by Miguelito at July 9, 2003 3:37 PMNot true. I did look at the US, actually (and the UK and Germany and Japan and a couple others). The US page is at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html#Econ
This is what it says:
"Labor force - by occupation:
managerial and professional 31%, technical, sales and administrative support 29%, services 14%, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and crafts 24%, farming, forestry, and fishing 2% (2002)"
Here is France:
"Labor force - by occupation:
services 71%, industry 25%, agriculture 4% (1997)"
You were looking at the "GDP - composition by sector" section. We just make a lot of money from services, but only actually employ 14% of our workforce in service industries. I imagine tourism counts for a lot of that.
My original point was that France can't expect to be a cultural world super-power if the bulk of its workforce is employed in service industries. 60% of the US works in a managerial/professional, technical, sales or administrative position. That's banks and insurance companies and real estate and all sorts of other potentially global enterprises which have helped English in becoming popular. Of course, we also have 5 1/2 times the labor pool, so that surely was a factor as well. And yet another reason why legislative solutions on the part of the French government won't make any difference (my other point).
Don't get me wrong: I'm not bagging on the French for their stance on the war or anything like that. I could honestly care less what they think about the war. I don't even agree with the war, to tell the truth. That's not it. And I'm not getting down on them because every Frenchman I've ever met has been, to a man, an elitist asshole. I figure they were the couple bad apples in the bunch (and they all had money too; large amounts of disposable income make just about everyone unpleasant to be around, regardless of nationality).
No, I'm bagging on them because of their socialist follies and growing global ineptitude. They find their language hasn't taken the world by storm and the first thing they do is mope and whine about it and so they form a committee to find out why everyone isn't using the hallmark of their precious heritage. Like, perhaps they can pass a law or get a resolution enacted that will force people to speak French -- for French's sake. You can hear them saying to themselves, "No matter what the market will bear, everyone should be buying French, right? And if not, we'll pass a law and make it that way!" Great theory, that. It's working with radio and TV and movies, right?
The French just don't get it. That's my point. And I'm still a little pissed about that whole Jerry Lewis thing.
Posted by wee at July 9, 2003 4:09 PMFrench is a mellifluous language, one has to give it that... But the article makes a good point in that it is a rather rigid one too. Part of what makes English so vibrant is the exact thing the French linguistic purists fear so much - that being its continual evolution, the way it absorbs words from so many other languages, the way new words are created for new concepts instead of building cumbersome phrases from existing words (unless of course it's the government we're talking about, and then they at least try to come up with clever acronyms that end up replacing the phrase, like SCUBA). No other language is as dynamic and as comprehensive as English.
Their culture is the only tool the French have left in presenting a case for their ongoing superiority in a world in which they've become increasingly marginalized. You have to feel for them, really. So much elitist arrogance, so little deodorant.
Posted by Tess at July 9, 2003 5:09 PMI thought that the adaptability of the English language was an interesting point as well. The article mentions the French language's inability to "create" new words -- and that's a skill any language needs if it wants to merely survive, much less grow globally. But I don't think that is enough, in and of itself, to ensure world-wide utility.
The Germans corner the market on ease of new word creation, IMHO. It's almost like German was invented expressly for creating new words: you take two words you already know, run them together, and you have a new concept which can be instantly used by any reasonably fluent speaker. So isn't being able to use two (or more) already known, native words to express a new concept better than having to incorporate those from foreign languages? It seems perfectly reasonable to me. For example, the concept of 'schadenfreude' has been getting a lot of play recently. If you speak German, you already know what it is. Literally, it's "harm joy" (or thereabouts). If you speak English, and need to import the concept of taking perverse satisfaction in the misfortune of others, then everyone has to define it internally before they can use it.
Not that I'm much of a linguist, but if you think of language as an evolving and growing organism, it seems like less "work" to make new words (and therefore new concepts) using building blocks you already have than to go find, define, incorporate and disseminate new ones. When you couple this ability to invent new terms out of thin air with an ability to ALSO incorporate foreign words, I think German beats English as far as being comprehensively dynamic goes. So why doesn't everyone speak German?
I don't think this "morphability" of English is the key, else German would have taken over globally. I think it has everything to do with two recent things: the American economy (including the effect two world wars had on spreading about physical representations of the US's wealth) and the Internet.
The US economy, like I wrote earlier, exports a lot of "stuff" (not necessarily hard goods, either). You can get a Coke anywhere on the planet, but more importantly, everyone on the planet knows what "Coke" is. Our economy is well-suited for exporting less tangable things like software and entertainment. I think France's is most definitely not. The US easily extends it's "American dream" all over the world and everyone winds up wanting to wear Levis and smoke Marlboros. That's not necessarily a good thing, IMO.
The dissemination of American "culture" or ideas makes the French downright pissed, because they see the American marketing juggernaut as subverting their culture. We are, and it is, but not intentionally. It's just the nature of our business. That business has started booming now that it's been combined with world which is slowly shrinking due to the Internet. Not only is it easier to get at American goods, but it's easier than ever to get at American bits. And people want it. Once entertainment becomes more digital (what's easier to move across the planet: a newspaper or a 1,300KB Unicode file?) I think we'll see Americanism --- and English -- becoming even more prevalent. We'll see even more Japanese schoolgirls singing Stray Cats songs. And you'll see more ripped-off Hollywood movies playing in France. There's nothing the French can do to stop it, either.
Anyway, that's enough of my inexpert opinion. Any typing I do today should probably go towards work stuff...
Posted by wee at July 9, 2003 5:45 PM"American culture" is an oxymoron?
Ahem.
I ask you...
Who invented the tractor pull?
I don't believe I need to say anymore.
-S.
Posted by Shane at July 10, 2003 2:25 AM