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Is French still important? | ||
Tags: Language Importance | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4834 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 41 of 44 17 July 2012 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Did I ever say that French is a world business language?
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| lemochris Newbie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4511 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Spanish* Studies: Persian | Message 42 of 44 20 July 2012 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I find this argument about GPD quite redundant, because no one is going to choose a language over another when their countries differences in GPD are not really significant.
The reason to choose Spanish over French is not due to business possibilities, in fact I think the latter is far more important as a business language than the former. In Europe, if there's any sort of language of prestige, that's French, maybe along with German. Saying, as Merv stated, that French culture output is at the same level or even inferior to any other country in Europe is pretty much an understatement. OK, maybe Russian literature of the 19th is the finest, as is the German philosophy of the same century, maybe French cuisine isn't far more better than others, maybe French literature today isn't producing the greatest authors of our time (besides M. Houellebecq) and maybe the French are arrogant and not very willing to help you learn the language, even if they want you to. Now, when it comes to contemporary cinema and music output, I don't think any other language in the world, besides the English speaking realm, Japan in cinema and Brazil in music comes close. Even with the most successful artists producing in English (David Guetta, Daft Punk, Bob Sinclar, Cedric Gervais, Justice, Carte Blanche...), they still manage to have a plethora of French speaking musicians and composers with a high quality production, in nearly all genres, maybe except as I stated before Dance & Electronic and Rock music, because the main composers and bands prefer to sing in English. Now, why Spanish gains in popularity? Well, because, when you think about Spanish you don't only think about Spain, but about Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Argentina... So many places to discover. When you think about French, the country that comes to mind is... France. You can well enjoy the culture of a language without well knowing it's language, but when it comes to travel and acquaint first-hand other cultures, knowledge of the language is far more important. In the other hand, I must say that in Spanish-speaking countries, French as always being a popular language and will still be, far more than German and nearly at the same level as English, because of the same origin, shared culture, and similar views. Now, German the language of Science? German newspapers, magazines, books are indeed of high quality, but really dull to read. I still found an array of German manuals (but you can find as many in Russian too, it's a shame i don't know this language) to study Persian very well conceived, not as many in French (even though I loved the "Asiathèque" series), and inexistant in Spanish. And I'm new, so hi! Edited by lemochris on 20 July 2012 at 11:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 43 of 44 21 July 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know about Spain, but medical literature in German is held in high regard here in Croatia, especially from the fields of psychiatry (Kraepelin and Freud practically invented psychiatry), and surgery. Springer Verlag is a famous medical publisher (in both German and English). French is important in tropical medicine (MSF), but that field is not huge here.
German is adored here in Croatia, because of tourism, and because many Croatians dream of working in Germany, sooner or later, Germany has working discipline and ethics difficult to achieve in Croatia (where everything is achieved through ''pull some strings'' and ''give some money before submitting your CV' methods). Spanish is liked because of Mexican soap operas (10 per week), and Portuguese because of Brazilian soap operas (2 per week). We don't get almost anything in French in Croatia. It's all in English (both US and UK), Mexican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Because we have two German-owned channels (RTL and RTL2), they make sure there's a lot of programming in German. Nothing is dubbed here, we get everything with the original audion. But overall, I'd say the French is the largest European language with which we have virtually no contacts or exposure. Sometimes, I wonder if France is in Europe or not ;) Italian is relatively overrepresented, because of our Italian minority (It's a co-official language in my county), and you can receive Italian TV's and Radios here much better than the Croatian ones, since their signal is stronger. I have to watch Croatian channels through the cable, because Italian programs are interfering when I use the antenna. I visited France 5 years ago (when going to Spain), and stayed 3 days in Nice. Nice was nice, but people couldn't speak English. I managed to get by with my knowledge of Italian and Spanish...The French people had no idea where Croatia was, they thought is was former USSSR country, somewhere around Kazakhstan LOL. In Brazil everyone know where Croatia was, it's not because they're crazy about geography, but because they crazy about soccer. LOL France does not give a damn about the rest of Europe. The two hugest French-singing European artists after ALIZEE's 2000 hit MOI LOLITA were not native French speakers at all: the Flemish girl Kate Ryan (how sang covers of M. Farmer 1980 hits like Desenchantee), and the Italian Girl In-Grid (the singer of a controversial TU ES FOUTU TUUUUUUUTUTU TUUTUTUTUTUTU). There are many nice artists in France, who have nice songs, but no matter how huge they are in France, they are unknown in neighboring countries. For example M POKORA is unknown in Spain, Italy or Germany. Edited by Medulin on 21 July 2012 at 4:02pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 44 of 44 21 July 2012 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
I suppose you must be ironical. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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