LLAS News Blog

News articles of interest to higher education LLAS subject fields.

Wednesday 16 June 2010

French is a useless language: learn Arabic and Mandarin instead says former minister

Chris Bryant, who served as minister for Europe under Gordon Brown, used a speech in the Commons to highlight the waning value of the French tongue, which has traditionally been the first foreign language taught to British schoolchildren.

Mr Bryant, now a shadow Foreign Office minister, said that young people should be pointed towards languages that were more useful for business.


Telegraph

2 comments:

Brian Barker said...

Chris Bryant raises the question on which language should be taught in British schools.

I see that President Obama wants everyone to learn another language, however which one should it be?

The British learn French, the Australians study Japanese, and the Americans prefer Spanish. Yet this leaves Russian, Mandarin Chinese and Arabic, out of the equation.

It is time to move forward and discuss the subject of a common international language, taught worldwide, in all schools and in all nations. As a native English speaker, my vote is for Esperanto.

Please look at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670. A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

Retnan said...

"It is time to move forward and discuss the subject of a common international language, taught worldwide, in all schools and in all nations. As a native English speaker, my vote is for Esperanto."

That's idiotic. It should be a real language that millions already know. English is the only choice.