why won´t French people speak English?

<<I hope so. More precisely, I'll try to think so. But this kind of "joke" based on historical facts will sound arrogant and insensitive to us lerners of English. We don't want to be accessorys after the fact. I sincerely hope nobody in France will not speak English, except peeple who want to or need to. Same with Japan. >>

Do you not have sarcasm in Japan? ;) Don't take things so seriously!

Indeed, Eito, take things with a light touch.

I don't know about Japan, but here in Hong Kong, we're sarcastic all the time *nita nita*. Then and again, Japan might actually be a little more uptight about things than other Asian countries. Is it true that Japanese secondary school students call each other "... -san" if they're not on familiar terms? In Hong Kong, we students would just snort at such forms of address and we'd simply call each other nicknames like "fat boy" and such. And plus, we slosh tea down with amazing rapidity and no ceremony. What's the point of being so uptight, anyway? ^^

Enjoy life. Give your female citizens more freedom. Make a higher slit in your kimonos just as we've done to our qipao (cheongsam) and as the Vietnamese have done to their ao dai. *winkwink*

Okay, sumimasen, that was completely off topic, haha. I just couldn't resist ^_~

Back onto topic, I'm pretty much in the same camp as Boy from Pakistan.

Honestly, Americans and Britons who live in foreign countries should try to pick up a bit of the local language. Many English teachers who live here in Hong Kong know no Cantonese at all, even though they've been here for ten years or more!! They pretty much assume that everyone should learn English, not the other way around. I hate that attitude. If I can be fluently bilingual (well, trilingual if you consider Mandarin and Cantonese distinct languages), then so can they, don't you think?

On the other hand, a news broadcast a few days ago featured a Norwegian woman who was doing environment-related work in Hong Kong. She spoke perfect, fluent Cantonese!! So admirable ^.^

Anyway, I think that everyone should learn as many languages as possible and attempt to practise them when they visit countries speaking those languages. I'm currently working on French and Japanese, because my chances of visiting France and Japan are very high due to France's proximity to the UK (where I'll be going for university) and Japan's proximity to Hong Kong. After I'm semi-fluent in these languages, I'll go on to Korean, Spanish, and Italian! I'm in no rush... languages are a hobby of mine and I believe in lifelong learning ^^

Bah... in my first message above, kindly remove the "s" I stupidly put after "kimono". It should be "kimono", not "kimonos."

Boku wa hontou ni baka desu ne?

Heehee, many congratulations on getting into Edinburgh! I hope you have a wonderful time there. Visiting France sounds like a great idea, and of course you have numerous other countries practically on your doorstep. That's the joy of Europe!

Not to play to the American stereotype, but doesn't everyone in Hong Kong already speak English anyway? (By "everyone", of course, I mean "an overwhelming majority" and not "every single individual in the entire city/province/state/autonomous region/whatever".)

- Josh

To Wild Pegasus:

Actually, that's quite true. Admittedly, there's no real *need* for anyone here to be fluent in Cantonese.

I just wish people were a bit more intellectually-driven, you know? Don't learn languages because you're really forced to do so, but learn them because it's fun and rewarding, and integrates you into the local population. It makes people happy! ^.^

I said that I "hate that attitude [of people not bothering to learn the native tongue]" not because I view these people personally as being stuck-up. Foreigners in Hong Kong are actually quite well-mannered and friendly compared to the local population.

But I...
simply
can't
stand
intellectual
apathy.

Thanks, Candy!! I'm certainly looking forward to university in the UK!!

Damian said that there are lots of international students at Edinburgh... Hopefully, I'll be able to find some friends with whom to practise French and Japanese and other motley languages! ^.~

If it's any consolation to the French who don't want to learn English, Look what happened to Latin. Once the dominant language, surviving the collapse of the Roman empire, and now it's quite dead.

English has survived the collapse of the English empire but not the American empire so it may take awhile to kill that one off yet. But there's hope.

I admit I'm hopeless with languages other than English but it's not for lack of trying.

<<In the old days we just used to send the army in and conquer countries to make them speak English......these days we "liberate" countries to make them speak English.>>

If that was a joke, quite hilarious. But if it was serious, it's nonsense. But that nonsense gets more sensible everyday with the effects of the globalization. Thanks America. Shit...

And to be honest, French people who are over 40 never speak English. Those who are young learn some English because they have no choice, although they are normally very bad at it. But, as I've said before, finding a French woman speaking English with a Half French-English accent is, in my opinion, one of the sexiest things ever. That's when I start to love France, because of the ocassionaly so cute women.

vive la France!

>>Do you not have sarcasm in Japan? ;) Don't take things so seriously!<<

Thank you. And sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

>>Indeed, Eito, take things with a light touch.<<

Maybe, it's good for our helth. Thank you for your nice adviceS.

>>Boku wa hontou ni baka desu ne?<<

I don't think so. I admire your positive attitude, which is what I lack.

french people have pride and so do I.
Why should I speak in a different language when i got my own ..

>> If it's any consolation to the French who don't want to learn English, Look what happened to Latin. Once the dominant language, surviving the collapse of the Roman empire, and now it's quite dead. <<

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Latin is not dead at all. It simply evolved into the Romance languages. Old English is dead. Middle English is dead. And even Early Modern English is dead. This doesn't mean that English is a dead language. Modern English is about as much different from Old English as Latin is from Italian. Languages are constantly evolving. Look at how the dialects of Britain and North America have diverged. Given enough time they will probably be called seperate languages.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French
In one sense, Old French began when the Roman Empire conquered the territory it called Gaul during the conquests of Julius Caesar, which were substantially completed by 51 BC. The Romans introduced the Latin language into southern France starting in around 120 BC, when they occupied southern Gaul during the Punic Wars. Starting during the period when Plautus was writing, the common Latin of the Roman world, the phonological structure of classical Latin began to change, yielding the vulgar Latin that was the common spoken language of the western Roman world. This vulgar Latin began to vary strongly from the classical language in its phonology; spoken Latin, rather than the somewhat artificial literary language of classical Latin, was the ancestor of the Romance languages including Old French.

The same sort of story could be said of English. Here's English in the year 1120:
forþam ðe witodlice manega þohton þara þinga race geendebyrdan þe on us gefyllede synt.
(Gospel of Luke 1:1)
I'd say that English is dead. No-one speaks like that anymore.
Here's English in the 1300s:
Forsoþe for many men enforsiden to ordeyne þe tellyng of þingis, whiche ben fillyd in vs
(Gospel of Luke 1:1)
Also a dead language. So is English a dead language? If we defined English as Old English or Middle English, then yes it is. But English has evolved since then. Here's English from the 1600s (Modern English):
fillyd in vs Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
(Gospel of Luke 1:1)

Latin is no more dead than English. It's just not called Latin anymore. It's called Italian (and French/Spanish/Portuguese/Romanian, etc.)

>> In my experience, French people in big cities don't want to speak French with English speakers. If they get the slightest inclination that you're English, they'll talk to you in English. They seem to think that even though English people may be making the effort to speak some French, if they can't converse in it fluently, it's not worth it. <<

You are so right. The only remedy is to speak French with a Russian accent, and pretend you can't speak a word of English.