What do you think about all these silly Spanish and French threads? I cannot bear them anymore. I'm probably going to stop posting in here. There were some moderators untill a few months ago, even though their job was not that good, they were able to stop the most annoying trolls. Now every maroon can post without the minimum control. I used to avoid those topics but they have increased a lot lately. I can speak both Spanish and French but as matter of fact I'm not interested at all in which language is more spoken or studied. I suppose that all those native Spanish and French people, who keep posting in this forum, are very young or particularly frustrated in their daily life, I cannot imagine any other reason for their silly behaviour...
I'm fed up with all these Spanish and French threads
Funny, I just posted a similar thead. Although mine was one-sided. Overall I agree with you though. Mods need to return and user accounts should be manditory to help avoid the current craziness.
I absolutely agree. I was shocked to see so much hate about just two languages, both valid and spread.
The funny thing is that the threads don't at all reflect reality. Spanish and French speakers don't have any more problems with each other than French/German, English/Dutch, Greek/Italian and so on, their relationship is just normal... It's obviously just a couple of individuals with personal grudges (probably not even really French/Spanish natives!).
But it's always the French fanatics that start them, the Spanish speakers only defend themselves, if you don't belive me count the number of anti-Spanish thread agains the number of anti-French threads, and you'll see the difference.
BTW, I'm sure some French user is gonna copy this message and change the word "french" for "spanish" like the retard he is.
BTW, I'm sure some French user is gonna copy this message and change the word "french" for "spanish" like the retard he is.
The Hispanic fanatics are the one who started the arguments in this forum. Everytime someone would post about French facts, here comes that fanatic posting nasty and non-sense messages just because he accept the fact that Frenc is more useful.
Example about the French speaking celebrities. Hispanic were so furious because they couldn't find a link that contains list of Spanish speaking celebrities.
Example about the French speaking celebrities. Hispanic were so furious because they couldn't find a link that contains list of Spanish speaking celebrities.
I agree with olasz .
I have friends from France and Spain and they say these guys are sub-normal. Probably they are not French netither Spanish.
Chao, Only one thing, usually French Fanatics start. (Just now i was checking the differents pots)
I don't know whether it exists moderators in this forum. I know some guys who lived this forum months ago because of this.
I think both languages are beautiful.
I have friends from France and Spain and they say these guys are sub-normal. Probably they are not French netither Spanish.
Chao, Only one thing, usually French Fanatics start. (Just now i was checking the differents pots)
I don't know whether it exists moderators in this forum. I know some guys who lived this forum months ago because of this.
I think both languages are beautiful.
<< agree with olasz .
I have friends from France and Spain and they say these guys are sub-normal. Probably they are not French netither Spanish.
Chao, Only one thing, usually French Fanatics start. (Just now i was checking the differents pots)
I don't know whether it exists moderators in this forum. I know some guys who lived this forum months ago because of this.
I think both languages are beautiful. >>
Shut up, you're one of those hispanics pretending to be mediator. Your message shows that you're biased. You know very well that the Hispanic fanatics attack not just the French but also English, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese languages.
So, you and those hispanic fanatics in this forum are the only ones who are abnormal not sub-normal as you said.
I have friends from France and Spain and they say these guys are sub-normal. Probably they are not French netither Spanish.
Chao, Only one thing, usually French Fanatics start. (Just now i was checking the differents pots)
I don't know whether it exists moderators in this forum. I know some guys who lived this forum months ago because of this.
I think both languages are beautiful. >>
Shut up, you're one of those hispanics pretending to be mediator. Your message shows that you're biased. You know very well that the Hispanic fanatics attack not just the French but also English, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese languages.
So, you and those hispanic fanatics in this forum are the only ones who are abnormal not sub-normal as you said.
No. I am not Hispanic.
Don't worry Kpam. My comments about this subject are over.
Don't worry Kpam. My comments about this subject are over.
Mourning the decline of French
In today's Guardian, Marcel Berlins approves of Jacques Chirac's walk-out from the opening session of the EU spring summit last week, prompted by a speech in English by the French leader of the EU employers' organisation. Ernest-Antoine Sellière did so because English is "the language of business". Berlins notes that he could have added "of international trade, the internet, pop music, the tourist industry and Hollywood":
French cannot compete. All it has in its favour is that it is the most beautiful language in the world, the most elegant, expressive and mellifluous. It's also the pre-eminent language of culture. But that's irrelevant if all you want is to do a deal.
What Chirac was concerned about, apparently, was that as French becomes less important on the international stage, it infiltrates and degrades French as well, which has been changing very rapidly of late, changes increasingly spearheaded by the younger generation, an example being "the language of the banlieue (slum/suburb), much in evidence last November during the riots of the disadvantaged". Of course, the language of the French slums is likely to be different from middle-class French, because they are populated by large numbers of Arabs and Africans. And as for the preponderance of English popular culture, dreck is dreck in anyone's language, but if the French have not produced a culture they consider worth keeping in the last forty years or so, you can hardly blame their youth for looking elsewhere.
Actually the real reasons French is on the decline is simply that it failed to colonise enough of the right places in the 18th and 19th centuries, and because Europe is enlarging. The British got underpopulated areas like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and (for a while) America. It also colonised most of India and large parts of Africa. Today, English is the lingua franca in many of these places - still used officially in India and Pakistan (its replacement with Hindi being resisted by, among others, the Tamils). France first tried to grab its neighbours' countries, and got trounced. It later got north Africa (which it misruled dreadfully), the desert and semi-desert of the west African interior, Haiti, Syria, Lebanon, Québec, and a few pockets of India - mostly places where a major international language was already spoken or widely understood: Arabic.
French is still an official language in many of these places, the internationally known names of several cities in Algeria, for example, being French rather than Arabic or any other local language. Read any English guidebook of Morocco, and you will find streets being named in French, rather than Arabic or in English translations.
As for the decline of French in Europe, this was bound to happen as French ceased to be the biggest single language spoken in the EU. In the Cold War days France was the biggest country in the EU by far, and French is also spoken in Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of Italy. Italian has similar Latin roots to French, while English and German have substantial amounts of French or otherwise Latin-based vocabulary, and French is generally the first foreign language British children learn. This is not the case any longer, with the arrival of large populations of Slavs whose language has nowhere near this level of French influence, and with French being only one of four major Latin languages. Probably the EU's biggest single language is German, with eastern Germany and Austria now in the union (with speakers in France, Poland, Belgium and Italy), but because of the problems you might have in getting the Poles and Czechs to accept German as the language of European business, it's not really a viable proposition.
I find it rather amusing that Berlins thinks French culture is particularly threatened, with fewer than 100 million speaking the language worldwide - compare this with fewer than half that number speaking Polish and with other European languages with fewer than 10 million - worldwide, not just at home. What do the Lithuanians do when speaking at these summits - do they never speak any language except Lithuanian? The only reason Chirac walked out in a huff is because in bygone days, he would have been able to go to other EU countries and expect to hear French. And I'm not sure the Italians would agree that French is "the most beautiful language in the world, the most elegant, expressive and mellifluous".
In today's Guardian, Marcel Berlins approves of Jacques Chirac's walk-out from the opening session of the EU spring summit last week, prompted by a speech in English by the French leader of the EU employers' organisation. Ernest-Antoine Sellière did so because English is "the language of business". Berlins notes that he could have added "of international trade, the internet, pop music, the tourist industry and Hollywood":
French cannot compete. All it has in its favour is that it is the most beautiful language in the world, the most elegant, expressive and mellifluous. It's also the pre-eminent language of culture. But that's irrelevant if all you want is to do a deal.
What Chirac was concerned about, apparently, was that as French becomes less important on the international stage, it infiltrates and degrades French as well, which has been changing very rapidly of late, changes increasingly spearheaded by the younger generation, an example being "the language of the banlieue (slum/suburb), much in evidence last November during the riots of the disadvantaged". Of course, the language of the French slums is likely to be different from middle-class French, because they are populated by large numbers of Arabs and Africans. And as for the preponderance of English popular culture, dreck is dreck in anyone's language, but if the French have not produced a culture they consider worth keeping in the last forty years or so, you can hardly blame their youth for looking elsewhere.
Actually the real reasons French is on the decline is simply that it failed to colonise enough of the right places in the 18th and 19th centuries, and because Europe is enlarging. The British got underpopulated areas like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and (for a while) America. It also colonised most of India and large parts of Africa. Today, English is the lingua franca in many of these places - still used officially in India and Pakistan (its replacement with Hindi being resisted by, among others, the Tamils). France first tried to grab its neighbours' countries, and got trounced. It later got north Africa (which it misruled dreadfully), the desert and semi-desert of the west African interior, Haiti, Syria, Lebanon, Québec, and a few pockets of India - mostly places where a major international language was already spoken or widely understood: Arabic.
French is still an official language in many of these places, the internationally known names of several cities in Algeria, for example, being French rather than Arabic or any other local language. Read any English guidebook of Morocco, and you will find streets being named in French, rather than Arabic or in English translations.
As for the decline of French in Europe, this was bound to happen as French ceased to be the biggest single language spoken in the EU. In the Cold War days France was the biggest country in the EU by far, and French is also spoken in Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of Italy. Italian has similar Latin roots to French, while English and German have substantial amounts of French or otherwise Latin-based vocabulary, and French is generally the first foreign language British children learn. This is not the case any longer, with the arrival of large populations of Slavs whose language has nowhere near this level of French influence, and with French being only one of four major Latin languages. Probably the EU's biggest single language is German, with eastern Germany and Austria now in the union (with speakers in France, Poland, Belgium and Italy), but because of the problems you might have in getting the Poles and Czechs to accept German as the language of European business, it's not really a viable proposition.
I find it rather amusing that Berlins thinks French culture is particularly threatened, with fewer than 100 million speaking the language worldwide - compare this with fewer than half that number speaking Polish and with other European languages with fewer than 10 million - worldwide, not just at home. What do the Lithuanians do when speaking at these summits - do they never speak any language except Lithuanian? The only reason Chirac walked out in a huff is because in bygone days, he would have been able to go to other EU countries and expect to hear French. And I'm not sure the Italians would agree that French is "the most beautiful language in the world, the most elegant, expressive and mellifluous".