Spanish is the language of bullfighting because only people with animal instinct do the bullfihting. Hispanics = Irrational, Animal instinct, salvaje.
Is French on the decline
All people have animal instincts. I will not say I like bullfighting. I simply don't but not because I consider bulls to have any rights. Bullfightings are simply boring to me. That humans are completely rationals was invented by the French revolution but it's not true. I guess that if Hispanics didn't kill bulls they would have to kill scum like you to statisfy the animal instinct WE ALL have inside.
All people have animal instincts. I will not say I like petanque. I simply don't but not because I consider bulls to have any rights. Petanques are simply boring to me. That humans are completely rationals was invented by the Spanish Civil War but it's not true. I guess that if Francophone didn't throw iron balls they would have used it to hit your flat head like yours to statisfy the animal instinct WE ALL have inside.
LOL, your impersonation makes me feel flattered. Why do you talk about petanque? Petanque is not a French game but Provenzal. Bullfightings and petanque are typical southern French and Hispanic passtimes.
In fact the original name of petanque is "petanca" in Occitan, the same as Spanish "petanca".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9tanque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9tanque
LOL, you're posting non-sense messages makes me feel excited. Why do you talk about bullfighting? Bullfighting is not a Spanish game but Catalonian. Petanque and bullfighting are typical southern French and Spanish past times.
<< Petanca and bullfighting are typical southern French and Spanish past times. >>
Yes, I agree.
Yes, I agree.
It is rather unuseful to count the number of Francophone, Anglophone or Hispanophone speakers. The number is not the only criterion for the importance of a language or a linguistic community which highly depends on the real purchase power of people.
The Spanish speaking world is more than four centuries old, but only now as a result of globalization it begins to increase its relevance, not only in Latin America but also in the US itself. A linguistic community is significant when the production of knowledge, the creativity in the arts and in literature is so important that these innovative elements become a reference in the world culture system. Chinese certainly is spoken by the biggest community, but it is hardly to believe that this very community is able to impose its value in due proportion of the important number of its speakers.
French philosophy and literature have a large impact of the global cultural system. As a result French has still an undeniable prestige although nationalist and conservative US citizens don't like France for her independent policy rejecting the war in Iraq. As a matter of fact I don't like US narcissism and the arrogance of US citizens, but I wouldn't be so biased to ignore the importance of US pop culture and film industry.
French is spoken by more 200 million of people which certainly doesn't make this language the most important one. But nevertheless it belongs to the first ten world languages likely to remain important in 2050 according to investigations of language researchers.
The Spanish speaking world is more than four centuries old, but only now as a result of globalization it begins to increase its relevance, not only in Latin America but also in the US itself. A linguistic community is significant when the production of knowledge, the creativity in the arts and in literature is so important that these innovative elements become a reference in the world culture system. Chinese certainly is spoken by the biggest community, but it is hardly to believe that this very community is able to impose its value in due proportion of the important number of its speakers.
French philosophy and literature have a large impact of the global cultural system. As a result French has still an undeniable prestige although nationalist and conservative US citizens don't like France for her independent policy rejecting the war in Iraq. As a matter of fact I don't like US narcissism and the arrogance of US citizens, but I wouldn't be so biased to ignore the importance of US pop culture and film industry.
French is spoken by more 200 million of people which certainly doesn't make this language the most important one. But nevertheless it belongs to the first ten world languages likely to remain important in 2050 according to investigations of language researchers.
Spanish :number of speakers 322-400 million (Total 400-500 million)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language
French: total number of speakers 170 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language
French: total number of speakers 170 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
We need to talk about the original question. I read several interesting posts and I can answer.
Yes, French is in dramatic fall. There are 10 reasons to consider French NOT important.
1. It is only spoken by 75 million as mother tongue. So, French has the same speakers that Tamil or Cantonese, regional languages of India or China. It is NOT in the top ten languages as mother tongue.
2. It is spoken by 175 million, total speakers. These data are also bad. It is NOT in the top ten languages and it will never be in these group. Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Indonesian, Portuguese and Urdu are more spoken than French.
3. It is dominant language NOWHERE. Other languages like Chinese in Asia, Arabic in Africa, English in North America, Spanish in Latin America or Russian in Eastern Europe are really important in a big area as mother tongue. French is only dominant in France. It is fourth in Europe (after English, Russian and German), fourth in Africa (after Arabic, English and Swahili) and fourth in the Americas (after Spanish, English and Portuguese).
4. The globalization affects to French very bad. It is probably one of the languages that suffer more this situation. Why to study the "second" World language if I can study English? Several old French colonies have added English as official language, like Madagascar, Rwanda, Burundi, etc. Cameroon, Canada, Seychelles, Vanuatu, etc had English yet.
For example, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia belong to ASEAN. This organization has English as official language. At this moment, nobody study French in these countries. All people study English.
5. The strengh of Arabic. Arabic is official in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon and Mauritania. It is very studied in Tchad, Niger, Comores, Mali, Djibouti, etc. In all these countries French will dissapear.
6. Business. English is the business language. In Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, English is the business one. Even in France it is the language to use with foreign companies.
7. Diplomatic field. English is the diplomatic language too, not French.
8. The strengh of Chinese and Spanish. These languages are the fastest growing languages nowadays. Spanish is the most spoken Western language and Chinese the most spoken Eastern language. They don't attack directly to French, but they are more studied in the educational system of several countries instead of French.
9. Economics. The francophone countries are the poorest on Earth: Mali, Haiti, Congo, Tchad, Niger, etc
10. Finally, we can see that French is changing in Africa and Caribbean. It will be several Creoles, like in Haiti. Hatian Creole, for example, is really a different language, not understood by French people.
Yes, French is in dramatic fall. There are 10 reasons to consider French NOT important.
1. It is only spoken by 75 million as mother tongue. So, French has the same speakers that Tamil or Cantonese, regional languages of India or China. It is NOT in the top ten languages as mother tongue.
2. It is spoken by 175 million, total speakers. These data are also bad. It is NOT in the top ten languages and it will never be in these group. Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Indonesian, Portuguese and Urdu are more spoken than French.
3. It is dominant language NOWHERE. Other languages like Chinese in Asia, Arabic in Africa, English in North America, Spanish in Latin America or Russian in Eastern Europe are really important in a big area as mother tongue. French is only dominant in France. It is fourth in Europe (after English, Russian and German), fourth in Africa (after Arabic, English and Swahili) and fourth in the Americas (after Spanish, English and Portuguese).
4. The globalization affects to French very bad. It is probably one of the languages that suffer more this situation. Why to study the "second" World language if I can study English? Several old French colonies have added English as official language, like Madagascar, Rwanda, Burundi, etc. Cameroon, Canada, Seychelles, Vanuatu, etc had English yet.
For example, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia belong to ASEAN. This organization has English as official language. At this moment, nobody study French in these countries. All people study English.
5. The strengh of Arabic. Arabic is official in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon and Mauritania. It is very studied in Tchad, Niger, Comores, Mali, Djibouti, etc. In all these countries French will dissapear.
6. Business. English is the business language. In Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, English is the business one. Even in France it is the language to use with foreign companies.
7. Diplomatic field. English is the diplomatic language too, not French.
8. The strengh of Chinese and Spanish. These languages are the fastest growing languages nowadays. Spanish is the most spoken Western language and Chinese the most spoken Eastern language. They don't attack directly to French, but they are more studied in the educational system of several countries instead of French.
9. Economics. The francophone countries are the poorest on Earth: Mali, Haiti, Congo, Tchad, Niger, etc
10. Finally, we can see that French is changing in Africa and Caribbean. It will be several Creoles, like in Haiti. Hatian Creole, for example, is really a different language, not understood by French people.
Once again so many wannabe arguments often heard from America first citizens. Unfortunately you didn't dwell so much on my arguments.
1) Again and again you count numbers of language speakers and specifically the mother tongue speakers by alluding that the category of quantities would summarize the importance of a speech community. If the number of persons really had such an importance underdeveloped people would rule the world. The overwhelming portion of mankind lives in the so called Third World but in fact an Urdu or a Hindi speaker has less power to assert his claims and to be heard than an English or Frencxh speaking individual in Europa or in America.
2) More than 55 million people learn French all over the world, a quantity that far transcends the number of learners of Hindi, Bengali, Indonesian, Portuguese or Urdu. In a consumer society even this number of the learners explains the importance of French still considered by Western or westernized people as a significant cultural heritage.
3) Naturally creole largely differs from classical French. But English in Africa or English creole exemplifies similar kind of differences, as it has not much to do with linguistic norms shared by people in Britain. Even British people realize that they are outnumbered in relation to their norms.
4) In the Arabic world, specially in the Maghreb region French is considered as an idiom of modernity. In Algeria even more people use French than under the colonial rule. Particularly the Tamazigh people tend to use French to oppose Arabic nationalism and Islamist mouvements. It certainly will not disappear but will remain as a complementary language to Arabic. And besides: What do you mean with Arabic? The Arabian dialects spoken in these region or classic Arabic only understood by a tiny elite?
5) In the European Union French and German are the languages spoken by more people than English: German by nearly 90 million people, French by 75 million people. With English French remains the official language mostly used in the EU institutions. In the UN English is very dominant. But if one language has a certain influence you propably will find more documents translated in French than in Chinese or Spanish.
So bury your hatchet against French chauvinism and accept reality.
1) Again and again you count numbers of language speakers and specifically the mother tongue speakers by alluding that the category of quantities would summarize the importance of a speech community. If the number of persons really had such an importance underdeveloped people would rule the world. The overwhelming portion of mankind lives in the so called Third World but in fact an Urdu or a Hindi speaker has less power to assert his claims and to be heard than an English or Frencxh speaking individual in Europa or in America.
2) More than 55 million people learn French all over the world, a quantity that far transcends the number of learners of Hindi, Bengali, Indonesian, Portuguese or Urdu. In a consumer society even this number of the learners explains the importance of French still considered by Western or westernized people as a significant cultural heritage.
3) Naturally creole largely differs from classical French. But English in Africa or English creole exemplifies similar kind of differences, as it has not much to do with linguistic norms shared by people in Britain. Even British people realize that they are outnumbered in relation to their norms.
4) In the Arabic world, specially in the Maghreb region French is considered as an idiom of modernity. In Algeria even more people use French than under the colonial rule. Particularly the Tamazigh people tend to use French to oppose Arabic nationalism and Islamist mouvements. It certainly will not disappear but will remain as a complementary language to Arabic. And besides: What do you mean with Arabic? The Arabian dialects spoken in these region or classic Arabic only understood by a tiny elite?
5) In the European Union French and German are the languages spoken by more people than English: German by nearly 90 million people, French by 75 million people. With English French remains the official language mostly used in the EU institutions. In the UN English is very dominant. But if one language has a certain influence you propably will find more documents translated in French than in Chinese or Spanish.
So bury your hatchet against French chauvinism and accept reality.
In the European Union French is spoken by 59 million people,not 75 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language .
English Wikipedia:
According to the European Union, 129 million (26% of the 497,198,740) people in 27 member states speak French, of which 59 million (12%) are native speakers and 69 million (14%) claim to speak it as a second language, which makes it the third most spoken second language in the
Union, after English and German.
German Wikipedia:
11 % of the EU population speaks French as a foreign language as French is learnt by Europeans after English and German. 12 % have French as their mother tongue.
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages/french.shtml
64,000,000 speakers
(Wikipedia, English)
But if you match the population of France (64.473,140 in 2008) likely to know French and the Francophone speakers of Belgium and Luxemburg (4.000,000) you supposedly get 68 million speakers. Another portion of speakers certainly may not have French as their mother tongue
According to the European Union, 129 million (26% of the 497,198,740) people in 27 member states speak French, of which 59 million (12%) are native speakers and 69 million (14%) claim to speak it as a second language, which makes it the third most spoken second language in the
Union, after English and German.
German Wikipedia:
11 % of the EU population speaks French as a foreign language as French is learnt by Europeans after English and German. 12 % have French as their mother tongue.
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages/french.shtml
64,000,000 speakers
(Wikipedia, English)
But if you match the population of France (64.473,140 in 2008) likely to know French and the Francophone speakers of Belgium and Luxemburg (4.000,000) you supposedly get 68 million speakers. Another portion of speakers certainly may not have French as their mother tongue
<< Manitoba (Canada) (-)
The province of Nova Scotia (Canada) (-)
Ontario (Canada) (-)
The province of British Columbia (Canada) (-)
The Province of Prince Edward Island (Canada) (-)
The province of Saskatchewan (Canada) (-) >>
Why I didn't expect that these predominantly English speaking provinces participate in Assemblée Parlementaire de la Francophonie where the language is of course French.
Thanks to Canada's bilingual policy and French Immersion Program attended by non-francophones, French is becoming more and more widespread in Canada.
The province of Nova Scotia (Canada) (-)
Ontario (Canada) (-)
The province of British Columbia (Canada) (-)
The Province of Prince Edward Island (Canada) (-)
The province of Saskatchewan (Canada) (-) >>
Why I didn't expect that these predominantly English speaking provinces participate in Assemblée Parlementaire de la Francophonie where the language is of course French.
Thanks to Canada's bilingual policy and French Immersion Program attended by non-francophones, French is becoming more and more widespread in Canada.