Even the French know the game is up, says Rod Liddle. What’s the point in us teaching their language when, in the end, it will be as obsolete as Cornish
It’s a strange thing. Once they have been relieved of office, they start talking a modicum of sense. First we have Ed Balls suggesting that all foreigners should go home because the River Tiber is beginning to foam with much blood, just like Enoch — a Labour supporter himself for a while, remember — once advised.
And now we have the former minister Chris Bryant telling the French that their language is absolutely pointless and that nobody should bother learning it, not even the French. Teach the kids Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic instead, he said. The Tories, suddenly ennobled by power, insisted that this was ‘insulting to the French’. Yes, sure — and your point is?
It is about time someone got to grips with our French obsession, our determination to foist this absurd agglomeration of bastardised Latin verbiage coupled with histrionic tics and shrugs upon the nation’s schoolchildren.
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