French Education minister Xavier Darcos has admitted the secret to the French success is speaking English
For generations, the French have fiercely guarded their language against the horreurs anglais.

But France’s education minister yesterday admitted for the first time that the secret to success is speaking better English.

Xavier Darcos claimed poor English is now a ‘handicap’ because all international business is conducted in the language, and said French schools would offer extra lessons during the holidays.

He also admitted that, because of globalisation, very few people outside France will being able to speak French in the future.

Mr Darcos said he wanted to make it easier for all French students to learn  English, saying that ‘while well-off families pay for study sessions abroad,  I’m offering them to everyone right here.’

The Education Ministry was putting increased funds into English language teaching in France to ensure that young people would not have to go abroad to learn the language, he said.

The extraordinary U-turn came just two years after President Jacques Chirac stormed out of a European Union summit in protest when a French business leader addressed delegates in English. 

Mr Chirac said he was ‘deeply shocked’ that a Frenchman would choose  to address the summit in English. 

The president’s attitude was supported enthusiastically  by the famous L’Académie Française  (French Academy), set up in 1635 to protect the purity of French,  the language of Molière.

The Academy has hit out at the increasing usage of  ‘Franglais’ words such as  ‘le weekend’ and ‘le parking’, as well as towards the unhealthy influence of Hollywood  films on Gallic culture. 

French used to be the lingua franca for most EU business, but with the  expansion of the EU to 27 member states,  the majority of which prefer English to French, the former has become by far the most dominant tongue.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy is a self-confessed Anglophile while former president Jacques Chirac is a firm believer in keeping things French.

It is a far cry from the founding principles of the French Republic, which has  historically seen alternatives to the one and only national language as tantamount to an attack on its very identity.  

Successive presidents have styled France as a small country which needs to  protect itself from international threats to unity. 

They have been particularly unhappy about the spread of English, seeing it as  synonymous with tough capitalist values, as opposed to the more socialist-leaning control of the economy traditionally favoured in modern France.

Two years ago a French subsidiary of an American company was, for example,  fined the equivalent of £400,000, with an ongoing fine of £16,000 a day for providing computer software to its employees in English only.

L’Académie Française has led the rearguard action against the increasing influence of what it calls the ‘Americanisation’ of French life, sometimes  bringing about censorship of movies from across the Atlantic, and ensuring huge subsidies for dubbing firms and the French film industry.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who succeeded Mr Chirac in 2006, does not speak much  English, but is a confirmed Anglophone who counts Englishmen like Tony Blair as  close personal friends.

Significantly his wife, pop star Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, chose to sing in English on her latest CD.

A spokesman for the L’Academie Francaise said there would be ‘no specific comment’ concerning ministerial pronouncements.
But he added: ‘There is clearly a widespread concern that any comment which undermines the use of the French language.’

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