Economist, Mar 31, 2018 (II)

choi

(2) Johnson | Build It and They Will Come; Motivation must come before means in getting people to learn your language.
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... ive-right-and-wrong

Note:
(a) "REMARKABLY, a French president had never addressed the Académie Française before. The French have a soft spot for authority, and the mighty presidency (atypical for Europe) and the academy (founded to guarantee the purity of the French language) are both symbols of that. So when Emmanuel Macron told the academicians [see (b)]—modestly known as les immortels—of his ambitions to revitalise French around the world, it was a very French affair indeed."

French-English dictionary:
* immortel (adjective masculine and noun masculine): "immortal"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immortel
* fraternité (noun feminine; from Latin noun feminine frāternitās brotherhood, from noun masculine frāter brother): "brotherhood, fraternity"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fraternité
* autorité (noun feminine; from Latin noun feminine auctoritās authority, from noun masculine auctor author): "authority"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/autorité
(b) "In some ways Mr Macron constitutes a break with Gallic tradition. He speaks English not only well but gladly, in contrast to his predecessors, François Hollande (whose ropy English was the butt of jokes) and Jacques Chirac (who often pointedly refused to talk in English, though he could). But in the best French tradition, Mr Macron spoke with passion about French and confidence in its future."

English dictionary:
* There are two English nouns for people: College professors are academics. People working in Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) 中国科学院 are academicians.
* ropy (adj): "British informal  of poor quality  <a portrait by a pretty ropey artist>"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ropy
(c) "Or consider Chinese, a language of booming interest to foreign learners. It is in a way the opposite of English: the vast majority of its speakers live in just one country. But what a country. China’s economy will soon be the world's largest, and its people still do not speak very good English. Learning Chinese is an obvious way to exploit an unrivalled [American English unrivaled: Oxforddictionaries.com] economic opportunity."

(d) "How, then, to revive the optimism for the language itself?  Much of the work will be done outside France, and by growth in Africa in particular. * * * keep Africans speaking French—not switching to English, as Rwanda did—France would be wise to continue this approach of fraternité rather than autorité with its African friends, * * * Reforms that get the French economy growing as Germany's has done would do more than all the shiny new French-teaching schools in the world."
(i) Rwanda (independence from Belgium in 1962; Capital and largest city Kigali)  Wikipedia
(ii) Chris McGreal, Why Rwanda Said Adieu to French. Guardian, Jan 16, 2009.
https://www.theguardian.com/educ ... da-english-genocide

Quote:

(A) "France has long claimed Rwanda as part of its francophone fold even though there is only one language common to all citizens of the tiny central African nation — the indigenous Kinyarwanda — and only a minority of the population speak passable French.  

"But now Paris will not even be able to make that claim after the Rwandan government announced an ambitious plan to switch the entire education system to English and effectively purge the country of French as it is forced out of the workings of government.

(B) "Kigali has also drawn closer to the US and Britain in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide [Wikipedia says that neither US nor UK acted DURING the genocide]. The UK is now the single largest donor to Rwanda, providing nearly half of its foreign aid, while Kigali has applied to join the Commonwealth though the country was never a British colony.

(C) "Rwanda for its part has accused more than 30 French politicians, officials and military officers of supporting the genocidal regime

(D) "English was made an official language in Rwanda, alongside French and Kinyarwanda, after the RPF [ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front] took power in 1994, because many of the RPF's leaders are Tutsis who grew up in exile in English-speaking Uganda and Tanzania.