LETTER: Pardon my French, but …

To the editor:

How do you say “lies and misrepresentation” in French? I ask this because in the “A Plus” section of last Monday’s The Utah Statesman, that’s what the French department provided. “Have you ever wanted to travel to … Africa … (or) Madagascar?” Why include Madagascar in a list of continents and world regions with French speakers when Africa is already listed? Did the writer try to “pad” the list?

However, my main contention is with the line “French is the most widely spoken language in the world next to English.” Most widely spoken? Using what criteria? Where is the source for this? Using the criteria of number of native speakers, French is nowhere near the most widely spoken language. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a non-profit organization with formal consultative status with the United Nations, there are approximately 78 million native French speakers. That puts French tied in eleventh place, along with Korean. The top 10 are, in order: Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, English, Spanish, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and German. “Ethnologue: Languages of the World,” ranks French 13th, with Wu and Punjabi having more native speakers. Even with an estimated 250 million secondary speakers of French added on, it still falls behind Mandarin, Arabic, English, Spanish, Bengali and Hindi.

Finally, the French department says that “a person who can speak French and English can go just about anywhere in the world … and not have … difficulties with language.” I guess “just about anywhere” doesn’t include Central and South America or the Far East. As someone who has been to Japan and Taiwan, I can tell you that this statement is a large misrepresentation.

French is still an important and useful business language, but it does no one any good to lie in order to make it sound more important. With the current situation in the world community, it is important to realize that other languages just might be more useful than French.

Adam Vanderwerf