https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1550435091871077

@Freedom5. Not contesting your comments. Mine was just a reference to the source in full.

He meant “she.”

Though I am not a fan of Renzi as I think that he is very similar to our JoJo, I have to break a lance for him. His English is for sure not that good, but his French is quite impeccable:

http://www.europe1.fr/mediacenter/emissions/l-interview/videos/matteo-renzi-italie-et-la-france-doivent-engager-des-reformes-structurelles-matin-2223203

Indeed. I had heard the PM of Moldova interviewed on BBC. His English is nearly impeccable, betrayed by a slight Eastern European accent.

”It is a class thing, the elite do not want the working class getting too clever as they may threaten the status quo.”

I did not realize that only the elite read for their bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in the UK. Are you sure you did not mistake the Downton Abbey Series for a current documentary?

@Marlowe

In mine too.

It is often a case of who permits himself to make the first mistake: if this can diplomatically be a mistake made in French by the anglophone, then communication opens up quite easily.

Your first sentence makes sense, join the dots. Your second doesn’t.

Unfortunately, there is no universal system which introduces pupils to a foreign language in primary school but, up till 2002, a foreign language was compulsory in secondary schools. The Labour Party did away with that. That’s when language learning took a really big hit in Britain.

It is only under the current government that small steps are being taken to re-introduce foreign languages into the curriculum. The English Baccalaureate, a school performance indicator, now has to include a language other than English as one of its five core subjects.

Languages offer benefits beyond communication. People who can speak two or more languages fluently tend to be brighter and do better at school than monoglots.

Labour might be re-elected this year so who knows what will happen to the coalition’s plans.

Doris Lessing was from Zimbabwe, so please, do choose your sarcasm carefully.

And in my experience, many French citizens can speak English relatively well, they just feel anxious about using it, since like French, English is very specific. One verb means just one thing with all the implicated baggage that that context provides and so on.