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French press review 21 May 2013

The front page of Libération this morning is in English, entirely, and it's good English, which is surprising. Usually when French publications attempt more than two consecutive words in the language of Milton, Shakespeare and Alf Garnet, the results would embarrass even old Alf.

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The main headline reads "Let's Do It," and the "it" in question is a proposal to teach some courses in French universities in - shock! horror! - English.

Those who support the initiative say it will encourage foreign students to register in French universities. Those who are against say it will relegate French permanently to the second division in the global language table and will threaten the national identity, no less.

Cultural icon Bernard Pivot says the move in favour of English, and exclusively English, will mean that technological and scientific advances will continue to be given English names and French will be mutilated and impoverished.

"It will become an ordinary language," laments Pivot, "or worse, a dead language."

The mathematician Cédric Villani is more realistic. He says that the fact is that the world's scientific community communicates in English and a French law ain't gonna turn that tide.

Another anti-change campaigner cites Marcel Proust as the key argument in favour of continuing to use French as the dominant teaching language in French universities. It's hard to see a seven-volume fictionalised mémoire longer than the Bible doing the trick, brilliant though Marcel's wee book is.

The debate, in French, opens in the Assemblée Nationale, soon to be known as the French House of Paliament, tomorrow.

A far more serious dispute dominates the front page of Le Figaro. The headline announces "Trade war declared between Europe and China". Brussels suspects that the Chinese are cheating to produce some key products like solar panels and telephones cheaper than could possibly done in Europe.

Apart from dirt-cheap labour, Chinese industrialists are allegedly benefitting from government subsidies to make their strategic products unbeatable for price on the global market. Europe is preparing a series of import tariffs in an effort to flatten the playing field but the Germans are worried that this might provoke a Chinese backlash and dent, for example, the sales of Mercedes and BMWs and Bayern Munich football shirts in the People's Republic.

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