Thursday June 1, 2006
Chirac's pride
- Posted by Rob (#1) on June 1, 2006 00:43 CEST
Read on Wikipedia's Euro-English article:
English is frequently used by Europeans to communicate even when neither of them know English as the first language. (For example, a French person who doesn't know German and a German who doesn't know French, but both of whom know English, would use English to communicate with one another, even though it is not the native language of either - such as at the first meeting of Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel at the Elysée palace after Merkel's confirmation as chancellor).
I wish there was a quotation for that, but nonetheless I find it rather amusing to see Chirac as the example of English being pretty much the lingua franca of Europe.
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- Tags: Europe, Angela Merkel, Jacques Chirac, Anglosphere, English
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