The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel - The Tory leadership elections

Yeah, it's just the "well we're all just mates having a laugh here" vibe of it. Endemic to parliament I know.

Jesus fuck have we really got another two weeks of this?

I don't think Johnson's French is very good in that youtube given that he spent some of his childhood and several years of his adult life in Brussels. It's just the bare minimum enabling you to get by, ie typical Boris

Again wondering out loud if any of BJ’s Eton fees were paid as part of an expat employee package that went with Daddy’s EC job, because wouldn’t that be *delicious*?

but Johnson is more immune to shame than most Tories, even. i think he'd be comfortable benefiting from something he intends to deny to other people.

I don't think Johnson's French is very good in that youtube given that he spent some of his childhood and several years of his adult life in Brussels.

Tbf it's a lot easier to live in Brussels (a bilingual, even trilingual city) with a bare-bones grasp of French than it is in Paris. By the same token, there are born and bred anglophone Montrealers whose French is poorer than Boris's, alas.

Regardless, I’d love to see him answer a question about it on telly. The waffling would befit Belgium.

lol

xpost you're no doubt right about Brussels although all the British people I know there speak French a damn sight better than Johnson!

Will never forget taking a train from Brussels to Brugge and at a certain point they just abruptly stopped doing announcements on the train in French.

there are born and bred anglophone Montrealers whose French is poorer than Boris's

A random example of this: Steven Pinker, who spent the first 20+ years of his life in Montreal, gave a conference at the École normale supérieure in Paris and wasn't even arsed to take QUESTIONS in French. The amount of anglophones who don't bother learning foreign languages even in contexts where you'd expect it is absurdly high, and it's not even entirely their fault. This is simply how linguae francae work: language is power, etc.

all the British people I know there speak French a damn sight better than Johnson

I assume they want to be there, though, whereas Brussels appears to have been Johnson's In Bruges.

tbf pinker is a massive twat in other areas of his life also

Will never forget taking a train from Brussels to Brugge and at a certain point they just abruptly stopped doing announcements on the train in French

yeah when we were in Bruges the other week I had to explain to my son why his attempts at French weren't necessarily appreciated

tbf pinker is a massive twat in other areas of his life also

Can't argue with that.

Mind you the francophone bruxellois don't bother to learn Flemish, although they're literally surrounded by Flanders

Yeah, there's a clear hierarchy. Regional languages in France have also been systematically quashed. My wife's grandfather, who was German-Alsatian, decided not to teach his children either German or Alsatian after WW2, although he himself continued speaking them as needed (in Strasbourg).

my father, a South American immigrant to the USA, didn’t teach us Spanish because he thought it would slow our assimilation. We learned it anyway.

I don’t know anything about pinker (some popular scientist? not gonna bother) but people at the ENS pride themselves on doing everything public in English. Of course internal ENS power (all ENS people *really* care about) is carried out in French. Pinker just showed himself uninterested in that, which is fine, for the locals as well.

Most francophones wouldn't go out of their way to give a talk in English at the ENS for the sake of showboating. And no bilingual Montrealer would ever consider such a thing, in such a context. I'm not taking issue with the ENS's openness to English here, I'm just saying that given the environment in which Pinker grew up, it's fair to expect some amount of linguistic sensitivity. Same goes for Naomi Klein, who comes from a similar background, and whose politics are far removed from Pinker's.

No, I meant he probably asked what language to speak and was told English (maybe with relief). Unless the entire audience is francophone an academic talk in Paris will be given in English. At least that is the norm ime

he probably asked what language to speak

What I'm saying is this certainly didn't happen.

It’s probably the least of his problems today...

but what about Steven Pinker pic.twitter.com/YNwqNZ0SRM

— Matt Hammington (@MattHammington) July 7, 2019