Michael Shields blog XML

Who’s the cultural imperialist now?

A letter to The Economist:

SIR – According to you, a French official in the European Commission says that “the English language is being killed by all these foreigners speaking it so badly” (Charlemagne, March 1st). French has already done its worst to the English language. Two centuries of Norman rule in England after 1066 significantly changed the Germanic grammar and dumped a large amount of French vocabulary into the language. The curious union of French and German that is modern English seems the best reason for making it the lingua franca of the EU.

Matt Simon
Boston

posted at: 2003-03-20 02:11 UTC | permanent link to this entry | comment