&t On foreign languages in the familiar - Disillusioned Lefty

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On foreign languages in the familiar

Published Tuesday, April 24, 2007 by Kevin Breathnach | E-mail this post

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The French are voting. The Times, therefore, are using some French. It's an exercise I've come to hate. Whenever anything happens in French politics or society, out comes the secondary school French vocabulary of the vaguely highbrow staff of vaguely highbrow publications. Orwell hated it because it was so unnecessarily opaque. On language, Orwell and I have before differed, and while this time, our conclusions are similar, our reasoning isn't. It's the inconsistency I hate. French is speckled around Anglophonic articles about French politics, but I've yet to read an article, for instance, about Ukraine's unstable, but hopeful, democracy in which an author employed any Ukrainian beyond that which was absolutely necessary.

Frankly, I'm outraged.

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