Today’s New York Times published an
op-ed notable in two
respects: One, it is written
by the head of a conservative/populist group normally marginalized by the goodthink media (here, the
Front National; similarly AfD,
UKIP, FPÖ, Swedish Democrats, etc.), Marine Le Pen. Two -- remarkably -- it is offered (along with a
translation) in the original French:
[Onomastic/orthoëpic note: The surname Le Pen is not pronounced by dropping the -n
and nasalizing the preceding vowel.
The vowel is oral, the nasal fully sounded: rhyming with reine,
saine, pleine, and other nice words.]
And within her essay, she uses a favorite phrase
that we elucidated earlier -- “fuite en avant”. Here we find it in its natural habitat:
Une chose est certaine : le départ
de la Grande Bretagne ne rendra pas l’Union européenne plus démocratique. La
structure hiérarchique des institutions supranationales va souhaiter se
renforcer car comme toutes les idéologies mourantes, l’Union européenne ne
connaît que la fuite en avant.
(So far that prediction has proved true, with the
incredibly bullying responses by Juncker and by Ayrault.)
The Times translated that thus:
Like
all dying ideologies, the union knows only how to forge blindly ahead.
For the full treatment of “fuite en avant”, click
here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/06/phrase-of-day-fuite-en-avant.html
~
[Sprachpolitische Bemerkung] The Times’ language stunt was a
novelty and a courtesy; it was not an illustration of the absurd meme
that has suddenly sprung up (like weeds at the spot where a bear has pooped) in
the columns of uncritical journalists, to the effect that “the English language
may be endangered” owing to the proposed Brexit! Umm… Neither the USA, nor Canada, nor Australia, nor
New Zealand, nor for that matter India or the other countries that use English
as an official language, nor those many countries (e.g. Hungary, Poland, …)
whose only hope of conversing with Joe Random Citizen (from Eritrea or Japan or
wherever), are members of the EU, and English is flourishing. It does so purely democratically,
by practical free choice.
The fact that certain Eurocrats and their mouthpieces are muttering
about disenfranchising the language, shows simply the authoritarian pettiness
that led to widespread disgust with Brussels in the first place.
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