OF 26 of France's largest companies, 16 gave English as their official working language—including Renault, Danone, and Aventis, according to a recent survey. Of these, nine have dropped French altogether. Seven put English and French on an equal footing.
To some French people, the trend is a slap in the face. After all, this is a country known for its linguistic pride, and one whose government outlaws advertising in English, and mandates a 40 per cent quota of French songs on the radio.
But even the most loyal Gaullists now recognize the need to equip citizens with the tools to compete in a globalized economy.
According to the study by the French branch of Educational Testing Services, a private, nonprofit educational-testing organization, English is increasingly the "lingua franca" of French business.
The report says not being able to speak English today is the equivalent of not knowing how to read or write 50 years ago.
"If you want to do business outside France, you have to speak English," says Eric DeLisy, whose company distributes industrial and chemical products across Europe. DeLisy says his 16 employees don't necessarily have to speak it well, but they must be able to read and write at a basic level in order to correspond with clients.
At business schools, the demand for English-speaking managers is having a profound effect.
"Ten years ago having an all-French programme and teaching in French was a matter of principle, an offensive for promoting the French language," says Jean-Marc de Leersnyder, a professor at Hautes études de Commerce (HEC). "But that's a thing of the past. Even our French students now expect classes in English."
And because HEC competes with schools in Britain and the US to lure international students, many of its programmes are now taught entirely in English.
The tilt toward English is not manifested just in the business arena. A recent government proposal to overhaul the national education system recommended that mandatory English classes begin as early as first grade, with a second foreign language to follow later.
Of course, not all French institutions are embracing the trend. Last year, labour unions at General Electric Medical Systems in France challenged in court the company's English-only manuals. They won under a French law that mandates all foreign terms used in the workplace be translated into French.
Académie Fran?aise, founded in 1635 to preserve the purity of the French language, publishes a dictionary of the French language and works with "terminology commissions" in each government ministry to come up with a French equivalent for every new Anglo-Saxon term.
Académie spokesman Laurent Personne says the institution's work today is not so much about fighting English as guarding against the "impoverishment" of the French language.
"In a globalized world we have to work to maintain the richness of different languages and cultures," he says.
"We're not here to rename golf terms," he says. Personne points to recent successes, such as the words "ordinateur" and "courriel", which replaced the English words for "computer" and "e-mail" and are now a part of mainstream French vocabulary. "The Germans are still saying 'kohmputer'," he notes.
