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<font face="Times New Roman, Times">The discussion on languages has been
interesting: right now the statistics in America are awful: 80-85% of
students under 18 learn NO foreign languages. For the percentage in
a foreign language class, most are in Spanish and stay for one year, 2 at
the most. The students who take a language for 4 years number
less than one percent of the student population. And America has
many universities where languages are not required for any Masters (M.A.)
or Doctoral degree (Ph.D.)<br>
Concerning the French and foreign languages: I teach German and Ancient
Greek in a Catholic high school in Ohio, and we have an exchange program
with a school in Germany. Every year a French exchange group is
also present at this school while we are there. Over the years I
have witnessed the French students refuse to say anything to my students
in either English or German when we are together, and in theory the
French kids have been studying both languages longer than my
students. The Germans shrug their shoulders at this, saying that
relations are still suffering from World War II, but that is why they
think the student exchanges are so important.<br>
Anyway, I have used German translations of Barks' Uncle Scrooge
stories in my classes: before Christmas we read "Weihnachten für
Kummersdorf" (Christmas for Shacktown) in my advanced classes, and
noticed that the German was much more literary than the Barks
original. My students enjoyed the story immensely.<br>
And hooray for Rob Klein for keeping the faith on "different
from": I suspect the error has crept in from German-Americans, since
in German "anders als" (different than) is the only way to say
it.</font></html>