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France is lucrative mostly to french native speakers, who have quite a massive phobia when they have to speak any other language rather than their own. It looks

France is lucrative mostly to french native speakers, who have quite a massive phobia when they have to speak any other language rather than their own. It looks ridiculous and shameful, especially when noone cares about speaking it outside french bubble. The language had it's prime time long time ago and now it's a mere curiosity. Not the prettiest nor easiest one to learn either. Then there is amazing countryside, but that's hardly big enough motivation alone to move in or stay. Some french work really hard, I think their effectiveness at work is above EU average. But they are socialists at their core - meaning all nice social benefits on one side, but massive inefficiency on the other, on all levels of government. In theory, there is no good reason why French should earn much less compared to say Germans. In reality, the difference is HUGE and there are good reasons for it. Market says it all :)

maelito 11y ago
You should read the introduction of this article about this "mere curiosity". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
- colinplamondon 11y ago
  290,000,000 speakers (including secondary speakers.) out of 7,000,000 people on the planet. 4% of the planet. If 4% of America spoke a language, most of us wouldn't be in much of a rush to localize. Fortunately for French, the core native speakers in France are rich, and most of the planet is still poor. As the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes more accurate over time.
  - maelito 11y ago
    You may want to read the rest of the introduction !
  - grp 11y ago
    And it is a dramatic error. If 4% of people only speak a functional programming language, does it mean that you never need to learn one? Just because the vast majority historically speak imperative doesn't mean it's the best for your business. Same for OSes. Diversity is source of wealth.
  - bolaft 11y ago
    Secondary speakers are not people who learned French in school and live outside a French speaking country. If you took French in high school in the US you are not recorded in these numbers. Secondary speakers are people like, for example, those who grew up in Morocco, speak French but have Arabic as a mother tongue (for example). Plus those numbers only account for speakers who can read and write. As I said in another comment, the alphabetization of Africa over the next few decades is expected to boost these numbers significantly. So, as the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes LESS accurate over time.
  - realusername 11y ago
    Except that the curve of language distribution is not proportional at all. If you sum up the top 15 languages, you maybe only have like 40% of the population. So a language with 4% speakers is actually really important in regard of the language distribution. Having 290M speakers is actually really rare for a language, most of the languages spoken in the world actually have very few speakers. This makes French (and all the other 15 top languages) disproportionately important with a such skewed distribution.
  - harperlee 11y ago
    So, in HN terms, I think it is a very poor business decision to leave out 1 in 20 clients that are so easily self-selected for segmentation (just by asking them their language). Mostly if you admit that it is a wealthy segment. By the way, I'm not french, and I find that "curiosity" term insultingly patronizing.
  - notNow 11y ago
    4% of the planet. If 4% of America spoke a language, most of us wouldn't be in much of a rush to localize. You're implicitly assuming that the remaining 96% of the population is speaking another language which is untrue in your analogy as the world population speaks more than one language and the largest one in terms of number of speakers goes to Mandarin with around 15% of world population.
- cletus 11y ago
  The GP has a "West-centric" view that, in that context, is largely correct. French used to be far more prominent in the West. It used to be the language of diplomacy. It's still the second most spoken language in the EU but it's declining [1]: "French is the second most widely spoken language in the European Union and the second most widely learned language in the world, but despite its strong international position, the outlook for French in Europe is not so encouraging. Over the last four years, the number of French-speakers in the continent has fallen by 8%." It has of course been supplanted by English as the lingua franca. French is still prominent in large parts of Africa but is facing increasing competition from English and Arabic. The huge number of human languages is a product of a bygone era of isolation. A Darwinian process has ensued that is seeing that number constantly whittled down and outside of truly primitive cultures (there are still people in the world living effectively in the Stone Age) I imagine within 100 years you'll see a smaller number of languages spoken by a larger portion of the global population. [1]: http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/french-languages-global-gains-hide-decline-europe-310014 http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/french-la...
bolaft 11y ago
I'm getting tired of hearing always the same uninformed comments about the French language and how the French perceive it. We're not very good with English because of the terribly inefficient way it's taught in school, not because of any kind of "phobia". A Frenchman speaks on average 1.8 languages, which is slightly less than Germans (and much less than Swedes and Norwegians), but still more than Spaniards and Britons for example. And French is not a "mere curiosity". It's the official language of 29 independent countries. It's also the second most employed language in diplomacy, being a working language of countless institutions, and the second most common mother-tongue in the EU. Not to mention that with the growing alphabetization of Africa, and its potential for economic and developmental growth, it could very well know a powerful rebirth in the near future. It's true that French is not the easiest language to learn though, but if you don't find it very pretty that's your opinion, however it's really subjective.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  Yeah dude, I live in Geneva for last 5 years, which is probably more full of french people rather than native Swiss. And let me tell you, I see this phobia daily, by people speaking often moderately well english, but having extremely hard time convincing to speak in it, in any possible way. If I go to France, same effect becomes 5x more obvious (of course this is anecdotal measurement). Every single person I've spoken to says same. I mean, every single person. Also those who spent years living/studying in France (Paris, Lyon). It doesn't matter how crappy your school english was (btw why do I keep hearing this excuse all the time?), in very few places it's stellar (neither was mine at home). We all sound a bit funny. So what? What makes difference between French and rest of the world is that any guy will try to speak English, even broken one, and will try to help anybody speaking it (ie in his own country). With English in France, story is consistently different. Yeah, just 5 years of daily experience, only only mine and all expats I know (this is always a funny topic to talk about). Who knows, I could get it all wrong :)
realusername 11y ago
The language has nothing to do with it. Japan has a good economy while speaking in average even worse English than Spain. When the right conditions are there, the business is growing regardless of the spoken language.
notNow 11y ago
What's with the bashing of languages excluding English & countries that are not part of the English speaking world as of late on HN? It's getting annoying and bordering on obnoxious chauvinistic & ethnocentric rhetoric. Not the prettiest nor easiest one to learn either. What makes you think that English is any better? Actually and this is an objective assessment English is one of the hardest languages to learn at least from orthography and pronunciation standpoints and in contradiction to the prevailing belief of the opposite. Unlike in Spanish or Italian and to some extent French which enjoy an almost uniform rules regarding pronunciation and orthography, in English you should memorize how individual words are pronounced and written and you can't deduce correctly how a certain new word to be pronounced or written based on the pronunciation because it is not 1:1 translation from official letter sounds to words. On the other hand, when you encounter a Spanish or Italian word and you know your alphabet and letters and simple rules, you pronounce the word as is no surprises in the process. When you hear a word correctly, you could decipher how it's written even when you encounter it for the first time and the success ratio is around 99%. Good luck trying this with the English language. Please get off your high horse and don't kid yourself, we foreigners are not learning your language that's English because of its innate "superior" qualities to other world languages. It just happens to be the global lingua franca of this age and we're adopting to this nothing more nothing less.
- S4M 11y ago
  French here. I do believe that English is very easy to learn, because not really error prone. Do you conjugate verbs? No (well, kind of). Do the English nouns have genders? No. It's true that English is not straight forward to pronounce, but that's pretty much the only difficulty of the language. On the other hand, I would say that French is very error prone: it's like Spanish or Italian (in the sense that you need to know lots of conjugations and the gender of the nouns), and the spelling of the words is very complicated, for example the sound 'o' can be spelled 'o', 'au', 'eau', 'ô'. In fact the spelling is so hard that I am suspecting it has been made hard on purpose so people who are not educated could be spotted straight away when they write a letter. Please note that I am not writing this out of content ("Look how we French people are smart for mastering such a complicated language"), but because I like the simplicity of the English language. In fact, I believe anything made hard in a language is just some incidental complexity in how we express our thoughts, and if I had to create a language I would use English as a base.

maelito 11y ago

You should read the introduction of this article about this "mere curiosity". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language

colinplamondon 11y ago
290,000,000 speakers (including secondary speakers.) out of 7,000,000 people on the planet. 4% of the planet. If 4% of America spoke a language, most of us wouldn't be in much of a rush to localize. Fortunately for French, the core native speakers in France are rich, and most of the planet is still poor. As the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes more accurate over time.
- maelito 11y ago
  You may want to read the rest of the introduction !
- grp 11y ago
  And it is a dramatic error. If 4% of people only speak a functional programming language, does it mean that you never need to learn one? Just because the vast majority historically speak imperative doesn't mean it's the best for your business. Same for OSes. Diversity is source of wealth.
- bolaft 11y ago
  Secondary speakers are not people who learned French in school and live outside a French speaking country. If you took French in high school in the US you are not recorded in these numbers. Secondary speakers are people like, for example, those who grew up in Morocco, speak French but have Arabic as a mother tongue (for example). Plus those numbers only account for speakers who can read and write. As I said in another comment, the alphabetization of Africa over the next few decades is expected to boost these numbers significantly. So, as the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes LESS accurate over time.
- realusername 11y ago
  Except that the curve of language distribution is not proportional at all. If you sum up the top 15 languages, you maybe only have like 40% of the population. So a language with 4% speakers is actually really important in regard of the language distribution. Having 290M speakers is actually really rare for a language, most of the languages spoken in the world actually have very few speakers. This makes French (and all the other 15 top languages) disproportionately important with a such skewed distribution.
- harperlee 11y ago
  So, in HN terms, I think it is a very poor business decision to leave out 1 in 20 clients that are so easily self-selected for segmentation (just by asking them their language). Mostly if you admit that it is a wealthy segment. By the way, I'm not french, and I find that "curiosity" term insultingly patronizing.
- notNow 11y ago
  4% of the planet. If 4% of America spoke a language, most of us wouldn't be in much of a rush to localize. You're implicitly assuming that the remaining 96% of the population is speaking another language which is untrue in your analogy as the world population speaks more than one language and the largest one in terms of number of speakers goes to Mandarin with around 15% of world population.
cletus 11y ago
The GP has a "West-centric" view that, in that context, is largely correct. French used to be far more prominent in the West. It used to be the language of diplomacy. It's still the second most spoken language in the EU but it's declining [1]: "French is the second most widely spoken language in the European Union and the second most widely learned language in the world, but despite its strong international position, the outlook for French in Europe is not so encouraging. Over the last four years, the number of French-speakers in the continent has fallen by 8%." It has of course been supplanted by English as the lingua franca. French is still prominent in large parts of Africa but is facing increasing competition from English and Arabic. The huge number of human languages is a product of a bygone era of isolation. A Darwinian process has ensued that is seeing that number constantly whittled down and outside of truly primitive cultures (there are still people in the world living effectively in the Stone Age) I imagine within 100 years you'll see a smaller number of languages spoken by a larger portion of the global population. [1]: http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/french-languages-global-gains-hide-decline-europe-310014 http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/french-la...

bolaft 11y ago

I'm getting tired of hearing always the same uninformed comments about the French language and how the French perceive it. We're not very good with English because of the terribly inefficient way it's taught in school, not because of any kind of "phobia". A Frenchman speaks on average 1.8 languages, which is slightly less than Germans (and much less than Swedes and Norwegians), but still more than Spaniards and Britons for example. And French is not a "mere curiosity". It's the official language of 29 independent countries. It's also the second most employed language in diplomacy, being a working language of countless institutions, and the second most common mother-tongue in the EU. Not to mention that with the growing alphabetization of Africa, and its potential for economic and developmental growth, it could very well know a powerful rebirth in the near future. It's true that French is not the easiest language to learn though, but if you don't find it very pretty that's your opinion, however it's really subjective.

saiya-jin 11y ago
Yeah dude, I live in Geneva for last 5 years, which is probably more full of french people rather than native Swiss. And let me tell you, I see this phobia daily, by people speaking often moderately well english, but having extremely hard time convincing to speak in it, in any possible way. If I go to France, same effect becomes 5x more obvious (of course this is anecdotal measurement). Every single person I've spoken to says same. I mean, every single person. Also those who spent years living/studying in France (Paris, Lyon). It doesn't matter how crappy your school english was (btw why do I keep hearing this excuse all the time?), in very few places it's stellar (neither was mine at home). We all sound a bit funny. So what? What makes difference between French and rest of the world is that any guy will try to speak English, even broken one, and will try to help anybody speaking it (ie in his own country). With English in France, story is consistently different. Yeah, just 5 years of daily experience, only only mine and all expats I know (this is always a funny topic to talk about). Who knows, I could get it all wrong :)

realusername 11y ago

The language has nothing to do with it. Japan has a good economy while speaking in average even worse English than Spain. When the right conditions are there, the business is growing regardless of the spoken language.

notNow 11y ago

What's with the bashing of languages excluding English & countries that are not part of the English speaking world as of late on HN? It's getting annoying and bordering on obnoxious chauvinistic & ethnocentric rhetoric. Not the prettiest nor easiest one to learn either. What makes you think that English is any better? Actually and this is an objective assessment English is one of the hardest languages to learn at least from orthography and pronunciation standpoints and in contradiction to the prevailing belief of the opposite. Unlike in Spanish or Italian and to some extent French which enjoy an almost uniform rules regarding pronunciation and orthography, in English you should memorize how individual words are pronounced and written and you can't deduce correctly how a certain new word to be pronounced or written based on the pronunciation because it is not 1:1 translation from official letter sounds to words. On the other hand, when you encounter a Spanish or Italian word and you know your alphabet and letters and simple rules, you pronounce the word as is no surprises in the process. When you hear a word correctly, you could decipher how it's written even when you encounter it for the first time and the success ratio is around 99%. Good luck trying this with the English language. Please get off your high horse and don't kid yourself, we foreigners are not learning your language that's English because of its innate "superior" qualities to other world languages. It just happens to be the global lingua franca of this age and we're adopting to this nothing more nothing less.

S4M 11y ago
French here. I do believe that English is very easy to learn, because not really error prone. Do you conjugate verbs? No (well, kind of). Do the English nouns have genders? No. It's true that English is not straight forward to pronounce, but that's pretty much the only difficulty of the language. On the other hand, I would say that French is very error prone: it's like Spanish or Italian (in the sense that you need to know lots of conjugations and the gender of the nouns), and the spelling of the words is very complicated, for example the sound 'o' can be spelled 'o', 'au', 'eau', 'ô'. In fact the spelling is so hard that I am suspecting it has been made hard on purpose so people who are not educated could be spotted straight away when they write a letter. Please note that I am not writing this out of content ("Look how we French people are smart for mastering such a complicated language"), but because I like the simplicity of the English language. In fact, I believe anything made hard in a language is just some incidental complexity in how we express our thoughts, and if I had to create a language I would use English as a base.