It's not just about the minority languages not being supported at all. (As the result,only very old patients spoke them, when I worked in Lorraine). It is also about the stupid focus on just English, instead of languages of neighbours. Czechs are having a rather similar problem on the other side from Germany, even though they are less aware of it for now.
Everyone has been pushed to focus on English, with the "English is the international language and all that you need" brainwashing, which is simply not true. And now, what a surprise, we need other languages and the population cannot speak them. Especially the areas near the borders are suffering from it. I sometimes wonder, whether this isn't being done on purpose, to lower the population's ability to migrate to better paid jobs. People leaving or commuting to Germany or Luxembourg are a commonly discussed topic in the region.
So, the lack of German teachers for this type of schools is just a reflection of both the overall struggles of teachers (there are now even protests in France, from what I've last heard) and the whole education system underestimating the importance of German, or other languages of the neighbours.
Back in France: vast majority of my colleagues had been from Lorraine or Alsace. All of them could have profited from German in various areas of life (the usual answer to anything you needed was "va à Sarrebrück", there were also some germanophone patients, germanophone colleagues the hospital regularly collaborated with at least till covid, etc). But the only person in my generation, who had an ok level of German, had just arrived from Reunion. Nobody from the locals spoke it, and all of them had had English classes at school instead, which was a totally useless language in their daily lives.
zenmonkey wrote:Le Baron wrote:I love French, but think the attitude of official Francophone organisations, that French is destined (and very much ought to be) to be the future lingua-franca of the planet, to be wildly delusional.
'Wildly delusional' is 100% accurate. Almost makes me think they are wannabee Esperantists.
Definitely. What we need in this century is a much stronger language pluralism. We need to finally enforce the idea of two foreign languages for every person with standard education in the EU (=highschool), with focus on languages of your neighbours. Whether they are neighbours just across the border, or minority speakers in another village near you, or an important minority in your town.
French won't be Lingua Franca, and the politics and the overall culture is actually doing the opposite of trying to make it the Lingua Franca. Even oppression of the minority languages won't help make it more attractive or dominant, if they leave a lot of their prestigious spaces (for example at universities) to English. But it can be one of the common choices for people learning two foreign languages, just like German should be one of the common choices for the French learning two foreign languages (which should be the majority of the population).