The first to French presidents really speaking English were Jacques Chirac and, now, Nicolas Sarkozi.
Ofcourse, Charles De Gaulle parlait probablement un peu anglais, mais je ne connais aucun discours de lui en anglais. Et ses interlocuteurs semblaient faire l'effort de parler français avec lui, tout à fait content d'eux-mêmes de pouvoir s'exprimer dans la langue de Voltaire.
The French language seems to be quite respected worldwide. Microblogs postings in English and in French can be posted worldwide, nobody complains about the French ones.
French and English are often the two language that are allowed for contribution to international congresses.
In recent times, however, French scientific papers have an English resumes placed above them. And the French are studying English at University level to be able to read the specialist magazines on their field of knowledge.
French, English, Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Portuguese are the European languages that have an intercontinental importance.
Chinese, Russian and Arabic are three other international important languages.
It are these languages that can be used for passing information worldwide and that have an official status as working languages for international institutions, but sometimes the choice is limited to English and French only for practical reasons.
It's a pitty that in Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, the knowledge of French is disappearing to the point that University students aren't able to consult French language sources concerning their specific discipline.
Let alone that these student would be able to follow or to give a scientific discourse in French as a contribution to a conference... unless they're specific study field is French, ofcourse or they've followed a Master-after-Master for which French was on the language curriculum.
French is even loosing out on Africa, the first public statement broadcasted of Kabbila was a statement in English. I was really amased about this interview and the very strong eloquence of his English.
French isn't easy. The morphology and syntax of French is a real difficulty when writing the language, even for the French themselves, like some eith out of then 'accords' aren't heard in the spoken language.
French has to learnt twice. Speaking and writing the language are almost two different competences.
But the proud, people display when proving they're ability in using French and their mastership of its complexity can only be compared to the feeling of doing the same in Chinese, Russian or Arabic.
The cultural richness of the French litterature is enormous, and reading an important French author can be done in about all the local languages of any importance and in French ofcourse.
Most other languages are translated only in English, but French is one of the few languages getting translated worldwide. This is one of the reasons French is still of so much influence on the international opinion.
French was, is and will stay important as long as France and the other French speaking nations won't forget to speak it and promote the study of it abroad.
Pieter Jansegers
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