Quote:
Originally Posted by New Brisavoine
So you guys mean Emmanuel Macron addressing a crowd in the central square of Tokyo in French would be fine then? Or, horresco referens, a French president not fluent in English (as François Hollande, or possibly Marine Le Pen in 2027) addressing a crowd in the central square of Toronto in... French? Imagine the headlines in the Anglophone media if he/she dared to do that...
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On one hand I think Le Pen (or whoever) would mostly be fine with that anyway, and that they'd more likely just deliver the speech in French (with maybe some token English thrown in occasionally, or maybe not) in Montreal or Ottawa or somewhere like that. Why on earth would Le Pen be giving a speech in English in Toronto in the first place?
On the other hand I think critics would be critics but ultimately a French leader giving a speech in French in a country where a lot of people speak French is not very controversial (in and of itself). If they did that in Tokyo, well, most of the crowd wouldn't understand French, but they probably would understand English (roughly as well as the average French politician might). Is the leader of Japan expected to speak fluent French, German, Italian and Flemish (+Polish, Czech, Greek, Estonian, Swedish, etc) every time they visit the EU?