English words in our communication
He also extends this observation to the way of communicating in the business world. For Charles Gardier this is a problem. “The English language is an important vector of communication that should not be neglected at the international level, but it is embarrassing when culturally English takes precedence over French. From then on, the French language is outdated while in other regions of the world the French language is trendy, in England for example..
Charles Gardier finds it a shame that in Belgium, we do not pay more attention to the promotion of the French language.which has more and more speakers around the world, particularly due to the demographic increase in Africa. It’s anything but a language in decline.”.
The MP is also concerned that, on certain social networks, most of the advertisements are not in French. “We don’t even notice it anymore, and it was in Quebec that I realized it. As someone who uses YouTube a lot, I am surprised that their powerful algorithm does not even take my language into account. Do the exercise. You will find that most of the advertisements are in English and even Dutch, but almost never in French even though French versions of these advertisements do exist.”. And according to him it goes even further, “In advertisements everywhere, advertisers use slogans in English. 80% of people don’t understand what we say to them and it seems like they don’t care.”.
History of prejudices: “Anglicisms do not hurt the French language”
The example of Quebec
To remedy the problems he denounces, Charles Gardier considers that the Wallonia-Brussels Federation should be interested in the way in which Quebec “lost in the middle of an English-speaking ocean”defend your tongue, “even if Quebecers sometimes encounter problems similar to ours”. “We could also draw inspiration from what the Flemish do with their language”he insists.
He also proposes to impose “quotas”in public and private media for artists, even if he considers it “always a bit of a shame to come to this.” But on a cultural level, he doesn’t really see how else to do it. “We need to think about what French brings to culture.”. For his part, he works “on the creation of an artistic label which would make it possible to identify artists of all kinds who come from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation all over the world.”. He would also like to have figures concerning “the impact of culture on our finances and the economy. A large number of countries or regions do this, but for us this is not the case.. He is also worried about the future of artists.Belgians, in general”. “We see that we no longer have a publisher to promote our artists on platforms like Spotify, this risks drowning our artists in the crowd”he concludes, hoping to be heard.
