MON DIEU! BREXIT COULD MEAN LE FRANÇAIS EST NOTRE LANGUE SECONDE

it MigHt be a good time to brush up on the language of love. that’s certainly the view of our European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee, now that ireland has joined a global Frenchspeaking organisation, the French equivalent of the Commonwealth. the move comes amid concerns that Brexit will leave us isolated as English speakers on the global stage. And though she admits her French is rusty, notre Ministre des Affaires Européennes is taking the new membership seriously, delivering a speech en Français at an OiF gathering in Armenia this week, when ireland was granted observer status along with Malta, gambia and the US state of Louisiana.

She said: ‘i don’t speak French well but i studied it when i was younger. i can understand it and speak some of it.’

She said her speech ‘went okay’.

Ms McEntee stressed we needed to look beyond Brexit and develop new relationships within Europe and further afield.

‘With Brexit, given we’ll be the only native English-speaking country in the EU, we need to place greater emphasis on languages,’ she said.

Also at this week’s gathering were French president Emmanuel Macron and Canadian prime minister Justin trudeau.

Ms McEntee told the summit that irish people had a passion for French, citing Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett, who wrote some of their works in French.

ireland applied nearly a year ago, with Senator Frank Feighan describing it as ‘a very strategic move’.

‘it will ensure we get into places such as east Africa or other parts of Africa and it will help our relationship with the EU and Africa and help us to do good,’ he said.

According to the 2016 Census, French is the second most dominant foreign language spoken in irish homes after Polish.