Shadow minister declares French a 'useless' language

A FORMER Foreign Office minister last night branded French as a "useless" modern language.

Labour's Chris Bryant, now a shadow Foreign Office minister, was advocating the importance of young people taking up languages to win business in the emerging economies.

He told the Commons: "Unless we have sufficient numbers of people who speak modern foreign languages – and not just the useless modern foreign languages like French ..."

Amid Tory protests that this was "insulting" to the French, Mr Bryant, who was minister for the EU before the May election, said: "I've said this to the French. I think they realise there are problems."

He defended his remark, insisting that while French had been the "most useful language to use because it was the diplomatic language", things had changed over the last 30 to 40 years and now "it certainly isn't".

He said the most significant languages to speak now, aside from English, were Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.