FRANCE’S rearguard struggle against the English language moved to the courts yesterday when technicians at a division of the General Electric company claimed that they were illegally being forced to use English.

The employees at General Electric Medical Systems (GEMS) told the Versailles county court that the multinational company’s policy of using English-only manuals and promoting English in the workplace breached France’s “Toubon” law.

Named after the Minister of Culture of the time and widely ignored since, this 1994 law requires foreign expressions to be translated into French in the workplace, on commercial products and in advertising.

The case was the first legal backlash against a widely lamented trend for international corporations, including French companies, to use English as their working language in France. Michel Vandenabiele, a GEMS union spokesman, said yesterday that the pressure to use English in meetings and in e-mails was unacceptable.

“Sometimes meetings between French staff are held in English. That is absurd,” he said. “We have a lot of English and Americans in the management who often do not speak much French. They could make an effort on their side.”

Employees who spoke little English felt excluded, he said. “Technicians are not supposed to have a real need for English in their work and some of the technical documents are difficult to understand, so it is a handicap.”

Lawyers for General Electric told the court that there was no alternative to English as a common language in an American multinational company.

The French business world long ago adopted international English at the higher management levels and le jargon anglais saturates advertising and the talk of the younger French. As well as long-standing buzzwords such as “cool” and “trip”, teenagers sprinkle conversation with plain English such as “yes”, “no”, “hi”, “bye”, “big”, and “too much”.

The linguistic invasion, which has progressed steadily since the Second World War, is deplored by commentators, politicians and the public at large as a surrender to “Anglo-Saxon” culture and ideas. This patriotism means that the French still speak poorer English than most of their continental neighbours.

Last week the Government bowed to pressure and scrapped a plan that would have required all primary school children to be taught “basic international English”. The new rule will simply require a foreign language in primary school, but most pupils are expected to choose English.

A Body Shop outlet was fined in 1996 for labelling products only in English, but since then advertisers and employers have avoided prosecution for the flagrant use of English.

Some guardians of the language say that the international pre-eminence of English should not frighten the French. Alain Rey, editor of the Robert Dictionary and a popular broadcaster, likes to remind the French that about half of the English language came from French to begin with. Even the dreaded English word “management” came from the French ménage, he pointed out.

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