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‘Test two-year-olds’ Danish skills’: minister

Danish social and children’s minister Mai Mercado wants children with bilingual backgrounds to be given Danish language tests at the age of two.

Published: 6 March 2017 09:09 CET

'Test two-year-olds’ Danish skills': minister

Social and children's minister Mai Mercado. Photo: Asger Ladefoged/Scanpix

The Conservative party MP says that children who speak other languages at home risk being left behind in Danish at school, so should be helped from an early age.

“It is very sad when we see many children with insufficient Danish vocabulary and language skills,” Mercado said, according to a report by news agency Ritzau.

A recent report by Copenhagen Municipality showed that 44 per cent of school children with non-Western backgrounds that started in kindergarten classes in 2015 required extra help with their Danish.

Mercado said she wanted to propose a bill that would enable local municipalities to assess Danish language skills amongst children as young as two.

“It is simply clear to us that some children need an earlier intervention,” Mercado told Ritzau.

The bill would allow children from non-Danish speaking homes to attend kindergartens as a way of improving their language skills, should this be considered necessary.

Education Minister Merete Riisager of the libertarian Liberal Alliance party said that, while she supports the suggestion, parents must also bear responsibility for children’s Danish abilities.

“The is a large statistical difference between children with Danish and non-Western backgrounds. The home environment is crucial for the ability of children to learn and take part at school,” Riisager said to Ritzau.

Parents must take an “active” role in ensuring that the statistical difference is evened out, the minister said.

Nationwide association Kommunernes Landsforening (Local Government Denmark) also recently called for early language testing to be introduced in the form of screening, arguing that it would help prevent social inequality.

According to the Copenhagen Municipality figures, only 11.7 per cent of ethnic Danish children starting kindergarten in 2015 needed “special or focused help” with their Danish.

The numbers for both groups fell slightly on 2014, when they were 47 and 12.3 per cent for the non-Western and Danish classifications respectively.

An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.

An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences.

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender.

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use.

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name.

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor.

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris).

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there.

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas

Islands

Islands follow more complicated rules.

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place:

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives.

No preposition needed

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include:

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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