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Cuba, the Caribbean Islands,
and Central America in 2001

St Martin Marigot

Bec
2004-09-17 16:46:36

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Marigot
The northern half of the island, is less commercial than the Dutch side but it is very French. It is cleaner, more expensive, more sophisticate and, more pretentious.

The cruise ships dock mostly on the Dutch side of the island but that does not stop the tourists from swarming all over so there is a special artefact market for them in Marigot.

Marigot is really quite small, you have seen most of it in these seven photos.

Grande Case
The "Espérance" airport on the French side is located at Grande Case, about five kilometres north of Marigot.

It is smaller than the Juliana airport which was built on the Dutch side by the US armed forces during WWII.

Grande Case has hotels and beach resorts like these at the north end of the beach, but it is best known for its fine restaurants.

There's nothing special about this fruit stall in Grande Case but take note of the name the grocery store on the left.

Using "Cash and Go" to mimic an American style could reflect the subservient attitude that can be expected from "servants of tourists" where most visitors are American tourists off the cruise ships but that does not explain the growing use of English in France itself.

I am not a psychiatrist but here is the way I see it. The French people have a very high opinion of themselves but, paradoxically, they seem to suffer from an inferiority complex about their language. It seems that they cannot accept that French, which once was the international language of diplomacy, has been dethroned by English, the international language of commerce.

Collectively there is nothing they can do about it but individually, they can dissociate themselves from their ordinary compatriots, condemned to speak a second rate language, by sprinkling their speech with English words and expressions that give them the individual distinction of being up to date. This tendency is not new, I first noticed it when I was working for ELF in Paris in the '60s. My engineer colleagues returning from training in the US would replace some French technical terms that they previously used, by their American equivalents as status symbols publicising the distinction of having been chosen for training in the US. Those who had not gone would follow suit so that it would not show! None of them bothered to learn to speak English well as just a few well placed English words sufficed to heighten their image.

It's a pity, the French are individually destroying their beautiful language to escape a collective inferiority complex. If you think that I'm exaggerating, just have a look at the bastard "Franglais" that has become current on French websites!

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