>Hi All, but esp. Dragan and Terry.
>
>In my Dutch newspaper of today there is the story of a French teacher (a teacher of French, not a Frenchman) who is currently sueing an employer for not wanting to hire him. The employer is a private, commercial school where adults can learn various foreign languages. The employer only wants native speakers as teacher. This person is a Dutchman who claims to have a better knowledge of current French than many of the employed native French speakers. He claims to know 28.000 French sentences by head, to know all current developments in that language, that many of those native speakers may have been born over there, but may have left their home country more than 20 years ago. She, the employer, feels 'insulted' by him because he says she discriminates him.

He may as well be right. Some foreigner international person who would study my language may as well be aware of the recent developments in it, may have read more books in it than I did, and may even speak it better than I do. For a native, the language is taken for granted; for a professional, it may also be a passion.

For teaching purposes, a non-native speaker has one great advantage over a native speaker: he remembers the pitfalls he encountered in the process of learning, and will be able to point them out to his students. A native speaker may be in for a lot of surprises there, specially if he doesn't have proper pedagogical training. He may be able to speak it well, but may be less able to transfer the knowledge.

The employer may have done better by hiring native speakers to pick the right candidates for her, instead of imposing a ridiculous restriction.