John TAGLIABUE, 
For Business in Europe: English, s'il Vous Plaît.

Ludovic Timbal learned English at school and 
used it occasionally while studying law in Paris.

But that never prepared him for the avalanche of English he 
encountered after he joined a Paris law firm last year. 

"I want to be a business lawyer, and I realized you just cannot
avoid speaking English," Mr- Timbal, 29, said in slightly accented English.

So now Mr- Timbal attends a Paris language school and 
spends up to four hours several days a week drilling English 
conversation - "an investmerit in the future," he called it.

As European banks and corporations go global, many are 
making English the official corporate language.

Two years ago, when France, Germany and Spain merged 
their aerospace industries into one company, they not only 
gave it an English name - the European Aeronautic Defense
and Space Company, or EADS - they also made English its 
language.

In Germany, the national postal service, Deutsche Post 
World Net, increasingly uses English as its working language. 

Smaller companies are doing likewise. In Finland, the 
elevator maker Kone adopted English in the 1970's; in Italy, 
Merloni Elettrodomestici, a midsize home appliance maker, 
did so in the mid-1990's. 

Management meetings at big banks like Deutsche Bank in Germany 
and Credit Suisse in Switzerland are routinely in English.

Behind this lies a reality that unsettles some Europeans:
the use of English is mainly determines by the dominance of the
Unites States in industry, commerce and finance.

In Toulouse, in the south of France, English has been the official language
at the aircraft manufacturer Airbus since its 
founding more than 30 years ago as a loose consortium of 
aerospace companies from France, Germany, Britain and 
Spain. Partly, Airbus executives say, this was because of a 
bad experience on an earlier project - building the Anglo-French 
Concorde supersonic jet. 

Concorde's French chief engineer, despite fluent English, 
refused memos from his British counterpart unless they were in French.

But the choice also reflected American predominance in civil 
aviation. "Our documentation was often based on American 
manuals," said Barbara Kracht, the Airbus spokeswoman.

In some cases, using English at work drives Europeans back 
to their native tongues. Christine Rahard, a French-woman 
in her 30's, manages corporate communications for 
the French automaker Renault, working extensively in English.

But in her home village west of Paris, friends and neighbors 
who feel the intrusion of English share a kind of mild backlash, 
reaffirming their French roots in food and drink, everyday 
customs - and language.

"At the market place on a Saturday morning," she said, "you find people using 
old words for vegetables that everyone thougt died out decades ago".

The spread of English, of course, is a gold mine for language schools.

Five years ago, Wall Street Institute, where Mr. Timbal studies, had only three
schools in France. Today, there are 38,8 in Paris alone.