Admitting that her language skills were not what they should be, Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, promised this week to work on them during the summer.

Where and when she would attend classes remained a secret after Ms. Ashton, who is British, disclosed that she would not take up a French government offer to study at a chateau in the south of France.

Though Ms. Ashton understands French, she is not fluent and speaks with a strong accent.

Not so long ago, this would have disqualified her from the job.

French was once the unchallenged lingua franca of European integration. Until 1995, French had the monopoly in the European Commission press room, where Anglophone journalists had to address their questions to English spokespeople in French.

According to the European Commission, the number of documents it sent for translation with English as the original language was 72.5 percent in 2008, the same as the year before. The proportion of original texts in French dropped to 11.8 percent in 2008 from 12.2 percent in 2007.

See:  The New York Times