Franglais

Lost in translation across the Channel

France might be just across the English Channel from Britain, but Emma Jane Kirby says both nations are still prone to the pitfalls of linguistic misunderstandings.

Last weekend, standing on Pegasus bridge in Normandy for the D-Day celebrations, I was touched to see two classes of French primary school children singing the British national anthem in honour of the veterans.

As I went closer, I realised with delight that while they had got the tune off pat, the words were just slightly off the mark.

Standing tall and proud, the children were calling on the Almighty to "sieve the Queen and her setter, Victoria."

It took me straight back to my own school days when I had learned to sing the nursery rhyme Frere Jacques.

For many years I had warned *Frere Jacques to wake up not because the morning bells were ringing (sonnez les matines), but because there was *"sunny semolina" to be had.

'Yoghurting'

Even in your own language, it is difficult to catch accurately the words of a song if they are not written down in front of you, and in France, which imports most of its music from the US or UK, there is even a word for the appropriation of lyrics.

It is "yaourt", or "to yoghurt".

You start singing confidently... and then trail off into inarticulate "yoghurting" when your lexicon runs dry.

As far as I understand it, so long as you look slightly pained and shut your eyes while you yoghurt, you seem to get away with it.

Some years ago, an Irish friend of mine was on a French exchange in Paris and was hanging out with some of the local teenagers.

Desperate to impress her, they began to reel off their repertoire of English songs.

They said their favourite was a hit by Queen that they had picked up on the radio - I believe the original version was called I Want to Break Free - but unfortunately, the boys knew only the yoghurt version.

Although retaining the original passion, it had lost a little of the sense. It went: I Want a Steak Frites, I Want a Steak Frites.

'Simply hysterical'

Mispronunciations can have embarrassing consequences.

A French friend of mine, preparing a few snacks to hand round at an English drinks party, implored her guests to help themselves to nipples.

My father once returned from a trip to France complaining bitterly that the French had just laughed at him when he had tried to ask for directions to the railway station.

A few probing questions revealed that he had not asked for la gare at all - he had asked for la guerre (the war) - and the locals were simply hysterical at the idea of this white-haired, would-be combatant showing up for duty 65 years too late.

But it can happen to the best of us.

Madame de Gaulle was said to have been lunching with the American ambassador at the time of her husband's retirement when she was asked what she was most looking forward to in the years ahead.

She thought for a moment before announcing boldly: "A penis". A startled hush fell over the table until the former president leant over and said: "My dear, I think it's pronounced 'happiness'."

Speak in French, wrote Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass, when you cannot remember the English for a thing.

But there are many faux amis (false friends) to be wary of in English and French.

'Slip of the ear'

You can flatter a French woman by telling she looks formidable in her new dress, but tell an English woman she looks formidable in her new frock and she will quickly go and change.

And that one wrong word can do untold damage.

In English, looking and watching are two different things. In French, one word - regarder - will cover you for both.

My American friend Janet, on holiday in Montana with her French husband Eddy, suggested he wandered around the shops while she tried on her zillionth pair of shoes.

After a few minutes spent in a bed linen store he was approached by the female assistant who asked him if he needed any help.

"No thanks, I am just watching," he smiled, and was puzzled as she backed off slowly, desperately fumbling for her phone.

The other day I was reading an article in a French newspaper about how we regularly mishear words, particularly in foreign languages, and how that completely changes our comprehension of the conversation.

The writer spoke of a British acquaintance of his who was struck when he arrived in France by how much the French seemed to talk about Johnny Marr, the Smiths' guitarist.

Until the writer realised what his friend was actually hearing was "J'en ai marre (I'm sick of it)".

He went on in his article to inform his readers that the English even had a phrase for such a misunderstanding. It was called, he said confidently, a "slip of the ear*".

Source: BBC News

Idioms:



The idiom is normally a "slip of the tongue". This means that you say something that you didn't intend to say; a mistake in speaking.

A Freudian slip is also something that you say by accident which is different from what you intended to say but seems to show your true thoughts.

Many slips of the tongue / Freudian slips can be heard on you tube; most of them a bit rude. Here is one from Gordon Brown when he was PM and he claims to have "saved the world".

I also made the same mistake as a child with the song "Frere Jacques" Another school favourite was "Alouette". Here is a clip from "Tom and Jerry" in French. I love when the little mouse says "Bonjour Monsieur Pussy Cat".

Never too old to blog

Spain's blogger granny dies at 97

A Spanish grandmother who billed herself as the "world's oldest internet blogger" has died at the age of 97.

Maria Amelia Lopez only began blogging from her seaside home in Galicia two years ago.

But her postings on international affairs, Spanish politics and old age quickly turned her into a celebrity, attracting followers around the world.

Towards the end of her life Maria Amelia used video rather than text to offer her thoughts.

'Elderly in action'

Maria Amelia Lopez only discovered the internet at the age of 95, when her grandson set up a blog (amis95.blogspot.com) as a birthday present.

But she quickly became a phenomenon.

A mix of opinions and nostalgia, tinged with a waspish sense of humour, her postings gave a deeply personal insight into the process of getting old.

She enlightened younger readers about her experience as an opponent of the Franco regime. And she blogged on modern-day politics ranging from the threat from Basque separatism to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

As her fame spread, the blog won rave reviews from as far afield as Alaska, China and Nigeria - and a prestigious international media award. There was even a meeting with Spain's prime minister.

This was one of her final postings, in February this year: "When I'm on the internet, I forget about my illness. The distraction is good for you - being able to communicate with people. It wakes up the brain, and gives you great strength."

Just three months before her death, Maria Amelia was introduced to the social networking site Facebook, where she set up a group called "the elderly in action".

Remembered fondly here as the "blogging granny" the internet has lost one its great characters.

Source: BBC News

'Welcome to Britain, a nation of binge drinkers'

Britain is becoming a nation of binge drinkers who like nothing more than "pigging out" on microwave meals in front of the television, according to the latest Lonely Planet guide to the country.

The eighth edition of the Lonely Planet guide to Great Britain, published today, warns those unfamiliar with life on what it calls "this damp little island" that we like to celebrate with "a big drink".

The authors write: "Across the country, alcohol consumption is on the rise, with the relatively new phenomenon of 'binge drinking' among young people a major concern for doctors, police and politicians."

And while Britons are obsessed with celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, our culinary habits "behind the scenes" are less appetising.

The guide comments: "Freshly created food sounds great in theory, but in reality the recipe for dinner is more likely to be something like this: open freezer, take out package, bung in microwave, ping, eat."

In fact Britons have developed something of a habit for self-delusion, the guide finds.

"Calmness in the face of adversity, a laconic sense of humour, a sense of decency and fair play, and mastery of understatement are all fundamental facets of the British character – at least, as seen by the British themselves.

"Ask the French, for example, and you might get a rather different list of attributes that includes stand-offishness, anti-intellectualism, public drunkenness and being **** at cooking."

David Else, lead author, said the purpose of the updated guide, which lauds the urban renaissance of many northern cities, was to give readers "the whole story" of life in Britain and not just the gloss.

Source: Telegraph

Do you agree with the travel guide's description of the British?

What is your experience of them?

Budget air-line?

Ryanair scraps check-in desks as it charges passengers £10 to print tickets at home (and a £40 fine if you forget)
Ryanair passengers face an automatic £5 charge to print out tickets at home as the budget airline moves to abolish traditional check-in desks, it has been revealed.

That means an ordinary round-trip ticket will carry a mandatory £10 surcharge.

And anyone who turns up at the airport without a pre-printed check-in card will have to pay £40 'boarding card re-issue fee'.

The new policy replaces Ryanair's previous practice of offering free online ticketing and charging £10 for anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in.

The old system discriminated against passport-holders from outside the European Economic Area, who were barred from checking in via Ryanair's website.

Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said the new system, to be introduced from next Wednesday, will further lower the airline's costs which will in turn allow it to drop prices for passengers by next winter.

'Passengers travelling without checked-in bags have already embraced our online check-in service and the extension of this service to all passengers, including those with hold luggage and those travelling with infants, will allow all passengers to forever avoid check-in queues,' he said.

'Ryanair's web check-in service allows passenger to check-in from 15 days to four hours before, and print, or re-print, their boarding card up to 40 minutes prior to their scheduled departure time. '

The new online check-in and 'bag-drop' system will be phased in at the 146 airports used by Ryanair by October 1.

The airline also announced it will no longer accept bookings for unaccompanied passengers under the age of 16 years from today.

All new bookings will require passengers - including infants and domestic flight passengers - to hold a valid passport or valid national identity card.

Mr McNamara said the new charges only apply to non-promotional flights and stressed 50 per cent of flights are offered on a promotional basis.

'We want to condition people to get into the habit of bringing their tickets with them to the airport, just as they would their passport,' Mr McNamara told Mail Online.

'It's a kind of a carrot and stick approach, and the stick is that people will get charged £40 if they forget their ticket. But if it happens once, they are sure not to forget it again.'

In-built restrictions on Ryanair's on-line ticketing system mean that many customers will be unable to print out their tickets at the time of booking, raising the chances for penalty charges from customers who think they've completed the process.

Ryanair says its computer system won't allow customers booking more than 15 days before their flight, or within four hours of one, to check in at that time.

So people booking farther in advance - common since Ryanair's cheapest deals often are offered months ahead and snapped up quickly - will have to get in the habit of revisiting the website again nearer the time of their trip.

European Union litigation has forced Ryanair to change the way it lists the costs of its tickets to include taxes and some - but not all - fees up front.

Advertised 'free' tickets can still end up costing £20 to £80.

For example, Ryanair adds £10 or more to each round-trip ticket per passenger if it's purchased with normal credit or debit cards, making the charge virtually impossible to avoid.

Nonetheless, this cost is omitted from the initial price. The airline defends this practice because it offers the option of free booking for holders of a restrictive, ill-marketed Visa Electron card that is not available in major countries.

Ryanair increasingly celebrates its penchant for imposing hard-to-avoid fees.

Chief Executive Michael O'Leary in recent months has alternately baffled, inflamed and amused press conferences with claims - now conceded to be sharp exercises in fanning free publicity - that he might introduce charges to use aircraft toilets and make Ryanair's fattest passengers pay extra.

He also has floated the idea of selling branded toilet paper with his own face on each sheet.

Source: DailyMail

Costa del Despair

They dreamed of an idyllic life in the sun. But thousands of expat Britons hit by the falling pound are caught in a terrible trap...

Climbing out of the cockpit of his Spitfire after completing his final mission as an ace World War II fighter pilot, Ian Ross made a solemn promise to himself. Having cheated death countless times - on one occasion staging a dramatic last-ditch landing with black smoke billowing from a shattered wing - he swore that he would cherish every day of life as a civilian and never worry about anything again.

To the young RAF Flight Lieutenant, that simple philosophy seemed the most fitting way to honour the many comrades he had seen killed, and for 64 years he managed to adhere to it.

This week, however, at his retirement home on the Costa del Sol - a small, sparsely-furnished second-floor flat near Marbella, which vibrates to the traffic streaming incessantly along the nearby main road - Mr Ross confessed that his wartime resolution is being tested to breaking point.

For like tens of thousands of expats who left Britain in search of the Spanish dream, this 94-year-old war hero is facing an enemy so pernicious that even he can see no way of defeating it.

In the UK we face spiralling national debt, plunging house prices, sky-rocketing unemployment and the return of 50 per cent income tax - but for the British expats on the Costas the situation is even worse.

The Spanish economy is predicted to shrink by 3 per cent this year and one in five people is expected to be out of work - twice the EU average. Home repossessions have doubled, bankruptcies soared, and the bottom is fast falling out of the tourism industry.

All this means that the recession is bad enough for the Spanish nationals, yet, as I discovered this week, when visiting many embattled expat communities on the Costa del Sol, for a rapidly increasing number of the estimated 750,000 Britons who live in Spain it has become a fullblown catastrophe.

The broad reasons are well-documented. Barely six months ago, £1 bought about €1.4, but with the exchange rate now at virtual parity, the private and state pensions on which many expats depend - and which are paid in sterling - have lost almost one-third of their value.

At the same time, interest rates on their investments have fallen from around 6.5 to 1.5 per cent. To compound their problems, many are tied into long-term Spanish mortgages at much higher fixed rates, so they are not benefiting from falling interest rates.

For many, this seismic shift in their financial circumstances has left them so broke that the Spanish Dream has turned into a nightmare.

Even such essentials as paying the rent or mortgage and clothing and feeding their families are beyond them, and they are being forced to sell heirlooms and trinkets at car-boot sales and to second-hand gold dealers (one of the few new boom businesses).

As if their plight was not serious enough, in recent weeks the situation for many expats has worsened dramatically. With the property market in freefall, they are finding themselves trapped.

There are now an estimated one million surplus homes on the conspicuously over-concreted costas, many of them purpose-built for the British market, but estate agents are closing down all along the coast.

And as the only buyers are speculators making audaciously low offers (50 per cent of the asking price is not untypical), the villas and apartments expats bought for optimum prices during the recent property boom - in the belief their value could only go up - have become virtually un-sellable.

So, even if they want to start afresh in rainy old Britain, they can't - or at least not without losing their entire outlay. An increasing number are so desperate, though, that they are doing just that; handing back the keys to banks and mortgage companies, packing up and flying home.

Since the British community in Spain is so vast and diverse, the casualties span the social spectrum, and, of course, some cases are clearly more deserving of our sympathy than others.

In the upmarket Marbella suburb of Nuevo Andalucia, stamping ground of Premier League footballers and soap stars, I met Stan Cornell, a roguishly charming property speculator from Slough, Bucks, who still dances and drinks till dawn at 62 years of age and describes himself as 'a bit of a playboy'.

A couple of years ago, the entrepreneur snapped up a fabulous threestorey villa built with wrap-around views encompassing Gibraltar and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, intending to gut and revamp it and sell it for a handsome profit.

Mr Cornell paid €900,000 (£640,000) for the then-desirable property and has spent a further £300,000 on it so far. Only a few months ago he could have expected it to fetch about £2 million when it was finished, turning a profit of more than a million.

But the mortgage alone is costing around £90,000 a year to service, and, with a buyer nowhere in sight, the property is 'bleeding me dry', he says. He is so desperate to get rid of it that he would gladly drop the price by a million and write off his losses.

'I've lost everything in recessions before, so I'm not quite on the little green and black pills yet,' he joked. 'But at this rate you never know.

'The one thing I won't do is go home. You can't behave like a teenager in your 60s in Britain, but you can in Marbella. And anyway, in the pubs at home my girlfriend couldn't dance on the tables.'

If our hearts don't exactly bleed for characters like Mr Cornell, who are in it for a fast buck and know the risks, one finds all too many genuinely sad stories; and surely none more so than that of former Spitfire pilot Mr Ross.

An Ulsterman, he returned to County Antrim after the war, where he married happily and carved out a career as an auctioneer.

When he retired, during the early Eighties, he and his wife, Maureen, who had no children, moved to a golf course villa in Spain, living modestly but comfortably on his state and RAF pensions, together worth about £13,000 a year.

His wife died from cancer 15 years ago, whereupon he moved to a smaller home and stoically set about making the most of the life that had been denied to so many of his generation.

Even at his advanced age, and suffering from arthritis, he still shops, cooks and cleans for himself, swims twice daily, and stays mentally alert by doing Sudoku puzzles. The problem is that at 94 he knows he cannot remain self-sufficient indefinitely and will soon need to be cared for professionally.

'Until a few months ago, I had made plans for what I would do when things reached that stage,' Mr Ross told me, sitting in the communal garden at his apartment complex on a beautiful April morning.

'As I have no family in Northern Ireland now and virtually all my friends are here, I thought I'd move into the old people's home at the end of my street. It's very pleasant there, and there are all different nationalities - English, Swedes, Americans - so even though I don't speak much Spanish I'd have plenty of company.

'But I've looked into this carefully, and because my pensions are paid into my bank in sterling, and the pound has fallen so badly, I won't be able to afford the home's £500-a-week fees.

'The only way I'll be able to manage is by going into a home in Belfast and I'm dreading that.

'Spain is my home now and I feel quite apprehensive about the prospect of having to go back to a strange place. I think that, and the miserable British weather, might just do for me.'

Unlike many Britons caught up in this mess, Mr Ross, who has all but given up his little luxuries, pities himself not at all. 'It's just how things are,' he says resolutely. He smiles and adds: 'My mistake was that I never expected to live this long. If I had known, I'd have put a bit more money by to provide for myself. It's all a bit unfortunate.'

This is something of an understatement. The situation is also 'a bit unfortunate' for thousands of others, among them Andrew Anderson, president of the Marbella-based British Association.

Mr Anderson is in a reverse bind to Mr Ross. His pensions have also sharply declined in value - but he is keen to return to his native Dunfermline. With Se Vende (For Sale) signs sprouting up all over the area, however, the 73-year-old architect knows he has little hope of selling his apartment unless he slashes the €225,000 (£205,000) asking price.

Thus, at a time when he would like to be roaming the Scottish heather with his new Trinidadian wife, he is trapped. 'With climate change, even the weather here is not as good as it was,' he said ruefully. 'Now it rains in summer.'

The picture grows more depressing still when you drive 40 minutes along the coast to the cheap-and-cheerful British enclave of Fuengirola, with its brash, football-themed bars, and cafes serving English pub grub.

Strolling along 'Fish Alley', a gourmet thoroughfare for British stodge and lager guzzlers, it soon became clear that the glutinous gravy-train has well and truly hit the buffers.

Usually by late April, the canopied terraces would be filling up with the Union Jack shorts brigade; but on Tuesday afternoon, with the thermometer tipping 72 degrees, they were eerily deserted.

Indeed, a good many British landlords have thrown in the towel and gone home. Among those still struggling on gamely, I found former London publican Fred Hill and his wife Anne, who paid about £65,000 for the lease to Friar Tuck's restaurant almost three years ago.

Like most of his rivals, he is attempting to lure customers with cut-price meals. 'This is the REAL deal,' reads his latest sign. 'Fresh Icelandic fish, fresh chips and mushy peas - only €7.50.'

Since imported fish prices have risen five times since he took over, one wonders how he does it.

'Business was fantastic at first,' said Mr Hill mournfully. 'We only needed to open from 6pm till 10.30pm, and we would get 90 customers. Now we open for 13 hours a day, and we're lucky if we get 30.

'I know two people who've just locked up and gone, losing everything they invested - tens of thousands of pounds. But we haven't quite reached that stage yet. Besides, there's nothing to go home to, is there?'

Sadly, the experiences of those who have returned to Britain suggest he is right, and not only because there are so few job opportunities and the economy lies in ruins.

Although the Spanish welfare system is far less generous than ours, affording scant protection to incomers who lose their jobs or fall on hard times, unemployed expats actually often find themselves worse off when they come back home.

What they fail to realise is that, by switching their residency to Spain, they have forfeited the right to claim UK benefits. Before they can do so, they must go through a laborious reregistration process which can take months. They must do the same to become eligible for NHS treatment.

'It can often be very difficult for those who go home because they find that the UK is not the great benefactor people seem to think,' says Tony Aldous, of Age Concern in Estepona, near Malaga. 'There should be a cross-border arrangement whereby benefits are transferable, but that is a long way off.'

Among those to have discovered the harsh truth are Suzanne Carmichael, 38, and her partner Carl Butler, who were forced back to Britain recently with their children, Zoe, 11, and Luis, two. Five years ago they sold their townhouse in Rochester, Kent, for £229,000 and took out a whopping €795,000 mortgage (£709,000 at today's exchange rate) to buy the home of their dreams: a white, Moorish castle-style villa with sumptuous views of the Mijas costa.

When times were good, they had no problem meeting their €3,000 (£2,500) a month repayments. But when their fixed interest rate ended, sending the monthly instalments soaring to €4,700 (£4,200), and they lost their jobs - she as a software company executive and he in construction - they couldn't manage.

Falling on the kindness of Mr Butler's mother, who offered to put them up at her home in Chatham, Kent, at the end of January, they gave back their keys (in an arrangement which at least preserved their credit rating) and flew home.

Almost three months later, the family who once dined nightly on a starlit terrace scented with bougainvillea, and spent idyllic weekends picnicking on the playa, are still humble lodgers.

'Coming back has been quite an eye-opener,' says Ms Carmichael. 'The first shock came when we were told that our UK passports and the fact we were born here meant absolutely nothing. The woman at Jobseekers even said to us: "Can you not just go back to Spain?"

'Since we got back, all we've had to live on is the £90-a-week Jobseekers allowance. The system is so severely under strain with the number of new people on housing benefit that we are still waiting for our claim to go through. Our child benefit forms haven't been processed yet, either.

'Another thing we have found is that people have such a negative attitude towards us. I class myself as very intelligent and hard-working, but because we have to claim benefits, through no fault of our own, we are treated as scum.

'That's very hard to take, particularly when you walk down Chatham High Street and see how standards of behaviour have deteriorated here since we left for Spain five years ago.'

Even after all they have been through, the family haven't given up on their Mediterranean idyll. Ms Carmichael says they may move abroad again once their daughter's education is completed.

Meanwhile, we must hope the battered pound strengthens sufficiently for Spitfire pilot Mr Ross to avoid spending his final years among strangers in some draughty British old folk's home.

He surely deserves his place in the sun. And when it comes to helping hapless victims of the Costa Credit Crunch, the country for which he fought so valiantly is no longer a land fit for heroes.

Source: Daily Mail

Fat tax

Ryanair proposes 'fat tax' for obese passengers
Budget airline considers extra charge for overweight after a third of travellers back idea in survey

Not content with plans to scrap check-in desks, charge passengers for using toilets and clobber customers with a £30 charge if their duty free won't fit into their hand luggage, Ryanair has hit on a new scheme for increasing revenue: a so-called fat tax for overweight travellers.

In what appears as much a ruse to gain publicity as a serious policy, the Irish-based budget carrier said today it would impose an as yet undecided extra levy on passengers who weigh considerably more than average.

The charge, which could fall foul of discrimination laws before it ever takes effect, was proposed following a poll of passengers on the airline's website. It attracted more votes than other ideas, including a €1 levy to use onboard toilet paper, which would have the face of the airline's famously pugnacious chief executive, Michael O'Leary, printed on it. The fat tax gathered nearly a third of all the votes.

The airline now plans to poll passengers on how the charge should be calculated, with ideas including a per-kilo levy for all men weighing more than 130kg (20 stone) and women more than 100kg, or a fixed penalty if a passenger's waist touches both neighbouring armrests at the same time.

"In all cases we've limits at very high levels so that a 'fat tax' will only apply to those really large passengers who invade the space of the passengers sitting beside them," said Stephen McNamara of the airline.

"These charges, if introduced, might also act as an incentive to some of our very large passengers to lose a little weight and hopefully feel a little lighter and healthier."

Several US airlines already oblige very obese passengers who spill over into neighbouring seats to buy a second seat in some cases. Earlier this month, United Airlines said it would do so for travellers whose size made them "infringe on another guest's seat".

Source: The Guardian

Ever gloomier economic outlook

World growth 'worst for 60 years'

World economic growth is set to fall to just 0.5% this year, its lowest rate since World War II, warns the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In October, the IMF had predicted world output would increase by 2.2% in 2009.

It now projects the UK, which recently entered recession, will see its economy shrink by 2.8% next year, the worst contraction among advanced nations.

The IMF says financial markets remain under stress and the global economy has taken a "sharp turn for the worse".

In another gloomy view of the UK economy, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Britain would be saddled with government debt for more than 20 years.

IFS director Robert Chote warned that spending would have to be cut or taxes raised by more than planned to allow public finances to recover.

The predictions came as Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization, urged countries not to react to the global economic crisis by resorting to protectionism.

Speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Lamy said such a move would be "a big mistake".

'Virtual halt'

According to the IMF, the outcome of the economic slowdown has been to send global output and trade plummeting.

"We now expect the global economy to come to a virtual halt," said IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard in a statement.

The IMF says that despite a number of policy moves, which have been carried out by many states, financial strains remain.

International co-operation is needed now to draw up new policy initiatives, and for capital injections to support "viable financial institutions".

Meanwhile, it predicts that the eurozone economy is poised to shrink by 2.0% in 2009 and the US economy by 1.6%.

Banking crisis

The report comes on the same day the International Labour Organization said that as many as 51 million jobs worldwide could be lost this year because of the global economic crisis.

It had been hoped that growth in developing nations would continue at a steady pace and help offset the recession in developed nations such as the US and UK.

But the seemingly endless crisis in the banking system has put paid to that notion.

Countries such as China are now struggling with a collapse in demand from their primary export markets.

Meanwhile, developed economies such as Japan, Spain, the US and UK are in recession, with new job losses being announced on a daily basis.

'Uncertainty'

The IMF says that growth in emerging and developing economies is expected to slow sharply, from 6.25% in 2008 to 3.25% in 2009.

It cites the main reasons for the drop as being falling export demand, lower commodity prices and much tighter external financing constraints.

The IMF points out that policy efforts to tackle the downturn so far - such as liquidity support, deposit insurance and recapitalisation - have been drawn up to address the immediate threats to financial stability.

However, it says that these emergency measures "have done little to resolve the uncertainty about the long-term solvency of financial institutions".

"The process of loss recognition and restructuring of bad loans is still incomplete," says the IMF's World Economic Outlook Update.

'Bad bank'

The IMF says future co-ordinated financial policies should concentrate on recognising the scale of financial institutions' losses and on providing public support to those institutions that are viable.

"Such policies should be supported by measures to resolve insolvent banks and set up public agencies to dispose of the bad debts, including possibly through a 'bad bank' approach, while safeguarding public resources."

The IMF says the global economy is projected to experience a gradual recovery in 2010, with growth picking up to 3%.

"However, the outlook is highly uncertain, and the timing and pace of the recovery depend critically on strong policy actions," it warns.

Source: BBC News