When Louis XIV was the King of France, French was at the peak of its worldwide importance and relevance. Absolutism and an aggressive approach to foreign relations, paired with a strong and charismatic personality, had turned him into France’s supreme head of state. His love for beauty and great taste had an enormous impact in the Arts and appears to have shaped the French style for decades and centuries, turning French into a synonym for elegance. Moreover, the language itself turned into a must-know for communication and education throughout Europe and beyond. There simply was no competition among European languages for supremacy over one another, as English never posed a threat to the French language of the time, it being spoken only by common people and French still being spoken at court. If a language had to dethrone Latin from its official role in diplomacy and foreign relationship, it had to be French: this choice was made in the XVIII century and lasted until the Great War.
Things have definitely changed over the course of centuries. In the blog post entitled “Hashtag or Mot-Dièse: adopting or adapting? New words and the translation issue” it was pointed out how new words from the world of technology and modern trends tend to impose themselves in other languages and how French reacted to that mechanism by creating new or adapted French neologisms in a bid to save the French language from being wiped out by these outer forces.
Yet, one might argue that the supposed decline of the French language had started way before the advent of the internet and the global social networking system with which we come face to face every day; and perhaps other reasons are to blame for the language’s downfall. History and politics have indeed played a big part in reducing the number of French-speaking people in the world: Africa, where a past of colonialism had spread the language throughout most of the continent, has shown to be more favourable to native languages, with many single countries preferring them over French or choosing English or Arabian as a lingua franca. The same has happened in North America and Asia, where English seems to be the dominant factor in communication and culture. This overturn, which happened in the last few decades and appears to be reasonable from a political and cultural perspective of self-determination, can also be interpreted as French’s decline in terms of influence and power. There simply is no comparison between the way Britain and France managed the end of their colonial age: the first turned the Empire into the Commonwealth, a strong system which still exists; on the other hand, France established the French Union (which was later on reinvented as the French Community) but this new system only lasted until 1995, which is when one can undoubtedly pin-point the true decline of the French language.
France’s effort to protect its own language comes across as an act of self-defense, an awareness, a project to at least preserve the French language within the borders of the country. Perhaps the act of defending itself from the hegemony of English and, soon, from the influence of other European languages such as German or international ones such as Arabic, Chinese and Russian, is the core of the problem. French must learn to communicate with the world, it just cannot reject the influence of languages from outside, but must become appealing and competitive to the international speaker. If one were to learn a foreign language, which one would be picked? French would be one of the most remote choices simply because there is no convenience, except the one of enriching one’s involvement with culture, French culture, which would only be limited to France. In a globalised world like ours, one will always try to associate oneself with an international language, a language that allows one to be versatile in communication, a multi-purpose language. French is not a top priority in this case, right now. Is the trend reversible?
