Speaking French

270 million people today can, to various extents, speak French. These are the estimates of the French Academy, which is a prestigious institution that consists of forty members (the “immortals”) - the prominent writers, artists and politicians who on a regular basis draft and publish a standard dictionary of the language of Racine and Molière, Balzac and Hugo, Proust and Houellebecq.

270 million people today can, to various extents, speak French. These are the estimates of the French Academy, which is a prestigious institution that consists of forty members (the “immortals”) - the prominent writers, artists and politicians who on a regular basis draft and publish a standard dictionary of the language of Racine and Molière, Balzac and Hugo, Proust and Houellebecq.

In our world with a population of over 7.2 billion people, this number may seem fairly modest. In number of permanent or occasional users, French falls significantly behind Mandarin Chinese (1.3 billion) and English, as well as Spanish and Portuguese, two languages that belong to the very same Romance group and that are spoken by hundreds of millions of Latin Americans. Among the three thousand living languages that are in use, French is only in 11th place in occurrence.

Nevertheless, it firmly holds one of the strongest positions in the linguistic table of rankings. It is not surprising that during international tests one in two school students in the world chooses French as a second language. There are good reasons for this.

What to talk about

The attractiveness of a foreign language abroad depends on many factors, both objective and subjective. Among former is, first and foremost, the potential content, or the information available in this language. Among the latter is the operational resource, i.e. the possibility of using its structural parameters (vocabulary, phonetics, grammar) for various purposes.

Globalization has made English the language of international business. Indeed the Industrial Revolution started in England, and throughout the 19th Century London was the international trade, economic and financial center, and the pound sterling was the world currency. The British Empire, with about one quarter of the total population of the world, was queen of the seas.

From the beginning of the 20th Century, the global economic center shifted to the English-speaking US, on other side of the Atlantic, which had a decisive impact on the outcome of the two world wars. Decolonization and the economic miracle of the Asian tigers helped enforce this tendency of supremacy of the English language.

English in its structural features was quite suitable for being used in international business due to the flexibility of synthetic notions, and the wide variety of regional dialects in different British colonies and dominions, their population consisting mainly of Anglo-Saxons.

Photo: Luigi Premazzi «The Cameron Gallery at
Tsarskoye Selo»,» 1859
The Russian empress Catherine II was in
correspondence with Voltaire and purchased
the library of Diderot

French could not successfully compete with its main international rival in the business area. Its homeland was behind Great Britain and later Germany, Japan, to say nothing of the US, in economic growth rate and volume of GDP; statism and protectionism were among the inherent features of its economy up to the middle of the 20th Century. The French colonial empire was much smaller than the British, and the French were reluctant to leave their country.

However, the French language turned out to have other advantages and fields of application. In the 17th Century, when one in every four Europeans was a French subject and the court of the Sun King Louis XIV in Versailles set an example for all other monarchs, French became the commonly accepted means of communication among the aristocratic elites in Europe, the language of higher social circles, upbringing of the younger generations, diplomacy and culture. Great philosophers and encyclopedists of the Enlightenment wrote in French. The Russian empress Catherine II was in correspondence with Voltaire and purchased the library of Diderot. Pushkin, whose nickname in the Lyceum was “Frenchman”, started to speak French before he could speak Russian.

The revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1871, the Napoleonic wars and social upheavals opened new and promising horizons for the French language. It became the language of politics and advocacy journalism, an expression of many fundamental European and global values - democracy, secularization, human rights. The acute struggle for them, at times taking radical forms, crossed national boundaries and became truly global.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th Century, France became the starting point for another type of revolution - the esthetic revolution of modernism in pictorial art, poetry, architecture and cinema, and 50 years later it gave rise to postmodernism. The rich cultural heritage of France made it one of the main tourist destinations: over 70 million tourists visit the country every year, whereas the population of France is significantly smaller than that.

One of the structural features of the French language is the exact and explicit identification of different concepts, which leaves no room for ambiguity. This can be explained by the existence of a great variety of synonyms, each having a nuanced yet precise meaning, which makes French an efficient tool in many natural sciences.

Hence French persistently and effectively protects its position from the hegemony of the English language. It remains the official or working language in all the key international organizations - the UN, the WTO, the IMF, the EU, etc. The headquarters of many of those, of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in particular, are situated in Paris - a city that hosts hundreds of congresses, conferences and workshops every year.

Photo: UNESCO Headquarters in Paris

All of this is happening not only due to the specific features of the language but also because of the focused efforts of the government, which has long since made the diffusion and promotion of French one of the main components of French “soft power”, i.e. improving the country’s image and increasing its authority in the international arena by non-military means (economic, political and cultural).

However, let us not oversimplify the situation. Many immortal pieces of world literature were written in the language of Shakespeare, Dickens and Hemingway; English is used to publish the overwhelming majority of modern scientific research, whereas the Michelins and Bettencourts created powerful transnational corporations on a global scale. Nevertheless, in the third millennium the historically privileged positions of the two leading languages of international communication remain intact.

Who talks

The departments of Counselors for Cultural Affairs in French embassies (in the number of which France is running a close second to the US) usually have special staff who are either in charge of classes of the French language for the local population taking place in cultural centers, or are engaged in promoting it within the educational system of the host country.

Their activities are coordinated by the main office for cultural, scientific and technical cooperation, where up to 40 percent of all the staff of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs work. They include not only career diplomats, but also members of the academic community - universities, research centers - and creative intellectuals.

Along with the governmental structures, the Alliance Française (French alliance) - a non-profit cultural organization - plays an important role in language diplomacy. Founded in 1883 by the most prominent members of the French intellectual elite - the great scientist Louis Pasteur, the famous writers Jules Verne and Ernest Renan, the developer of the Suez Canal Ferdinand de Lesseps and the publisher Armand Colin - the organization is in charge of over 100 French language classes in 135 countries, the total number of students amounting up to 440 thousand. It is noteworthy that the wide range of activities of the Alliance Française is mainly self-financed through tuition fees, renting out premises, etc., whereas state subsidies rarely exceed 5% of the total budget of the organization.

With whom to talk

French is the mother tongue of one in every three people who use it in their everyday life or in their professional activities. These are the 65 million French citizens including, France's overseas departments and territories, and the residents of the French-speaking provinces of Belgium (Wallonia), Switzerland and Canada (Quebec and part of Acadia).

Photo: robertbaxter.org
Map of the French World

The populations of the former French and Belgian colonies in the West and Equatorial Africa (20 countries) and in the Caribbean (Haiti) are a significant part of the French-speaking community. Since many of these countries are multiethnic, French remains an indispensable tool of interethnic communication for their citizens. It is officially a state language which is used in the government system and in the educational system, both of them having been designed on the model of and with assistance from the former mother country.

In other North African (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), Middle East (Syria, Libya) and Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) countries which used to be part of the French empire at different times, the achievement of independence was accompanied by “going back to one's roots”, including language roots. However, for many members of local elites, especially among the elder generation, French remains a symbol of belonging to the educated and privileged part of society.

French has a similar role in countries where local elites believe that it is a means of inclusion in the European culture and, to a certain extent, a counterweight to the aggressive expansion of English, which imposes certain patterns of living, consumption and mass culture that are inconsistent with national traditions (Turkey, Iran, Egypt).

In order to take advantage of this tendency for protecting and increasing French influence in the world, the French government initiated the founding of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, which comprises 56 out of the 193 UN member states. In many of those only a limited number of citizens speak French - for example, in Romania. At the Francophonie summits, the last of them taking place in Kinshasa (the Democratic Republic of Congo) in October 2012, not only are cultural and language issues discussed, but also major political and economic challenges .

A great number of non-governmental structures - the Association of French-Speaking Mayors, the French-Language University Agency, etc. - are contributing to the successful functioning of the head Francophonie organization.

All in all, the French language is an important factor in preserving and enriching the global cultural heritage. French policy can set an example for many other countries where national languages have for centuries played an equally important role on the regional scale, and to an extent the global scale. This concerns the Russian language above all, since its protection and diffusion are increasingly becoming the focus of close attention from both the Russian government and the general public.