Batailles Perdues: Why Isn’t French the Global Language?
Last summer, the world descended on Paris, bringing a festive atmosphere to a city whose recent history has been characterised more often by angst than jubilance. In spite of myriad worries, the Jeux Olympiques went off without a hitch — except for one thing.
In addition to being the language of 2024's host nation, French is the co-official language of the Olympics everywhere. Yet, the big-shots and athletes who spoke at the Opening Ceremony almost all displayed an offensive preference for a different one. From where I watched, at one of the fan zones set up for those who did not have a spare €1,600 in their pockets for a bleacher seat, it was not hard to tell that French TV was rather aggressively dubbing the ceremony into the language it should have been in in the first place.
The situation is the same at international institutions from the International Court of Justice to the European Union. French is co-official, usually on par only with English. But translation is done as a matter of form, and read only by the French. Most Eurocrats in Brussels and Strasbourg prefer English, even though the only Anglophone countries in the EU are Ireland and Malta.
To be sure, French still has a lot of global clout. It is studied by schoolchildren from Saskatchewan to Shanghai, and listed in most passports. American ones give it pride of place before Spanish, the country’s de facto second language.
But it is clearly losing ground, even in home territory. If the Seven Years’ War had gone differently, French would have become the dominant language of North America, and would almost certainly dominate the world today. Instead, the government of Quebec is fighting a vigorous rear-guard action against the creep of English. Anglo Canadians grumble at borderline-Orwellian language policies. But meanwhile, the Cameroonian army is prosecuting an actual dirty war against the country’s English-speaking minority.
From the 17th Century on, French supplanted Latin as Europe’s lingua franca. It held the perch into the 20th. When the great powers hammered out the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, it was considered noteworthy that it was bilingual — in English. Frenchmen rue the concession to this day.
In the near term, French arguably still reigned supreme. English gained co-official status at the League of Nations, but most delegates still opted to speak and write in French, which is really not the case at the United Nations today. Language enthusiasts the world over should be forever grateful to Ambassador Gabriel Hanotaux, who stood firm at a fork in the road and vetoed a measure accepted by everybody else to make Esperanto the sole international language.
But as the last century went on, it became increasingly clear that there was a new king in town. French retained its official position. But everyone on earth knows the most useful language to learn in the modern world. So, what happened?
A hundred years ago, most people who travelled internationally were the sort whose parents hired French tutors for them. But in a globalised world, knowing a lingua franca has become a practical necessity for billions. For normal people (excluding scholars, snobs, and the very religious), the principal reasons to learn a new language are commerce and culture.
French does have plenty of soft power. Its literature is globally renowned, and it continues to enjoy a reputation as the language of refinement and high culture. But output in more modern media like music and movies, while strong, is not much ahead of other major European nations, let alone the United States.
A lot of people do learn a language for (or from) books, songs, and TV. But it is a big undertaking, and many more only go to the trouble if it will advance their careers. And in terms of unlocking economic opportunity, the gulf between English and French is yawning.
France’s GDP clocks in at $3 trillion, which is respectable. After all, it still tops the entirety of Africa, and is only just behind India, which has 21 times the population. On the other hand, the French economy is significantly less powerful than that of California alone. Texas is catching up rapidly. In per capita terms, if France joined the United States, it would be the poorest state in the union.
The UK is not doing much better. But of course, the modern world is bigger than Europe. Even discounting everyone’s favourite tea-chucking colony-turned-superpower, Britain’s seeds of empire fell on more fertile ground than France’s (or Belgium’s). There are 26 million Australians, and 106 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but who is more important for business and tourism?
French is still the world’s second international language. None of its potential challengers seriously threatens that position. Mandarin is great for business, but it is very hard to learn. In spite of Beijing’s efforts, there seems to be a cultural gap between East Asia and the rest of the world that prevent it becoming truly cosmopolitan the way European languages are.
Arabic has transnational appeal, both culturally and economically, but only in a specifically sectarian way. And a language that has translated fewer books since the 9th Century than Spain does in a given year has some work to do before it becomes a modern global standard.
For a time last century, Russian was a strong contender, at least for half the world. But now, it is just the language of one great power, which is neither particularly rich nor popular. On the other hand, everyone likes and respects Germany, except many Germans, who in any case are linguistically talented and (even before 1939) have never been particularly interested in projecting their language.
To be sure, French is still growing rapidly. This is mostly through organic growth in Africa, where 67% of French speakers now live. Some time in the late 2010s, Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, overtook Paris as the largest Francophone city in the world.
But one lingua franca is enough for any conversation. French will remain, into the indefinite future, a major regional language, like Chinese or Spanish. However, in the pivotal 20th Century, it lost the big crown.
Still, the legacy of l’age d’or is not going anywhere. Aviation, telecommunication, and other trans-global industries run on what is traditionally called Greenwich Mean Time. In 1967, the international community opted for the more neutral “Coordinated Universal Time.” But the French rejected the acronym “CUT,” insisting instead on “TUC,” for Temps Universel Coordonné.
What resulted was the fudged “UTC,” which makes no sense in any major language. In a world where more people learn English by the day, the legacy of French as an international language is with us in every hour.
