Adieu to French?

French--and Americans--should learn from the Swiss

By Domenico Maceri

What has happened to French? In the thirty years before 1998, enrollments in Spanish-language classes in US colleges went from 32 percent to 55 percent while enrollment in French dropped from 34 percent to 16 percent. The reduction in the number of American college students taking French parallels a decrease in the importance of French as a world language. The French people themselves perhaps have begun to realize the decline of their language when Le Monde, France's most prestigious newspaper, began to include a weekly English-language digest of stories from the New York Times.

The French language's importance has been decreasing for many decades. Yet, some French people saw the action by Le Monde as another nail on the coffin. Of course, the French language isn't really ready for its funeral. French is spoken by more than 70 million people as their first language, and millions of others speak it as their second language. It is still one of the two working languages of the United Nations and one of its six official languages. And certainly the historical and cultural influence of French will continue for a long time.

When a language loses power, its speakers begin to learn other valuable languages. That was the reality which Le Monde was acknowledging. In so doing, the editors infuriated many French readers who saw in the English insert a recognition that French is no longer le top dog.

The editors explained that we are living in a multilingual world and learning about the "other" makes us stronger. They are right. The Swiss have been doing just that by fostering three official languages and recently added a fourth: English. Multilingualism hasn't torn Switzerland apart. In fact, it has contributed to the stability and prosperity of the country and provided its citizens with a high standard of living.

When one's own native language is the lingua franca of the world there is little or no incentive to learn another. It's easy to say, "Let the others learn English." This is a mistake, for we Americans have to learn about other cultures and we can start by learning their languages. Are any American newspaper willing to follow Le Monde's example?

Domenico Maceri teaches foreign languages in California.