https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Academia_Española https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Academia_Española It's similar in terms of language, but very different

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Academia_Española https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Academia_Española It's similar in terms of language, but very different in terms of culture. Since Spain is a multilingual country the language is does not play a big part in the nationalistic sentiment (though this was different under Franco). The French national identity revolves pretty much around the language and its uniformity: if you went to a French public school and speak French then you are as good as French (remember that France has jus soli). You can contrast this with Germany, where there are many different dialectal variants of German and they are all acceptable and the German identity is more focussed on blood. Or with the USA which don't even have an official language. Once you understand this, you'll understand why it's so important for the France to translate everything and why they spend so much money promoting French in other countries: to them the fact that a lot of people in, say, Senegal speak French means that Senegal is somewhat still under their influence. The more people speak English in France, the more they feel they are a colony of the US.