3 ms·

I think it's a good thing we try to defend our language. With no international reach it would slowly be replaced by English even at home in some given fields (g

I think it's a good thing we try to defend our language. With no international reach it would slowly be replaced by English even at home in some given fields (graduate studies, for example). That said, promoting French should not be equated with replacing other languages (like it was done with regional languages): it is a non-zero-sum game as people can learn multiples languages. So we should not only promote French as a second language for international communication but also work harder to learn foreign languages. In this framework, nor English nor Esperanto development are ennemies of French use.

Bakary 9y ago
Learning another language provides enough of a challenge that monolingual English will necessarily win out in international communication and science in the long term as it is the solution that provides the least friction. However, I fully agree that France should be careful to preserve its own linguistic culture lest they become like Sweden or the Netherlands in terms of getting dominated by Anglophone patterns of thought and expression.