Spreading the Words

FRANCE Spreading the Words

Next to his liver, the Frenchman's chief preoccupation is his language. One of the main reasons why Charles de Gaulle blocked British membership in the Common Market for nearly a decade was his fear that French would lose its place as the premier language on the Continent.

With British entry an active possibility once again, De Gaulle's old fears have reappeared among France's numerous linguistic patriots. Recently, 32 leading intellectuals and members of the venerable French Academy carried their worries directly to Georges Pompidou; in a bristling letter warning of the dangers of "subordination to the Anglo-Saxon world," the group demanded that the President take steps to see that French would remain "the working language of an enlarged Europe." Pompidou's reply included a solemn pledge "to preserve the legitimate place" of the French language in Europe.

Verbal Zeal. If Britain comes into the Common Market, the French fear, so will Ireland, Norway and Denmark, and all of them recognize English as the language of international diplomacy and business. Should the Six become the Ten, pressures to make English the working language of the European Community would rise in The Netherlands, Germany and Italy, where English is the standard second language. Eventually, Paris worries, French could dwindle to a mere regional language, current only in France, Monaco, French-speaking Switzerland and among the 3,109,000 Walloons of Belgium.

Rather than wait, France has mounted an unequaled campaign to keep its language alive. The ubiquitous Alliance Francaise today guides more than 500,000 students a year through French grammar and the stylistic nuances of Rousseau, Racine and De Gaulle in the 1,200 language centers it maintains around the world. It is supported partly by the government, partly by ordinary citizens who respond to leaflets pointing out that "for 10 francs--the price of a cinema ticket--ten Chilean children can be given an hour's French lesson." Some of the Alliance's more illustrious alumni are Teddy Kennedy, Pope Paul VI and Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato.

Currently, at least some 30,000 young Frenchmen are happily taking advantage of draft exemptions offered to anyone who volunteers to teach French in the hundreds of lycees and other schools spotted from the Ivory Coast to Indochina.

Severe Handicap. Partly as a result of this campaign, French is now the main language of a record 180 million people, far more than the 100 million that most U.N. agencies reckon as the minimum for a bona fide "working language." And while the British Commonwealth recedes, ties between France and other French-speaking areas--including the former colonies, particularly in Africa, and also Quebec--continue to grow stronger.

Still, French is at a disadvantage where it really counts: in the laboratories and board rooms of Europe. The language has often been criticized as basically too inflexible to accommodate new terms and new concepts--severe handicaps in a technological age. French Nuclear Scientist Louis Leprince-Ringuet jokes that he was forced to learn "70 words of English and 40 idiomatic expressions" before he could qualify as an international figure. As for the young Frenchman on the way up, he is expected to know all about le management and le marketing, le cash-flow and le spin-off--as well as the best places to be seen having le long drink with a girl wearing le short.

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