The Story of French (41 page)

Since the end of the civil war, the Algerian government has gradually become more tolerant of French in its official discourse. It is even toying with the idea of joining the Francophonie (the subject of chapter 16). Algeria recently reintroduced French classes at the secondary and primary levels, and French is now mandatory from the second year of primary school. In effect, Algeria is moving towards a language policy that better reflects the linguistic reality of the country, similar to the approach of its two neighbours, the former French protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco.

French was never as contentious an issue in the latter two countries as it was in Algeria. For one thing, neither society ever had to deal with as huge a class of European settlers as Algeria did. And neither had a war of independence (both became independent peacefully in 1956). French is not an official language of either country, but there is nothing close to the kind of hostility towards French that there is in Algeria. A third of Moroccans and half of Tunisians are regarded as functionally francophone. Both countries have an open, tolerant, rather pragmatic attitude towards French, which they consider the language of the “modern world.” Technology, engineering, science and medicine are all taught in French.

National languages also played a role in shaping Moroccan and Tunisian attitudes towards French. Besides the fact that Morocco never travelled a violent road to independence, it has the highest proportion of ethnic Berbers in North Africa—fifty to sixty percent of the population, compared to twenty to thirty percent in Algeria (these are estimates). The Berber presence had a surprising impact on how French is perceived. Tamazight (the Berber tongue) is still used as the principal language of daily life in Morocco, and a sort of Berber renaissance underway at the moment is making efforts to revive and encourage its use as a written language. Historically the Berber majority in Morocco consider Arabic, not French, the language of the colonizer (Morocco started being Islamized in the seventh century). When the French arrived, the Berbers to some extent saw them as liberators from Arabic oppression. Indeed, it was the French who, in the early twentieth century, established the first institute to study Tamazight and Berber culture. On the whole, Berbers consider the French “on their side,” and the French language is neutral ground between Morocco’s native languages and Arabic, the language of religion.

Syria is the only former French protectorate that really succeeded with post-independence Arabicization. In 1963 the Baath regime embarked on an aggressive campaign to make Arabic the language of education, administration and everyday use. This campaign worked, partly because in 1941 the French had partitioned Greater Syria to create Lebanon, slicing off the most francophone (and Christian) part of the country. In 1943 there were 134,000 students of French in Lebanon and 104,000 in Syria, though the latter country is four times more populous. Now the number of francophones in Syria has fallen to fifteen thousand, but 294,000 children learn French in school.

In Lebanon the status of French was as ambiguous as it was in Tunisia and Morocco; Arabic was (and still is) the only official language. But French was sheltered in the newly independent country because Lebanon’s constitution ensures total freedom of language in teaching (and still does). Today French is still Lebanon’s first second language. Almost forty percent of Lebanese are considered francophone (according to the criteria of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie) and another fifteen percent “partial Francophones.” Some seventy percent of Lebanon’s secondary schools use French as the second language of instruction, compared to thirty percent that use English.

Lebanon’s school system is the main reason that French survived. When children start elementary school they are taught in Arabic, but they begin learning a second language almost immediately. Schools teach one second language, either English or French, but not both. In French schools math and science are taught in French, while history and literature are taught in Arabic. As students advance to secondary school and university, they are taught progressively more in their second language: In French schools, math, physics, chemistry and biology are taught in French, while history and literature, in most cases, are taught in Arabic. The education system is modelled on the French system, from primary school through university (a hangover of the protectorate). Lebanon also has three French-language universities—Libanaise, Saint-Joseph and Saint-Esprit—with a total of forty thousand francophone students. Lebanon has maintained strong cultural connections with France through scholarships and university exchanges. There are roughly fifty French-language publishing houses in the country, and literally thousands of French cultural centres, institutes and teaching bodies.

Roughly ninety percent of Lebanon’s Christians still speak French as their principal second language, whereas Muslims tend to favour English (but in a lesser proportion). Traditionally the Christians’ links to France and French culture have always been strong. We met Fady Zein, the Lebanese consul in Montreal, to discuss the situation. A passionate francophile, Zein talked about how much French-speaking Lebanese revere France, which has always supported them diplomatically, militarily and economically. “We consider France our beloved mother,” he said. Even Zein’s Arabic was punctuated with French words such as
ça va, merci
and
d’accord.

Besides Syria, Indochina (now Vietman, Laos and Cambodia) is the only other former colony where French regressed after independence. With their language policy there, the French very early planted the seeds that would lead to the loss of their colony. The seventeenth-century French missionary Alexandre de Rhodes was the first to transcribe the Annamite (later called Vietnamese) language from ideograms into Latin characters. Later French colonizers used this language, known as Quôc Ngu, in their attempt to introduce so-called “civilization.” They succeeded in displacing the influence of Chinese, but it was the Quôc Ngu language, not French, than benefited most from their efforts. Quôc Ngu gained popularity among the growing class of Indochinese intellectuals in the 1920s. By the late 1930s books, as well as hundreds of different periodicals, newsletters and bulletins, were being published in Quôc Ngu. This literary renaissance spawned a nationalist movement that became increasingly critical of the French colonial system. By the 1930s the movement had grown into a full-fledged protest against the colonial government.

The key figure of the period was Nguyen Tat Thanh (1890–1969), much better known as Ho Chi Minh (“he who brings light”). Ho Chi Minh studied at the French
lycée
of Hué and moved to Paris in 1917, where he worked at a number of odd jobs. In 1919 he attended the Paris peace negotiations as a cook’s assistant in the kitchen of the hotel that hosted the conference, and filed a petition asking for independence for his country. He organized groups of Vietnamese workers in France and joined the French Communist Party in 1920. In 1946 he declared Vietnam’s independence, sparking a bloody war of liberation with the French that later led to a civil war, which in turn would draw in the United States and China. It is still remarkable to consider how the Vietnamese forced a humiliating retreat on both the French and the Americans.

During the colonial period, French schools in Indochina were not very successful. As in Algeria, French spread almost exclusively through trade and commerce and because it was a language of social promotion. It was mostly spoken in the cities. After independence, when Vietnamese became the official language used in business, administration, education and the media, French began to decline. The virtual occupation of the country by the Americans in the 1960s and the growing influence of China to the north spelled the end of French. As in Louisiana, some older people still speak it today, but many people believe it will die out with the last generation that lived under colonialism.

Cambodia was a different story: French stood a better chance of outlasting colonialism there. This kingdom had been relatively accepting of French colonial power and remained part of the Union française until 1955. But the seeds of the future Communist revolution, which would reach its peak in the mid-1970s, were already growing. Pol Pot (1928–98) was a prime example of a former
évolué
who had been schooled in France, but he would literally wipe out all the French speakers in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge closed schools and monasteries, abolished private property and emptied the cities. Between 1975 and 1979 they killed about fifteen percent of the population—about two million people—mostly from the bourgeoisie and middle class, among whom were ninety percent of the French-speaking elite.

Still, the proportion of francophones in Cambodia is equal to that in Vietnam. According to statistics, 0.6 percent of Vietnamese speak French, compared to 0.5 percent of Cambodians and 0.2 percent of Laotians. The new king of Cambodia, Norodom Sihamoni, speaks perfect French, and in Laos, government forms are in both Laotian and French. French is said to have disappeared as a principal language in Vietnam. But some 163,000 Vietnamese are studying French right now, a number that compares favourably to the seventy thousand who attended French school during colonial times. In Thailand, which was not a French colony, fifty thousand people are learning French in order to emulate the strongly francophile royal family. The picture is the same in Cambodia, where the royal family is still very francophone. Interest in French has recently picked up again in the region as a result of the efforts of the Agence universitaire de la francophonie, and since the 1997 Francophonie summit in Hanoi, which Vietnam insisted in hosting (more on the Francophonie in chapter 16). So the story of French is not over yet there.

Statistics on French-language users (and for all other languages) have to be considered with care. While we were travelling to research this book, we came to the conclusion that the statististics didn’t always correspond to the actual state of French in a country—or of English, for that matter. Part of the problem is the difficulty in defining a francophone. Does the term apply only to those who speak French as a mother tongue? Or does it apply to second-language speakers who master oral French? Does one need to be able to write it? And where do French students fit in?

We became particularly sceptical about statistics when we visited Algeria and Senegal. Although only ten percent of Senegalese are officially regarded as fully francophone, and another twenty percent as partially francophone, it was rare to meet anyone in a city who didn’t have a functional understanding of French. Even in the countryside, most people we met had at least a veneer of French, picked up through a few years of school or from the radio. The picture was roughly the same in Algeria, although the proportions and numbers of francophones are much greater. Fluency is a question of degree, and no statistics clearly account for that.

During our travels we tried to get an idea of how much English was displacing French in France’s former colonies. This led us to understand a curious phenomenon. History has led many Americans, British, French, Spanish and Arab speakers to believe that languages are somehow a zero-sum game, that the gains of one language necessarily come at the expense of another. This point of view is widespread among journalists, business people and even diplomats. Yet from what we saw, nothing could be further from the truth. Most Algerians, Senegalese, Indians and Polynesians are at least bilingual (not surprisingly, since only ten countries in the world, and very small ones at that, are classified as strictly monolingual). The progress of French in Algeria and Senegal has made no impression on Arabic or Wolof. By the same token, the progress of French in some former British African colonies (French is now an official second language in Nigeria, for instance) has not affected the status of English there. And of course, in countries where French second-language teaching is the most extensive—Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia—few, if any, have lost their English.

Despite widespread belief to the contrary, English is not really threatening the status of French in France’s former colonies. In most cases the threat to French is coming from declining education systems. This is true in almost all developing countries, but especially in Africa (more on this in chapters 16 and 19)—and for that matter it represents a threat to English as well as French. As a result of failed investment, austerity measures and plain mismanagement, investment in education in Africa has been declining since independence. So, not surprisingly, few sub-Saharan countries can afford to teach new foreign languages, whether English or any other. In Atlanta, at the conference of the International Federation of Teachers of French, we met many African French teachers who deplored the fact that they didn’t have teaching materials adapted to African realities. “We still have teaching books with stories that talk about French castles and snow,” says Congolese professor Désiré K. Wa Kabwe-Segatti, who teaches French at a university in South Africa. “Kids in the francophone Congo don’t know what snow is!” And the fact is, introducing English into the schools is a luxury few African countries can afford.

While we were in Senegal, the question of English frequently came up. Over the past ten years there has been something of a
rapprochement
between Senegal and the United States. Making a departure from his predecessors’ ways, Senegal’s president Abdoulaye Wade has actively sought to steer his country away from France’s influence and into the diplomatic orbit of the U.S. To gain George Bush’s favour, Wade went as far as hosting a conference on terrorism in Dakar in 2002. Among the Senegalese elite there is much speculation about how this political realignment will affect French. One of Senegal’s star journalists, and a respected political analyst, Abdou Latif Coulibayi is the author of half a dozen books on the Senegalese political landscape and the owner of the country’s most influential private radio station, Sud FM. He assured us that the Senegalese elite have nothing to fear from English. “The Senegalese elite are keen on learning English,” he told us. “But by the time students discover English, they are already francophones. Not even the United States can erase the effects of three centuries of French presence in Senegal.”