French: A Dying Language or Still Important? (generations, polls, fence)

[lexdiamondz1902]

Originally Posted by Acajack

As education levels increase in francophone African countries, one can also expect the number of French speakers to increase as well, as this is the language they teach in. In almost all francophone African countries, the percentage of the population that can speak French is increasing. Sometimes rapidly.

And it's not simply the élites either. Ever since the refugee crisis hit the mediterranean, with thousands of Arab and Sub-Saharan African migrants journeying to places like Ceuta and Lampedusa, many of the interviews I've seen of migrants have been in French. People who literally have nothing but the shirts on their backs. So much for it being restricted to the élites...

[2bpurrfect]

a dying language? hardly, especially if even 100,000,000 people speak it,that is a large number. French has not been the "lingua franca" (lol) for a couple centuries now, so , why is this even being asked? in the usa, we don't need much french, the only french speakers are in Louisiana and Canada, and Caribbean isles. So its importance depends on your location, or the group of people you have to deal with. Calling it a dying language is just absurd.
The French and millions of others still speak it and aren't giving it up for some other language anytime soon. This is an obvious non-issue, there's no chance of the French language dying until the Second Coming of Christ, if even then.
If you just wanted to ask how relevant or important French was in the whole world today,that is a different question.
Are you trying to determine which language to study in college? depends on your purposes.

Originally Posted by KellyXY

Do you think that French is a "useless" or "dying" language, or does it still have relevance in the modern world? I've seen on here (and elsewhere) someone chiming in when asking about learning French that you should go with something else more "practical" like Spanish or Mandarin. Below I'll post my opinions against French's major "competitors" in language study .....[ blah blah blah]....
What do you think?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by KellyXY

Thanks for your thoughts!

I think an important point to remember about French is that although it is outnumbered by at least several other languages going by numbers of native speakers, in terms of its importance in official capacities it is still probably the second most important world language (after English). Hence the stats often cited like "used in 29 countries on five continents" (I'm not sure about the exact number of countries but IIRC that's how many). That's unlike Spanish where most of the countries where it's an official language the majority of its citizens speak it, but with less international official recognition - or Mandarin, which boasts the greatest number of native speakers but are found mostly in one country that is enjoying an economic sweet-spot in the present times.

Interestingly that point is also one that I use to contrast the "French in Canada vs. Spanish in the U.S." debate. The former is more of a "second language" when it comes to officialdom, whereas the latter presents a greater likelihood of finding a non-English speaker in real life. For example, French is enshrined as a language co-official to English in the Canadian federal government - all services are available in both languages nationwide, most packaging must display both languages, etc., but there are many parts of Canada where you'd be more likely to hear someone speaking something other than French on the street. In the U.S. it's the opposite - in all but a handful of areas you are more likely (often by a large margin) to hear Spanish than any other non-English language IRL, but it doesn't have the same status in the federal government as English (e.g. sometimes services are available in or packaging will show Spanish, but it's not mandated across the board like French is in Canada).

It's a favourite meme of the anti-French crowd in Canada to talk about the uselessness or absence of French. This is a more reputable link on this issue:
CBC News Interactive: Languages in Canada

While it does show that certain immigrant languages are more present than French in places like BC for example, it also shows that French isn't as absent as if often alleged.

Also note that ''Chinese'' isn't really a single language, and lumping all Chinese languages together (in order to show it outnumbers another?) is almost akin to lumping together ''Germanic'' or ''Romance''…

[Tritone]

Originally Posted by 2bpurrfect

French has not been the "lingua franca" (lol) for a couple centuries now, so , why is this even being asked?

Is hasn't been nearly that long. In the early half of the 20th century it was still used as a diplomatic "lingua franca". The dominance of English didn't come about until after WW2.

[Cida]

Just because a language isn't the most widely used in the world certainly doesn't mean it's dead.

As for Spanish being practical, most people who say that are thinking of their ability to speak with illegal immigrant workmen, which isn't a high priority for me.

[masonbauknight]

French is pretty much done in the US as a foreign language. All one has to do is compare statistics: now versus the 1980s, and especially now versus the 1950s/1960s, when the typical foreign language in US schools was French. French is the second-most-studied language in US schools and universities after Spanish, but here in New York, it's sometimes 3rd or 4th (after Spanish, Mandarin, and Italian). The French-language press was crowing about a front-page report in the NY Times back in January. The article noted that French was making kind of a comeback in New York public schools (three new bilingual French-English schools created after intense lobbying by the French consulate and local French business community). Yet there are still more Spanish-English and Mandarin-English bilingual schools in the NYC public school system, a fact many French and Québécois media chose to leave out. The decline of French as a foreign language is also evident in other countries such as Germany, where French has taken a beating as a studied foreign language in some German Länder. The trend is not good, and certainly compared to previous decades.

[slowlane3]

Either Rwanda or Burundi ? recently officially changed their language from French to English.

[O.C. Ogilvy]

The Seven Years War ended this debate in 1763. Canada is still dealing with its French speaking minority in Quebec. Us Americans, who benefited from the Seven Years War because it hurt England financially, making it feasible for us to fight a winning colonial war against our oppressors never had that problem. Sure, some French speakers exist in Louisiana and Maine, but those states aren't interested in leaving the Union. For the record, I support Quebec independence.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by masonbauknight

French is pretty much done in the US as a foreign language. All one has to do is compare statistics: now versus the 1980s, and especially now versus the 1950s/1960s, when the typical foreign language in US schools was French. French is the second-most-studied language in US schools and universities after Spanish, but here in New York, it's sometimes 3rd or 4th (after Spanish, Mandarin, and Italian). The French-language press was crowing about a front-page report in the NY Times back in January. The article noted that French was making kind of a comeback in New York public schools (three new bilingual French-English schools created after intense lobbying by the French consulate and local French business community). Yet there are still more Spanish-English and Mandarin-English bilingual schools in the NYC public school system, a fact many French and Québécois media chose to leave out. The decline of French as a foreign language is also evident in other countries such as Germany, where French has taken a beating as a studied foreign language in some German Länder. The trend is not good, and certainly compared to previous decades.

Despite what you think I don't find the French or Québec media convey anything illusory about the global importance of French. They are pretty realistic.

That said whether current events are taking place in Tel Aviv Moscow Washington Buenos Aires or Tokyo it is always interesting how Radio France or Radio Canada never have any trouble finding someone local and knowledgeable (univ prof, local official etc) to discuss it in French.

[Acajack]

(Swiss German) Sepp Blatter of FIFA made his résignation statement in French only last week hahaha!