The inclusion of French in the Constitution of France only dates back to 1992. This is one of the pieces of information that you will (re)discover at the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, the doors of which are now open.
The International City of the French Language has been open to the public since November 1, 2023, an opportunity to learn more about this language which allows more than 320 million people to communicate around the world. A visit to the permanent course will reveal its thousand and one secrets (sometimes open ones). In the meantime, there are already seven with explanations from Xavier North, the main commissioner of the permanent course dedicated to French in Villers-Cotterêts.
“The language of the Republic is French”
Since 1992, this sentence has been included in the French Constitution and, not “French is the language of the Republic. because it is the language of countries other than France, underlines Xavier North, the main curator of the permanent route dedicated to “The adventure of French” in the new Cité internationale de la langue française. This inscription, he recalls, has coincided with the opening of the “large European market, this is the year when borders fall in Europe”. This is a good opportunity for France to reaffirm “on what its identity is based”. “The legislator felt the need to emphasize, to strongly emphasize that what makes us French is speaking French,” indicates the commissioner. He is “a constituent element of our identity in the same way as attachment to a territory”.
Eminently political
French has appeared for centuries as an instrument in the service of the State in France. “It is a language, which precisely in its political dimension, has been exploited by a power, hasfirm Xavier North. First royal power, then the Republic. It was made the instrument of political unification of the Nation. In other words, we are in a universe where the political unity and the linguistic unity of the Nation have gone hand in hand, have worked together. Which explains, even though this country is fundamentally multilingual – we have always spoken several languages in France – that it is an official monolingualism that has imposed itself. The Villers-Cotterêts ordinance played a considerable role in this regard.explains Xavier North.
A few centuries after this document which made French the administrative and legal language, “at the time of the French Revolution, only a third of French people (THE) were talking”. The French language finally imposed itself “very slowly”. By making the International City of the French Language “his” cultural project, President Emmanuel Macron has joined this old, uniquely French political tradition.
A global reach
French is used by 321 million speakers, making it the 5th most spoken language in the world after English, Chinese, Hindi and Spanish. It is the 4th most present language on the Internet, behind English, Spanish and Arabic. Likewise, “French is the 2nd most learned language in the world by more than 50 million people”according to the French Language Observatory. And it is not Paris, the city where most French is spoken, but Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the center of the African continent, which is home to the majority of French speakers. According to Xavier North, the best defense of French and therefore the right formula for leaving its mark all over the world, is its literariness. In other words, its capacity to produce concepts which can only be stated in this “world-language”.
Official language of the Court of Justice of the European Union
It is the only institution in the Union where French occupies this place. The European Court has thus preserved its legal dimension. The institution thus deliberates in this language. French is its working language: a case is introduced in its original language, translated into French and the judges render their verdict in this same language. Their decision is then transcribed into the 23 other languages of the Union. “It is the language of European law”summarizes Xavier North.
Mediator
“The reality of French in the world is this (…): French is always in coexistence with other languages”analyzes Xavier North, with “Arabic in the Maghreb”, “the extraordinary abundance of African languages, it dialogues with English and this dialogue is conflictual in North America because there are power struggles between the languages“. French is “always in contact with other languages” And “this is what gives it its mediating function.” He is “par excellence a language of dialogue between cultures”. On its territory of origin, French coexists with Arabic, the most widely spoken language after it, and 72 regional languages.
Recognized by the Nobel Prize in Literature
The writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she discovers the roots, the distances and the collective constraints of personal memory”. She thus became the 16th French author to receive the prestigious literary award. “France, explains Xavier Northis the country that has won the greatest number of Nobel Prizes for literature.” Likewise, after English, French ranks second among the languages that received the most.
The language of Molière
Why the periphrasis “The language of Molière” Does it mean French? Unlike Racine and Corneille, replies Xavier North, “Molière speaks the language of the French: aristocrats, bourgeois, doctors, peasants (…), patois has its place in the rooms and even the lingua franca, the language of sailors. All the ways of speaking French the era of Molière appear in his dramatic repertoire.”