Are we really giving our language all the love it deserves? If so, how to explain that an individual who has practiced his mother tongue since childhood and who will use it throughout his life never manages to master it? However, it was not the French lessons that were lacking in our childhood. Twelve years — minimum — of learning our language have not spared us this sad statistic that has persisted for years: more than half of the population has great difficulty understanding and using written texts to function normally in society.
To make us aware of the importance that we should give to French in our lives, our teachers should perhaps have given us the definition of a language and explained to us what it is serves. And then teach us its mechanics.
It would have been important to have been told, when we were young, of all the miles one can travel with twenty consonants and six vowels when they are made to dance with each other. Explain to us that we can paint with words. That our language can help us to question ourselves and others, to build ourselves and even to heal ourselves. That just like the arts, sports and leisure, it invites us to escape. The prospect that reading, like writing, could one day become faithful allies for us would surely have made it more attractive.
A popular expression says that with a language you go to Paris (or Rome, according to some). Seemingly playful, this quote should have enlightened us, because it alone reflects the importance of communicating well. She tells us about resourcefulness, intelligence, daring and all the doors that will open to us if we know how to make ourselves understood. In other words, it speaks to us of the future.
According to certain persistent rumours, the French language is in a fragile situation. No wonder when you have an English-speaking neighbor who is ten times our population. Except that the arguments put forward to defend it are unconvincing. It is hinted that the threat would come from others. They would have us believe that to love our language, we must deny that of others. And that if we like the language of the neighbor, we will inevitably lose ours. Fear has never been a good advisor or selling point.
Few initiatives on our part are put in place to defend our language and restore its luster, if not to present it as an eternal matter of dispute between two solitudes or brandish it as an insurmountable barrier. Even less to enhance it or project it into the future. The reactive rather than proactive attitude favored to date by our standard-bearers ended up disenchanting those who, even yesterday, harbored hopes for its future.
If our language deserves to flourish — and nothing indicates that it cannot achieve this — the society in which it evolves must be rigorous in its practice (hello, the media!) and give it a place of choice at all levels of education. Because the beauty of a tree, as a gardener would say, depends first and foremost on the quality of its soil. In other words, don’t each of us have a responsibility for its future?
For several decades, we have been told regularly, with great tremors, of his inevitable death. Let’s be honest, with the exception of an annual meeting without a future, on a beautiful June evening, how many times during the year do we hear about our language, its literature or its poetry? with love and pride? Asking the question is a bit like answering it.
French health is a matter of individual wealth and collective pride. We need to understand that a language, however difficult to practice it, is the result of the efforts made by the institutions and individuals who practice it, nurture it and respect it.
So let’s make the effort, all together, to give him a little more love before his last hour strikes. Because the worst thing that can happen to it is that because of our indifference, it finds itself condemned, before long and forever, to remain a one-night stand.