Walter - Chapter IV: French outside France
The status of French and international diversity

1. The situation of French
Since the inter-war period, it is a fact that English has replaced French as the international language. The situation was so alarming that de Gaulle created the Haut ComitÈ de la Langue FranÁaise in 1966 to “defend and spread” French. All French presidents have been concerned with preserving the national French symbol.
Areas of concern: - international scientific congresses (even those held in France)
- international summits
Golden age: - French was exported outside its borders as early as the Middle Ages (table pp.130-31) with William the Conqueror (11th c. England) and Marco Polo (13th c. Far East); colonisers ventured to America and the Indian Ocean (17th c.), Oceania (18th c.) and Africa (19th c.).
- French replaced Latin in philosophy, medicine, banking and business. It became the language of science and technology, diplomacy and high society in Europe where royal courts invited French writers; foreign writers used French (part of the Divine Comedy of Dante is in francoprovenÁal, Leibniz, Tolstoy, Casanova).

Present situation: one of the official working languages of the UN, NATO, UNESCO, Islamic Conference and the Arab League; official language (with Latin) of the Vatican, Olympic Games (Pierre de Coubertin).

French also “survives” well in foreign languages (tables pp. 132-33), and is still spoken on other continents (map p. 136), although it is difficult to know exactly how many francophone speakers there are. Walter cautions us that we need to distinguish between:

- those who do in fact speak French every day
- those who can speak it but use another language
- those who understand it but cannot speak it.

Estimates vary between 140 to 300 million. A conservative estimate would be:
- 10 million in Europe (not counting France: 62 million)
- 15 million in North Africa and the Middle East
- 10 million in Canada, United States and West Indies
- 7 million in black Africa
- 4 million in Indian Ocean, Asia, Oceania

Luxembourg: since the Middle Ages, rulers married French princesses and French replaced German as the official language in 1946 (Germanic dialect still spoken).
Italy: Val d’Aoste, Duchy of Savoie and part of Piedmont spoke French for centuries. Official written language in 1536 (before edict of Villers-CotterÍts). France annexed Savoie in 1860.
Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernesey, Stark): remains of the Duchy of Normandy still gives a special status to French which is used with English as the language of the administration on Jersey.
North America: St Pierre-et-Miquelon, parts of Canada, communities in Louisiana, Missouri, Missippi, Frenchville in Pennsylvania and New England.
West Indies: Martinique, Guadeloupe, HaÔti, Saint Thomas.
South America: French Guyana; one of the official languages in 18 African countries where people do not necessarily speak it; not official in Magrheb but well used.
Middle East: French spoken in Lebanon since the 19th c.; all presidents, many ministers, parliament members, top civil servants are former pupils of the French Jesuit fathers. French mandate lasted only from 1920 to 1943; English has become the language of banking and trade but French remains the language of culture.
Indian Ocean: language of the intellectual elite on Madagascar after its independence (1960); people have mixed feelings about France. Situation is more favorable to French on Mauritius.
Asia: 75 years of colonisation in former French Indo-China left some traces; prestige among the intellectual elite in Laos and Kampuchea (former Cambodia).Ha Noi in Vietnam is hosting the 1997 Summit on Francophonie (read the Vietnam news).
Oceania: official and common language in New Caledonia, used with Tahitian in French Polynesia, and English in Vanuatu.

2. Diversity of French outside France
a. Belgium
Linguistic division since the Middle Ages: Flemish region and its Germanic dialect to the North vs Walloon region and its Romance language to the South. French also spread to Flandres in the Middle Ages and became the language of the aristocracy, religion, administration, culture and writing. Attempts to get rid of French in the 14th c. failed as French had already spread to the middle classes, and by the 18th c., to towns throughout the country. Today, French is spoken in Walloon and parts of Brussels in Flanders.
Characteristics of Belgian French pronunciation (according to Jacques Pohl):
- distinction between brin/brun
- length distinction between patte/pate
- length distinction between aime/aimee, nu/nue (masc./fem.)
- two syllables in lion, nouer
- u pronounced ou in huit and enfuir
- devoicing of final consonants (Serbe, perde, douze)
Less widespread but still common (working classes):
- distinction between bouleau/boulot, maux/mots
- nasalization of vowel in front of nasal consonant (meme pronounced minme)
These characteristics (older forms of French) are also present in one or more French regions. Belgian French has many specific lexical items which differ from standard French (p. 141).
b. Switzerland
There is no real linguistic frontier between France and Switzerland, and Swiss French is similar to the French spoken in Franche-Comte, Bourgogne and Savoie (map p. 143). French is a prestigious language for the German-speaking Swiss elites.
Characteristic of Swiss French pronunciation:
- open o in pot, mot, sabot => distinction between pot/peau, maux/mots
Lexical characteristics (p. 142).
c. Canada
French “pilgrims” introduced their language in the 17th c. There are 6 million true francophones, 5 million live in Quebec where 98% of them are of French ethnicity. See map p. 145.
- Acadians were French people from Poitou, Aunis and Saintonge who settled around 1604 in present Nova Scotia (called Acadia then). In 1755, they suffered the ‘Great Upheaval’: France and England fought over Acadia up until 1670; it was French until 1713 when it fell under English rule. The Acadians refused to swear allegiance to the king of England and were deported in 1755: forced to embark on boats at Grand-PrÈ, the few survivors scattered throughout North America. The present Cajuns or Cadjins living in Louisiana are their descendants. Others found refuge in present New Brunswick with the help of the Indians; some were sent back to France or shipped to England.
The world discovered that tragedy only a century later when Henry Longfellow wrote a long poem telling the story of Evangeline Bellefontaine who spends the rest of her life looking for her fiancÈ after they were separated at Grand-Pre: when she finds him, they are both very old and he’s dying.
- Settlers, who created the Nouvelle France or Canada from Quebec, Trois Rivieres and Montreal, had a more peaceful existence. Canada became an English colony in 1763. 25% of the population was anglophone. Montreal remained mostly anglophone until 1871. After Paris, it is the largest French-speaking city in the world.
- Pronuncation characteristics in Quebec:
- assibilation of occlusives: t as ts, and d as dz
- banc, gant, vent as bain, gain, vin
- specific lexical items p. 149-50.

Canada is very much involved with Francophone issues.

d. Louisiana (named after Louis XIV in 1682) was French only until 1803 when it sold by Napoleon to the Americans. The first settlers were joined by the Acadians (–> Cajuns) in 1755, then French refugees from the Revolution, and finally black slaves from the West Indies. These three settlements created three linguistic varieties:
- colonial French or old creole French (New Orleans and Mississippi plantations) preserved in long vowels and written form.
- Acadian/Cajun in spoken form, as the most widespread.
- black creole or Louisiana creole (gumbo French or courimavini): creole similar to the West Indian creole, spoken mostly in the south.
e. West Indies and Guyana
In the West Indies (Martinique, Guadeloupe and its dependencies), French is the official language, spoken and understood by most, but the everyday language is the creole formed in the 17th c. (result of French and African languages spoken by slaves). West Indians and Guyanans are bilinguals.
- characteristics of West Indian French: r is weakly pronounced; a few lexical differences.
f. Africa (map p. 152 - Senegal 17thc, other countries 19th c.)
Black Africa. All the varieties of African French are a ‘school’ French, with each African language influencing French in its own way. See lexical differences p. 154. The elite speaks an excellent French, but only 5 to 15% of the population uses it. Usage varies greatly from country to country though. In Zaire, it is read and heard but not used as a lingua franca as in the Ivory Coast where is it used in daily life.
North Africa. French colonies dated from 1830 in Algeria, 1881 in Tunisia and 1912 in Morocco. French immigration lasted until WWI. Italians in Tunisia spoke French as well. Among the foreign people living in Algeria, Jews became French in 1870, Spaniards, Italians and Maltese in 1889. By 1930 French was spoken all over Algeria and French people no longer spoke Arabic. After the independence of the Magrheb, arabicisation did not succeed in ousting French: most public signs are bilingual and French is taught in schools from the 3rd year of primary school, is the compulsory second language, and some subjects are only taught in French.
- characteristics of North African French: men pronounce r as in Italian (rolled) while women pronounce it as in Standard French (velar). This difference may be explained by:
- soldiers and teachers (early colonisation) used a rolled r and passed it on to men who initially were the only ones learning French. Later, when girls were schooled, teachers pronounced a velar r. They are now spreading this usage, which gave the non-rolled r a “feminine” characteristic.
- the lingua franca or sabir (very widespread in North Africa) used before French colonisation used a rolled r.
- Pieds-Noirs: Algerian French (also applied to Tunisian and Maroccan) spoke a special variety of French which became well-know in the 60s when they returned or moved to France.

Africa is very much involved with Francophonie as well.

And you may want to read about France's foreign policy.