Cultural Journal Report
Pardon My French
by Michael Kimmelman
published April 21st, 2010
Summary
This article is an interview with a Mr. Zemmour. He first talks about his own book French Melancholy, then he speaks about the French language. People are using French less and less often, he says. The French elite have given up. They all speak English. And the working class, I'm not talking just about immigrants, the don't care about preserving the integrity of the language either. From Mr. Zemmour's point of view, France has lost a lot of it's connection to its history, partially because of all the new immigrants and other influences. The language of French is key to France's culture. Now a lot of the people who speak French aren't even from France.
Thoughts
I hadn't realized that France's number of French speaking people was so low. It made me think about how languages have moved around and where each is spoken. I guess it's a good thing that French is moving around the world and being spoken in other places, but isn't it also important that it's spoken in the place where it originated? Shouldn't that be the place where the most people speak it?
Tying Into France's Culture
The languages we speak are tied in with our culture. It's more than just the way we communicate with each other, it's about traditions and being able to speak the same language and communicate the way that your grandparents did. It's also in our everyday lives, in music, in our jokes and the words we use on a daily basis. When France's language starts to leave, will their culture change with it?