Besieged by English and threatened with domination from the Anglo-Saxon culture, France is not doing enough to promote its language and the much touted Francophonie is in a deep crisis, French experts have said, urging the government to "increase efforts."
The damning revelation is contained in a new report that was submitted to the French government earlier this week, calling for the launch of a large-scale offensive to promote and demystify the language.
"The Francophonie is very little known. There is a general lack of visibility in France because we do not believe in the Francophonie and the country has failed to promote its language," Herve Bourges said Wednesday while submitting the report to France's Secretary of State for Cooperation and Francophony Alain Joyandet.
"In France itself, the concept of Francophonie appears retrogressive, obsolete and unheard especially among the younger generations," said Bourges, one of the authors of the report that was commissioned by the government.
"France bears a responsibility in this malaise within the francophone community, which is estimated at over 200 million world-wide stretching from Haiti and Vietnam, through Africa," Bourges said.
France, which has always lived "too inward-looking," notably owing to the "weight of the colonial legacy which is increasingly being seen as hostile by the French-speaking populations in the South," said the report.
"There is need for increased efforts to demystify the Francophonie," said Bourges, calling for more visible actions from the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF), which has 68 member states.
France should launch a "linguistic counter-offensive, by multiplying, as did the United States, the use of our language on the sidelines of negotiating trade or diplomatic agreements" in order to impose French, said the French linguist.
"We must launch the offensive to ensure that French is developed in confident manner, just like English, because the current battle is not only linguistic or cultural aesthetic. This is a battle in which the real stakes are measured in terms of bothpolitical influence and economic growth," according to the report.
In the report, Bourges notes that the British Council has launched a program aimed to increase the number of English speakers from 2 to 3 billion with an investment of 150 million euros (about 233 million U.S. dollars), at a time when the OIF has set aside an estimated 6 million euros for the implementation of programs to promote French.
To remedy the situation, the French linguist proposes the incorporation of the concept of Francophonie in schools and colleges, creation of a "Francophone Academy" on the model of the French Academy and the establishment of a program to encourage exchanges between universities in the North and South.
There is also a need to create a "Francophone visa" modeled on the "Commonwealth visa" with a view to facilitating the flow of persons within the Francophone world and spur the creation of an expansive zone that "brings together a third of the countries represented at the United Nations," according to Bourges.
Overall, the Francophonie must be less financially dependent on France "which today provides up to 50 percent of the budgets of Francophonie institutions," said Bourges.
The French linguist further called for the creation of a "Francophonie Foundation," which would be dependent on the OIF but which could also raise private funds to support language programs.
Source:Xinhua
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