The place of the French language in our society

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

11 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

05/17/2009

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Linguistics

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Summary :

Introduction
The status of the French language
1. Definition of the French language
2. The place of the French language in the world
3. The International Organization for the Francophonie
4. The use of French in France
5. The French diversity
6. The French language abroad
7. Origins of the words
8. French as a working language
The French language in history
1. The Roman invasion of Gaul
2. The Franks
3. Langue d'Oil
4. Foreign language groups
5. Modern French
Modern issues
1. The preservation of French
2. French in the Globalization process and on the internet
3. Do you speak Franglais?
4. Esperanglais
5. French is fighting back
Conclusion: How to preserve French

Abstract

The french language is one those languages which are spoken all around the world. It's the 11th most used language through the world, the second most commonly-taught second language in the world (after English) and the official language in 29 countries . According to some estimations, more than 170 millions of people are french speaker, this means 3.2% of the global population. Europe gathers 44% of the francophone population, the USA 7.6%, Africa 46.3%, Asia 1.8% and Oceania 0.3%.

After the denial of the Constitution of the EU in 2005, many countries called into question the engagement of the french, who were with the Germans, the leader of this process. It appeared that the french were not ready to harmonize their laws and many people misunderstood the constitution, they perceived it as a threat for their culture, their jobs. But, the french can not deny the globalization and the evolutions which are going with such as the question which is on everybody's lips: in which ways can we consider English as a new Lingua Franca?

The french pride themselves for having an extremely "civilized" language, a pure language different from the English which is considered as a hybrid language. An amount of 1 billion $ is invested each year to promote the french language in order to maintain its place and its prestige all over the world. But the inevitable spread of English through the internet, the movies, marketing and the mechanism of globalization, is regarded as a threat to french. How does one preserve the french cultural exception and how does one safeguard linguistic diversity without expelling the country from the international scene?