Cavesa wrote:But it is clear that French will never get such a position in the US. The natives and bilinguals (for example in Luisiana) stopped pushing their language into the society (probably for a variety of reasons, valid in the past) and learnt English.
I just want to make the point that, as I read in
The Story of French by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, after many Acadians were deported to Louisiana from Canada by Roosevelt and the Canadian PM at the time, later a policy of eradicating French from Louisianna was adopted by employing monolingual English speaking ‘French teachers’. They were forced to use English. And Acadians do not give up their culture and language easily.
I draw on this to illustrate, that in more ways than that which I have simply illustrated, that the future of French and Spanish, imo will be steered politically more than anything. And it won’t necessarily be one language group being promoted vs the other promoting theirs, as it could depend on which of the two languages, Spanish or French throws their hands in the air and says ‘I give up, my language is not relevant anymore, English is the global language’.
If I take a look at the world, as it currently stands with my very cynical / conspiracy like glasses on, as many of you know I can be, I’d say Spanish would win the race out of the two languages because...
...where Spanish is an official language it is more often than not the first language of the vast majority of the population, while French is often the second, third or fourth language of the vast majority of those countries in which it is official. English could replace it, and already has in some (Rwanda for example, or look at the amount of English taught now in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia compared to French, once ifluential).
The situation of French is more politically volatile than Spanish, which is why I’m doubtful of French predictions in Africa, even if it cannot be initially displaced by English, in a more and more globalised world, English is likely to be taught more and more in Francophone Africa and eventually French could be seen as limited in the globalised world.
To add to this, the current leadership in France is very pro-EU and pro globalisition. My research tells me that at the top in France there is more care for globalisation than pushing French itself, which means English will only increase its influence in Europe and Africa.
How many universities have English taught programs in Latin American countries vs France? You can call it economics if you like, but French people need more English than do Latin Americans, particularly those from South America.
Politically, French will lose to Spanish as Latin America is slower to adapt to the global defeatest trend coupled with the economic/globalising changes or at least Spanish has a much stronger foothold in Latin America than French in Africa. This is, what I currently see continuing into the future based on the current situation, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t occur as such.