Bernard Cerquiglini on the decline of French

As the International Organisation for French Speaking Communities (OIF) opens its summit conference in Bucharest this Thursday, September 28th, the linguist Bernard Cerquiglini notes that the French 'no' to the referendum on the European Constitution is in part attributable to the relationship the French maintain with their own language. "Despite their official multilingualism, political Europe seems to have chosen English. Most French people find the idea of an English-speaking Europe revolting, they consider it, not without reason, the allegiance to a certain European policy, with the importation of anglo-saxon judicial and economic concepts. Liberalism begins with lexical Atlantism. The French distress can be measured with the referendum. The oppression of its language's universalism, is a blow to the national identity. And European desire is waning."

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