Who’s French and Whose French
French is now spoken mostly by people who aren’t French. More than 50 percent of them are African. French speakers are more likely to be Haitians and Canadians, Algerians and Senegalese, immigrants from Africa and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean who have settled in France, bringing their native cultures with them.
That’s Michael Kimmelman in his latest New York Times column Pardon My French, which examines global French, immigration, and what it all means to French and Francophone identity.
It’s fascinating for a few reasons, not least of which is that France has positioned itself as a bulwark against American-dominated globalization and Anglophone domination. In some ways this is about cultural resistance, even as it smacks of ethnic chauvinism and racism.