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The story of the French and the English

The Story of French (St. Martin’s Press) by Canadian authors Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow is reviewed in The New York Times and praised as “a well-told, highly accessible history of the French language that leads to a spirited discussion of the prospects for French in an increasingly English-dominated world.”

The book offers a view into a culture in which French, since the 17th century, “has been treated by French speakers less as a language than as a work of art.”

According to the review, Nadeau and Barlow argue that French, spoken by 175 million people scattered across continents, offers a “counterweight to American political and cultural power.” The prestige of French culture, they say, “makes French an attractive second language around the world, giving it an influence out of proportion to its numerical standing as the ninth-most-spoken language in the world.”

However, William Grimes, the reviewer, goes on to note that “Mr. Nadeau and Ms. Barlow are four-square cultural protectionists who regard Quebec’s language laws as models.… From the evidence offered, it’s hard to tell whether the French glass is half empty or half full. Is French a surprisingly robust international presence, as the authors’ carefully harvested statistics seem to suggest, or an invalid that needs help crossing the street, terrified at being run down by Anglo-Saxon vehicles with an insane, cursing American at the wheel?”

Welcome to Canadian linguistic politics.

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Click here for the full review in The New York Times

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