About French

Few people in China know that the last week was La Semaine de la Francophonie. On March 2th, I attended a reception hosted by the ambassadors of Belgium, France, Switzerland and Canada to commemorate the annual French Week. The four ambassadors lined up and shook hands with the guests. When greeting the French ambassador, I told him in French that I was from China, but he suddenly told me in Chinese that he could speak Chinese. I immediately asked him where he learned Chinese, and the French ambassador's favorite diplomatic phrase from China replied solemnly, "I learned Mandarin in Taiwan Province Province of China", and the host and the guest laughed heartily.

The French ambassador showed Chinese in French Week, which shows that Chinese is playing an increasingly important role in the world. No wonder some people think that Chinese will replace English as an international language in the 21st century. This is a bit too optimistic. In fact, in order to replace English, Chinese must first surpass French. Many people take it for granted that French is declining, but in fact French is still a strong language in today's world. Whether a language is strong or not depends not only on how many people speak it, but also on how many countries and regions speak it. According to statistics, there are 2 million people who speak French in the world, of whom only 6 million are French, and others are distributed on five continents. There are more than 2 countries and regions in the world that are the official languages in law or in fact. The number of people studying French in the world reached 9.7 million in 22, an increase of 15.4 million compared with 1994. Since the French-speaking population is mainly concentrated in developing countries in Africa and America, and the population of these countries is growing rapidly, the French-speaking population will continue to increase.

Let's look at Chinese again. The global population who speaks Chinese (including Putonghua and major dialects) is as high as 1.4 billion, but 99% of them are concentrated in China (including Taiwan Province and Hongkong). Besides, only Singaporeans speak Chinese. According to the most optimistic estimate, there are only about 3 million people studying Chinese overseas, most of whom are descendants of immigrants from China. In addition to immigrants of China origin, foreigners who study Chinese mainly come from two countries which are deeply influenced by Chinese culture in history. The number of Chinese learners in Europe, the United States and Africa is still rare, far lower than that of French learners. I have a university classmate who is now teaching in a university in Hong Kong. His scientific papers are all written in English, but strangely, French abstracts are often required when submitting them. I know French, so I'm glad to help this classmate so little. Every time I translate abstracts for him, I always think: When can Chinese replace French to abstract English scientific papers?

Therefore, in the face of this rising wave of "Chinese fever" in the world, we China people should be cold-minded and even have a little sense of crisis while being proud. First of all, the so-called "Chinese fever" is relative to the situation that Chinese was left out in the cold before. We might as well make a comparison. The total number of people learning English in the world is 2 billion, and the number of people learning English in China alone exceeds the number of people learning Chinese in the world. Even compared with French, in the United States, 1 million people are learning French with a population of only 6 million, while less than 1, people are learning China with a population of 1.3 billion. Even from the perspective of development, I am actually pessimistic about the future of Chinese in the world. The basic motivation for foreigners to learn Chinese is to catch the China economic express train, compete with China people for the few job opportunities in employment, or explore the China market and compete with China enterprises for business opportunities. Globalization has made the world a besieged city. China people want to go out and foreigners want to come in. The most pitiful thing is that the children of overseas Chinese, who think they are foreigners, refuse to learn Chinese in order to "integrate" into the mainstream foreign society, and finally end up frustrated inside and outside. Azouz Begag, the French minister of "promoting equal opportunities", gave a surprising prescription for the riots in Paris and solving the social problems in poor suburbs at that time when he was interviewed by National Television 3: the government should invest heavily in setting up Chinese courses in high schools in poor areas, especially those with difficult conditions. Why? The minister believes that "in five years, Chinese will become an indispensable tool for career development". "If we start teaching Chinese on a large scale today, today's 15-year-old teenagers will speak fluent Chinese when they reach the age of 25, and then they will have no problem finding a job."

China people should have a sense of crisis, not blind optimism, about this utilitarian "Chinese craze". We should see that from an international point of view, Chinese is still an introverted language, that is to say, it is a language for dealing with China people. This is very different from English, French and even Spanish. There are more than 7 countries in the world where English is the official language, and 1 countries where English is the main foreign language can be counted. There are more than 6 members and observers in French, and there are more than 2 Spanish-speaking countries and regions. In other words, if you learn English, French and Spanish, you can travel all over the world without fear, while if you learn Chinese, you can only travel in the Greater China area or deal with China people who have gone abroad. To put it more clearly, the popularity of English, French and other languages is due to the successful decoupling of these languages from Britain, France and other countries, and as international languages, they have become communication tools for people in other countries outside their own countries. Even if the relative economic strength of these countries is weakened, the influence of internationalized languages will not fade. Historically, there have been "German fever" and "Japanese fever" because of the rapid growth of the economic strength of Germany and Japan. Today, Germany and Japan are still the largest economies in the world after the United States. Why are the "German fever" and "Japanese fever" no longer at room temperature? This shows that the "X-language craze" based solely on the economy will not last long. The current international "Chinese fever" is quite similar to the "German fever" and "Japanese fever" of that year, and it is likely to repeat the same mistakes. I think that the real revitalization of Chinese in the world is to strive to internationalize Chinese and make Chinese a medium of communication between two foreigners. From this point of view-I'm sorry to spoil the fun of Chinese people-let's not surpass English, and it is impossible for Chinese to surpass French in the 21st century.