France, just accept it: English is far superior

It wasn’t always the case, of course, that English ruled the world; for centuries it was Latin; for a time, particularly in the world of science, German and Russian; and for a long while French was the language spoken in civilised salons throughout the Western world and beyond. But the rise of America in the 20th century eventually knocked all other gnarled old European languages off their pedestal and installed English as the top dog.

I am thrilled about this, of course, since I love English and speak it to the exclusion of pretty much all other languages. (But, as I tell those who chide me for my Anglocentrism, I do speak English really well.)

The French, however, have never quite got over their fall from the linguistic throne. Where other nations, from Israel to Italy, simply accept that English wins when it comes to the lingo of technology and things like snowboarding (in Italian, it’s “le znoboard”), the French still rage.

So I couldn’t help but cackle at the sheer predictability of their response to a young adult fiction (YA) festival in France, scheduled for next month. The festival had the unpatriotic audacity to boast of featuring “Le Live”, a“Bookroom”, a “Photobooth” and a “Bookquizz”.

In response, a hundred French authors, including Leïla Slimani, winner of the Prix Goncourt, wrote an indignant letter published in Le Monde and La République des Livres. They condemned the fair’s organisers for their liberal use of “sub-English known as globish”, calling the choice of terms “an insult”.

“In the streets, on the web… everywhere, in fact, English tends to replace French, little by little, at the speed of a word a day,” they wrote. “But even at a book fair in France… is it not possible to speak French?”

The thing is, when it comes to languages, the best one for the job usually wins. And that, sadly for the French, just happens to be English.