French, it goes without saying, is a language of very great historical and cultural importance, one with an incomparable literary and philosophical heritage. The history of French and Belgian colonialism also means that the French language is the lingua franca of parts of West and Central Africa. But is French really a world language any more?

Over the last few days in Hanoi, unremarked in the English-speaking world, a grandiose but melancholy event has taken place, the Seventh Francophone Summit Conference. This Summit, or, to give it its full name in English, The Conference of Chiefs of State and Government of Countries Having French in Common, brings together representatives of over forty countries, including the French President, Jacques Chirac. It’s costing the Government of France over five million US dollars (thirty million French francs, pending the coming of the euro).

Why do I call this meeting melancholy? For a start, hardly anyone in Vietnam speaks French. And those who don’t have little desire to learn it. What they want to learn, for better or worse, is English. Or Mandarin Chinese. Or Korean. But not, alas, French. In Laos and Cambodia, the other two former French colonies in South-East Asia, indifference to the Francophone heritage is more striking still. In Phnom Penh, for example, the capital of Cambodia, you can take a walk down a thoroughfare known as English Street. There are language schools from end to end of it, where they teach both English and Asian languages. By night it’s the busiest place in the city outside the red-light district. But not one of the schools there offers French classes. A few years ago the French Ambassador to Cambodia was foolish enough to acknowledge this obvious fact in an interview in a local paper. A stiff memo from the Quai d’Orsay and he was forced to retract his comments.

The organisers of the Francophone Summit acknowledge, sniffily, that English is now the language of commerce in Asia; but French, they assert, is still the language of ‘fraternité et culture’. The Summit, accordingly, is the occasion for the creation of a new post, a Secretary-General of the Francophone world, whose task will be to forge bonds between the diverse countries where French is spoken. Perhaps we should admire this sang-froid. In the face of a shrinking share of the market, the French are putting on a brave show. Forty-six countries are represented at the summit. But a good few of them are marginal to the Francophone world. They include São Tomé, where they speak Portuguese (and a local hybrid, Kriolu), Moldova, where the language is Romanian, and Egypt, where the study of French is the prerogative of an ageing sector of the haute bourgeoisie. One cannot help thinking that the French government, which, on top of the cost of the Summit, spends nearly US $1 billion a year on promoting French language and culture abroad, has purchased the attendance of such countries at a high price.

The sad fact is that French is no longer a ranking world language. Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese are all spoken by a greater number of people. There are fewer French speakers in the world as a whole than there are Portuguese speakers in Brazil alone. The global status of French is an artful illusion maintained by French cultural diplomacy (as is the notion that French is the very language of diplomacy). Even in Britain we are under its spell, learning French routinely as our first foreign language. You would think we might take a cue from the students on English Street and prioritise learning Chinese instead.

Not, of course, that there is anything at all wrong with learning French, or studying the great heritage of culture and philosophy that it embodies. But the linguistic imperialism of the French government is something that we may reasonably deplore. The Francophone Summit is merely a folly, but the language issue has led French foreign policy into a quagmire. French government support for the genocidal Hutu government in Rwanda was determined, to a significant degree, by the fact that the génocidaires spoke French (while the Uganda-based Rwandan Tutsi exiles who overcame them were anglophone). French support for Boutros Boutros Ghali in his disastrous term as Secretary-General of the UN – and France’s attempt to secure a second term for him – was based, similarly, on the fact that he is francophone. No surprise, then, who has been appointed the first Secretary-General of La Francophonie, of the imaginary empire of Francophonia: the very same Boutros Boutros Ghali.

Unlike the English, who have long since surrendered possession of their language and now contemplate its global variants with equanimity, French elites have famously been obsessed with maintaining the purity of their tongue. The attempts of the Académie Francaise to legislate against foreign borrowings over the years have been mocked often enough. Now the struggle has been taken into cyberspace. Under a law passed in 1994, the French campus of an American university, Georgia Tech, is being prosecuted for posting a website in English. And President Chirac has made a fuss about the predominance of English on the site maintained by the European Union.

Again, it’s not that it is reprehensible to be concerned about the state of your language; it’s just pointless. How did English get where it is today? By absorbing vast amounts of Norman French vocabulary in the Mediaeval era (including most of the longer words in the sentence you have just read). English is, in fact, a franco-saxophone language, a vibrant creole. Imagine trying to purge it of foreign elements the way the authorities in France try to do with French.

There’s just no way of preserving a language in the pristine state that the French government aspires to. In Dakar last week, in the heart of Francophone West Africa, I overheard two young men talking as they ran into one another on the street. One was wearing a business suit, the other was a dread-locked rasta, or maybe an adherent of the Senegalese Baye Fall sect of Islam. Wasalaam alaikum – peace be with you,’ said the first, using the Arabic greeting common in the Muslim world. ‘Bonjour,’ said the second, and added, jocularly, ‘Maximum respect à toi, bro’.’

That’s the way the world’s going, the way it always goes: hybrid cultures, creole languages. France’s linguistic Maginot line cannot hold. ★

Afterword

A reader in Belgium, Philippe Hunt, cast doubt on my account of the ascendancy of English in Cambodia. French, he argued, is still commonly spoken there. In his letter he explained that he had lived in Phnom Penh, so I defer to him. And I agree with the other points in his letter. ‘There is no doubt,’ he wrote, ‘that English is popular, as are a few Asian languages. They are all popular for one reason: Cambodia (and especially its youth) is in the grip of a get-rich-quick mentality. English, Thai or Chinese, computer skills, powerful relatives and firearms are among the tools one may find useful in that pursuit. In this context, French hardly stands a chance. Neither do the sciences, the arts or philosophy.’ In 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, later President of France, published a book called Témoignage (Testimony). Among the suggestions put forward in the book is the idea that the French should accept English as the modern world’s lingua franca.