[LINK] "Random thoughts on returning from French Africa"

[rfmcdonald]

At A Fistful of Euros, Douglas Muir--great blogger, he--makes the very important point that French in Africa is well-implanted and growing.

If you’re a human being who is literate in French — say, at a high school graduate level — you’re probably European. But not for much longer. Demographic growth plus the slow-but-steady rise of literacy rates in most of Africa means that by the next decade, most literate Francophones will be African too.

Given time, this is going to have interesting effects on French literature, language and culture. African writers are going to be more interesting and important. African dominance will take much longer — Africa is still very poor, after all — but it’s not a completely daft idea; if Africa ever starts converging on European income levels, there’ll be a lot of money in making French language products for them. In the nearer term… oh, watch for African script and screen writers drifting north to Paris. Longer term, well, the Academie Francaise has always allowed non-French citizens to be members; by 2050, I’d expect these members to be approaching a majority.

[. . .]

rench is now one of the major languages of Islam. There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about the Muslim populations in Europe. But we never hear much about their mirror images: the Muslims who stayed behind, but who’ve become linguistically — and to some small degree, culturally — French. Northwest Africa in particular, Senegal and Mali and Mauretania and Niger, is a land of Francophone Muslims. And many of them have picked up more from France than just the language; Senegalese love croissants and fine pastries and read Tintin and Le Petit Prince to their kids.

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