The Universality of the French Language

On June 3, 1784, Antoine de Rivarol was awarded the Berlin Academy Prize for his essay The Universality of the French Language (French: Discours sur l'universalité de la langue française). He began his discourse by tracing a brief history of the origins of French language. Indeed, he reminded that the Roman conquest and the invasion of the Franks in Gaul contributed to the emergence of a linguistic hierarchy, at the top of which stood Latin. However the contact between Latin and the idioms spoken by the “barbarian” population generated the vulgarisation of classical Latin, namely a multitude of patois dialects. The writer equally highlighted the two major dialects which divided French territories: the Picard language spoken in the north and the Provençal, the dialect of the south. Although the pre-eminence was given to the northern dialect (la langue d’oïl), Rivarol regarded the northern pronunciation as “a little bit thud” and regretted the eclipse of the southern dialect (la langue d’oc), which he qualified as “full of sounds “that would have conferred to French more splendor”. Afterwards, Rivarol examined the causes of the universality of the French language.

The discovery of America, the passage to India, the invention of the printing press, the development of the trade market and the progress in science gave to Europe supremacy over the world. By consequence, relations between European powers felt the necessity of a common language. In his essay, Rivarol showcased the dominant languages ruling the European continent, and demonstrated why they could not supersede the French language.

Rivarol began his statement by the language of Goethe. He blamed German people for having denied their own language during the 16th century. The French essayist declared that the inferiority position of German with regard to Latin explained in the fact that the Prussian empire had never been unified under the same crown. Another argument criticised the difficulty of German syntax that appeared to be an obstacle to the learning of this language. In addition, the glottal pronunciation, as well as the gothic writing “shocked people of the south”. Rivarol even dared to express in front of the Berlin Academy the revolting feelings that people from Latin origins associated with northern languages. Nevertheless, he mitigated his statements by describing the German language as “too rich and too hard at the same time”. He praised the German literature for giving to the world poets and writers of genius. However, as Germany fell behind its neighbours in terms of art and literature, its language faced difficulties in finding a privileged place at the international level. The German language projects an image of “antique and modest” people, too conventional and sedentary. Rivarol finished his critique on Germany by pointing out another argument against a possible development of the German language: the blind tolerance and the warm welcome that the Academy presented to foreign idioms.

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