An answer to Marine Le Pen - I am French and I do speak English... I even sometimes dream in English

If Time Magazine is considering establishing a new annual list for “The most stupid political comment of the year”, Marine Le Pen is surely a great contender for a Top 10 rank. All dressed up in cheap marine blue on the red carpet at the 2015 Time 100 Gala in New York last Tuesday, she couldn’t find any other explanation to her lack of fluency in the local language than an arrogant and poor “Oh no, I don’t speak English, I’m French !”.  

I’m as French as the leader of France’s far-right - with whom I also share roots in Britanny – and I’m proud to say that I do speak English. I do speak English, I do try to write in English and, some nights, I do even dream in English. I do all of this and when doing so I don’t feel less French. The contrary actually.

To please "her" people

Unsurprisingly this comment by a shrewd politician aspiring to run her country would have been expected to go down well with her constituents. They would have probably liked her provocative defiance of the global language right in the center of the first iconic city of globalization. And she had a pretty dress, sort of…

Right. Top to bottom of the society, most of my fellow citizens can’t speak - or even understand - English. Last December, a study sponsored by the language company EF Education First ranked France 29^th out of 63 countries for English proficiency – and even worst 21^st out of 24 European countries. Even if Education First focused on adult population – and therefore it could give hope in the younger generations -, there is nothing to be proud of.

An outdated "cultural exception"

Wrong. Language studies have never been a priority in France’s school curriculum. Until 10 years ago, French kids would only start learning English when entering secondary education at age 11 – or 13 for some 10 per cent who would favour German, Spanish or some other languages as their first. English courses entered most of primary schools as late as 2007 and it only became compulsory from age 7 in September 2014.

Wrong. France’s television channels hardly ever broadcast films or programmes in English. And in cinemas most films, especially Hollywood blockbusters, are dubbed – even quite well dubbed. Such monolingual obsession – coupled with some sort of insular syndrome - amazes our fellow Europeans in Belgium, the Netherlands or elsewhere in Scandinavia. Make your bed sleep in it.

And it shows that nowadays the few French people reaching the top of the international stage in their fields are those who comply with the absolute necessity to express themselves in some sort of English, not be it Shakespeare’s or the Queen’s one. This is how it is in the globalized world we live in and there is no point turning a blind eye on this phenomenon.

Never surrender though

Speaking English, making the effort to speak English to be understood by a broader audience does not diminish one’s Frenchness – or anything else-ness actually. And to go further I would almost argue that I am never as French as when I speak English as somehow it gives me the opportunity to convey what it is to be French to people who can't always understand what it means and implies as they don’t speak French and are not French. I do value this deeply.

Speaking English doesn’t prevent me from battling for a broader use of French in countries or organizations where French used to be historically more broadly used. And speaking English doesn’t prevent from considering that English should not turn into “Globish” the one and only language of a one World. Learn English but also learn Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish and so on. It would help in times of deeper misunderstandings.

Spin doctors got it wrong as Marine Le Pen would have stunned her audience – and the World – by somehow regretting shamefaced her lack of fluency. And once again she could have easily blamed the Gallic establishment… and probably some bureaucracy in Brussels. Instead she has preferred to wave the flag with arrogance and stupidity just as if not speaking English would always remain a prerequisite to sit at France’s presidential desk.