I’ve long believed that the problem the French have with Americans is rooted in jealousy. The most obvious affront is English displacing French as the Lingua Franca of the world. In fact Lingua Franca, which literally means French tongue, refers to a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. 

At one time, French was the language of business and trade throughout the world, as English is today. The French have never been able to let go of this upset, and I had a funny experience a couple months ago as a French gal tried to teach us a game I will call, “The French Game of World Domination”.

The game may have had a name, but I don’t remember, and the title I gave it is appropriate. The way it was played is that you picked three cards during your turn. Each card contained a clue to guess a country in the world. The point of the game is to teach the players how many countries in the world speak French.

This lesson has merit. While French is no longer the Lingua Franca of the world, it is still spoken in many countries around the globe, countries that had been colonized by France in its heyday of world domination. 

In case you’re curious, English is spoken by more people than any other language, and French comes in at number five, having lost out to Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish as well as English. It shows no signs of recovering its former dominance, just as someday English will likely lose out to Chinese. How many countries do you think speak Roman today?

I was sad to inform the French girl, however, that not only is English spoken by more people worldwide, it is spoken in more countries worldwide than French. She was even more petulant after hearing that, claiming that Americans have to dominate everything. I reminded her that English is spoken so widely around the world, not because of American colonization, but because of English colonization. In addition, Americans would not likely make up a game to demonstrate our world domination. That is solely a necessity of the French.