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JE SUIS la jeune fille<\/em>: though I\u2019ve never formally studied French, I\u2019ve had that phrase stuck deep in my linguistic consciousness since childhood. So, surely, have most Americans of my generation, hearing it as we all did over and over again for years in\u00a0the same television commercial. Frequently aired and never once updated, it advertised a series of language-instruction cartoons on videotape. Even more memorable than the French words spoken by that young girl were the English ones spoken by the product\u2019s both grandmotherly and severe pitchwoman: \u201cYes, that\u2019s French they\u2019re speaking, and no, these children aren\u2019t French, they\u2019re American. And they\u2019ve acquired their amazing new French skills from\u00a0Muzzy<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n
In those same years, an early episode of\u00a0The Simpsons<\/em>\u00a0saw Bart sent off to France, an ostensible student exchange meant to punish him for his constant pranks. He spends two months in the French countryside mistreated by a couple of crooked vintners who, in a plot point ripped from the headlines of the era, spike their product with antifreeze. When a shoeless and disheveled Bart finally spots a passing\u00a0gendarme<\/em>, he can\u2019t make himself understood in English. Only when he reaches the brink of emotional breakdown does he realize that, unconsciously and effortlessly, he has internalized the French language: \u201cHere, I\u2019ve listened to nothing but French for the past\u00a0deux mois, et je ne sais pas un mot<\/em>. Attendez! Mais, je parle Fran\u00e7ais maintenant! Incroyable!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n
All this convinced me, on some subconscious level, that to learn a foreign language meant almost by default to learn French. Sufficient exposure to the sounds of French, I also gathered, might lead to fluency by osmosis. More than a quarter-century later, French President Emmanuel Macron has set about spending hundreds of millions of euros on an international campaign to reintroduce versions of those now unpopular notions: that his country\u2019s language is easily acquirable, and that it\u2019s worth acquiring in the first place. Macron believes, as he told a group of students in Burkina Faso last year, that French (which in number of speakers currently occupies sixth place behind Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, and Arabic) can potentially become \u201cthe number one language in Africa and maybe even the world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n