France, “Le Hashtag”, and Digital Language

When I was living in France as a college student many years ago, my fellow students and I were greatly amused by the valiant effort of the French government to erect unenforceable barriers designed to stem the pollution of their mother tongue from the increasingly popular, but oh-so-gauche terms emanating from the English-speaking world. The French were forever trying to maintain the purity of their beautiful language, but the onslaught of new terms from the United States and Britain were leading to bastardized cognates like “le weekend” and “le hamburger”.

So it was with great enjoyment that I read this interesting op-ed from William Alexander, author of the book Flirting with French. Evidently, the French have realized that their language is doing just fine, merçi beaucoup, and any notion that some group of bureaucrats could stem the tide of new phrases in the Twitter age was ridicule.

As it turns out, the French attempt to use the phrase mot-dièse to thwart the more popular phrase “le hashtag” hasn’t found much traction with French tweeters, and the Ministry of Culture finally waived the white flag.

Although I didn’t stop by France on this last trip (très dommage) I did re-experience the amazing English language skills of my hosts, which leads me to think about what the lingua franca of tomorrow will look like, and how we might prepare.

I first had the opportunity to take foreign language classes in junior high school where I could take any language I wanted as long as it was either French or Spanish. At the insistence of my mother I began in French and as the school years went by I never left. Since I was interested in all things international at a young age, my mom sold it to me by saying that French was “the language of diplomacy”, although I suspect she also simply found the sound of it enchanting, as many women have throughout the years.

As it turned out, Spanish would have been be more useful language for someone living in the United States, but by the time I got to college my years of French afforded me the opportunity to study in a French-only school in Avignon, located in the beautiful Provence region of France.

Many Americans while traveling in Europe are amazed and humbled by the number of locals who speak passable English (or, in some cases, better English than the travelers themselves). But let us focus on a new language that is increasingly uniting and dividing people, as languages do. I will simply refer to this new language as “Digital”.

The fact that so much of the internet/technology/social media/twitter age has emanated from the United States in general (and the Silicon Valley in particular) means that English has a disproportionate impact on the resulting digital language. In his column, Alexander points out that despite the idiocy of the term “Wi-Fi”, it has been adopted everywhere – including France, where the attempt to replace “Wi-Fi” with “accès sans fil à l’Internet” experienced the same level of success as calling the hashtag a mot-dièse.

So if you’re a native English speaker, you’re in good shape, right?

Well, maybe….

Sure, English has been accepted as the language of business for some time, but “digital” is increasing in importance. A non-native English speaker with mediocre English skills who is also able to navigate the digital world (Twitter, mobile apps, customer engagement & conversion) has the advantage over the native English speaker who cannot speak digital.

So if you want to speak the lingua franca of tomorrow…..

• Have a Twitter account and follow people who generate thoughtful content that is relevant to where you want to go….
• Learn more about how companies use data to target offers to you (and your kids)….
• Leverage your mobile device to set personal financial goals and track your progress….
• Understand the basics of SEO, and if you don’t know what that term means, read this……

Because whether you’re French, Dutch, Danish or American, the word “hashtag” is no longer an English word. It’s a digital one.

Bonne Chance!

 

(This post is the second in a series related to my recent travels in Europe. For part one, go here.)