Ils Sont Forts

In Senegalese French at least, to say someone is good at something you say il est fort, or “he is strong,” as in “he is strong in swimming.” Well the French were good at colonizing. As I keep seeing, they were really good at spreading their culture (although I wish they had spread some money instead so cats in Senegal could afford all of the tasty, fancy French cheeses) and their language. French takes you much further in Morocco than English in Egypt. Two Arabic countries (although the language situation in Morocco is more complicated) which strongly emphasized Arabic after “independence” but the French ils sont forts. It’s even worse in Senegal where people are always surprised to learn that French is the only official language. The only language allowed in government is French. Almost everything written is in French. Unlike Anglophone African countries, Francophone Africans have not developed their native languages into literary languages. So that some Yoruba in Nigeria write in Yoruba, while much fewer do so in neighboring Benin. It was really hard to find anything written in Wolof. Moreover, this is the same country where magazines will translate from Wolof to French when interviewees use Wolof proverbs and idioms as if Wolof were not the language of the majority and French the clearly foreign language.