According to a study, carried out by the polling institute One Poll in July and August 2025 for the language learning application Babbel, 33% of the French population grew up with a parent or grandparent whose first language was not French. But among this sample, a quarter of French men and women with an immigrant background did not have access to this transmission.
Naïma, 28, was born in Paris to an Algerian mother who spoke Berber and Arabic. “These languages were banned at homeshe confides. My grandparents preferred to speak in broken French, rather than speaking their mother tongues. My mother also only spoke French, trying at all costs to erase her foreign accent.”
A linguistic break during the 20th century
Naïma’s case is far from isolated. According to the One Poll study for Babbel, 39% of members of the two generations of post-war immigrants chose not to transmit their mother tongue, because they thought it would facilitate the integration of their children into French society. “Leaving one’s language in favor of French appeared to the first generations of immigrants as a rational choice to protect their children from discrimination, in a society which strongly stigmatized foreign languages”explains Sophie Vignoles, linguist and head of educational content at Babbel.
In an article entitled “The dynamics of languages in France throughout the 20the century”, published in 2002 in the journal Population et Sociétés, sociologists and linguists François Héran, Alexandra Filhon and Christine Deprez note that if the proportion of adults having inherited a foreign language from their parents increased with the rise of migration after the Second World War, the language of the country of origin was gradually abandoned and only French was spoken at home.
Non-transmission seen as a vector of integration
In 1999, in their “Study of family history”, the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) and the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) demonstrated that the foreign languages most affected by non-transmission during the second half of the 20e century in France were Polish, Creole languages, Italian, Spanish, African languages, Berber, Arabic, Portuguese and even German.
“For my family, the priority was that we excel at school and that necessarily meant removing Arabic and Berber from our lives.”
Over the years, immigration has continued to fuel recurring debates on identity, integration and national cohesion. Integration policies have, for their part, often promoted linguistic assimilation, affecting the perception of oneself and one’s language of origin among immigrant populations. “For many new arrivals, erasing one’s original language was seen as a key factor in social integration and a way of maximizing one’s children’s chances of academic success”specifies Sophie Vignoles.
A reality experienced by Naïma: “For my family, the priority was that we excel at school and that necessarily meant removing Arabic and Berber from our lives.” However, we now know that speaking several languages fluently and/or having several mother tongues is a powerful lever for academic success, but also an advantage on the cognitive and social levels.
It was by feeling her parents’ urgency to integrate that Anna, 40, had a blockage with Romanian. “My father, who ran a hotel, told his customers that he was Greek so as not to reveal his true nationality. One day, when I was a child, I was speaking in Romanian and he corrected me by saying: “Here, we are in France, so we speak French.” From then on, it was as if I had internalized my parents’ shame about their origins and I was no longer able to speak Romanian, even with my family back home.traces the one whose real name is Anne-Françoise. “My parents thought it looked very French and to look French was really their biggest wish.”
A relationship with languages intimately linked to the historical and societal context
The relationship with one’s own language, whether it is pride, shame or rejection, depends a lot on its perception by the host country. At the age of 4, when she moved to a village in the south of France, Anja, 38, immediately internalized the negative outlook projected on her mother tongue, German.
“With my sisters, we were the only foreignerssays Anja. I felt the strong need to blend in, but we were constantly reduced to our status as strangers and enemies. We were called “chleuhs”, “boches”, “Nazis”. So I completely rejected the language. I only responded in French when my family spoke German to me and I did everything to erase my accent. Today, I no longer speak my mother tongue at all.” The stereotypes concerning German in France offer a good example of the weight of the historical and political context on the perception of languages.
As for the countries formerly colonized by France, they remain perceived through a postcolonial prism, which tends to make their language, their cultural and historical wealth invisible. “I always felt that my father prevented himself from speaking his mother tongues, the fon (or fon-gbe) and the gun (or gun-gbe)because they were not valued at allillustrates Thibault, 38 years old, whose father is from Benin. He was also very afraid of failing in this injunction to integrate. At that time, it was not possible to have multiple identities. The very notion of crossbreeding was unthinkable. At school, they thought I was adopted because my mother is white. It was a fairly violent period, which did not leave much room for the diversity of cultures, histories, backgrounds.”
The injustice lies in the fact that where certain foreign languages suffer depreciation and erasure, others, conversely, are extremely valued. “If my father had been British, everyone would have been very proud that we learned and spoke English among ourselves. It would have been unanimously perceived as a lever for academic and social success.imagines Thibault.
Language as a vector of memory and cultural continuity
For Sophie Vignoles, languages are far from being simple communication tools. They contain a number of intangible components that link us to ours and to others. “A language is a vector of emotions, history, traditions. It is a way of seeing the world, but also an invisible thread that links generations together, a door to the culture of a country and to others. When we lose contact with the language of our parents or ancestors, a whole part of our family and social history disappears.”
An observation also made by Ando, 28 years old, born in Armenia and arrived in France at the age of 6. “At home, we always spoke Armenian among ourselves. We come from a people who experienced a genocide. The country today has only 3 million inhabitants. So it’s a bit of our duty to keep our culture and our memory alive. Without language, they would disappear.
“There is a real generational change. Instead of erasure, today we are more accepting of our linguistic pluralism and we are claiming our different identities.”
Today, Naïma bitterly regrets not speaking the language of her Algerian origins. “With my siblings, we feel like we were deprived of something that should have been an integral part of our identitybreathes the young Parisian. When we go to Algeria, we feel hindered, because we cannot speak fluently with our family. For me who has just had a baby, it is a great sadness to know that I will have nothing to pass on to him at this level.
Same story for Anna: “It’s a bit of a double whammy. In France, I was not allowed to speak Romanian, but in Romania, I was criticized for having forgotten my mother tongue. All these years, this state of affairs has distanced me from my family and prevented me from feeling legitimate there.”
A society more open than yesterday
But society is evolving and in its wake, populations from abroad are perhaps allowing themselves more today than yesterday to pass on their mother tongue to their children.
“There is a real generational changenotes Sophie Vignoles. Instead of erasure, today we are more accepting of our linguistic pluralism and we are claiming our different identities.” Also, many individuals from new generations are determined to reconnect with what was not transmitted to them: “It is a form of reparation which is part of a true collective movement which contributes to the modernization of our culture.”
Ando and his family embody this paradigm shift well: “Throughout the ages, out of a desire to be like any French person, Armenians have not always allowed themselves to speak the language with their children. We arrived in a different, more favorable context, so we have to do this work of transmission.”
In recent years, Anna has taken Romanian lessons from a private teacher. “Sometimes I have the level of a child, sometimes I speak in a very sustained waytempers the forty-year-old. It’s very uneven, but it doesn’t matter. I found certain reflexes and I even started dreaming in Romanian again.” Over time, Thibault also reappropriates his cultural heritage from West Africa. “I go to Benin regularly and I try to learn, little by littletestifies for his part this thirty-year-old. It’s difficult, but I’m hanging in there. Whatever anyone says, these languages are part of me.”
