From July 26 to September 8, France organizes «its» Olympic and Paralympic Games. The third in France (after 1900 and 1924), the first in a francophone city since Montreal in 1976. A golden opportunity to promote the language of Molière internationally!
French, along with English, is one of the two official International Olympic Committee (IOC). It is written in section 23 of the Olympic Charter : “At all Sessions, simultaneous interpretation shall be provided in English and French.” In other words, documents, posters, signage in the alleys of the Olympic Village, announcements during the events must be bilingual (then in the language of the host country).
It is to a Frenchman that we owe this privileged status. Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), «father» founder of modern Olympic Games. Educator and pedagogue, he is struck by the importance of sport in the Anglo-Saxon education system. Himself an outstanding sportsman (rowing, boxing, fencing), he campaigns for the French school to be more open to physical activity. To achieve this, Pierre de Coubertin thinks that sport must be internationalized. His idea? Revive the Ancient Olympic Games, born in Olympia in Greece in 776 BC, held every four years for twelve centuries before being abolished.
Promote the French language
Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894 during a speech at the Sorbonne. The first edition of the modern era took place two years later in Greece, then in 1900 in Paris. He was also responsible for the creation of the Olympic rings symbol, the Olympic Charter and Protocol, the athletes' oath, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the games. He created the Winter Olympics in 1924 in Chamonix.
An ardent promoter of the French language, he logically made French one of the two official languages of the Olympic movement (English joining French only in 1972). Not to mention that he is not the only one to have invested in the creation of the IOC, alongside Jules Rimet, Louis Magnus, Frantz Reichel and Albert Feyerik, all francophones.
But if the use of French is supposed to be guaranteed, the reality of the field is more contrasted. Its use varies greatly from one Olympic edition to another. For the past thirty years, French has remained even less present at the Games hosted abroad.
Reaffirming the place of French
A finding that alarmed defenders of the French language and the Francophonie. Thus, since 2004, and at each edition of the Games, summer and winter, a “great witness of the Francophonie” is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Olympic Charter: the French language is and must always remain (with English) the official language of the Olympic Games.
In 2016, for the Rio Games in Brazil, Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango, then a great witness of the Francophonie, and Canadian Michaëlle Jean, secretary general of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), noted their disappointment with “the treatment of our language”.
To prevent such a linguistic scenario from recurring this summer, the OIF and the Organising Committee of the Games signed an agreement last June which «commits Paris 2024, among other things, to use the French language on communication media, in announcements and comments throughout the Games period and at official ceremonies».
For it would be an insult to the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, that the French language be mistreated. On the contrary, the Olympics are a moment to seize to put it back in its rightful place.
The famous (but borrowed) words of Pierre de Coubertin
«The important thing is to participate» and the motto of JO «Faster, stronger, higher» are sentences that stick to the image of Pierre de Coubertin. If he said them right, they’re not his.
On 24 July 1908 in London, Coubertin gave his speech on the values of the Olympic ideal, with this famous phrase: “The important thing is to participate”. This maxim was inspired by the Bishop of Pennsylvania, Ethelbert Talbot, in a sermon delivered at St Paul’s Cathedral on 19 July 1908 for the Fourth London Olympics. The bishop said: “The important thing in these Olympics is less to win than to take part.”
As for the motto «Faster, stronger, higher» (in Latin Citius, Altius, Fortius), it is actually the work, in 1891, of the Dominican religious Henri Didon. In 2021, it was expanded to “Faster, Stronger, Higher – Together” (Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter).
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