Paris - The French language risks becoming obsolete in the 21st century, insidiously overwhelmed by a bastardised English which itself has been ruined by neologisms and barbarisms.
The warning came from the historian Alain Decaux, a member of the Academie Francaise, during a debate at the Institut de France in Paris in which the French language and culture were deemed to be in a state of crisis. "Is French going to find itself in the same situation as those American Indian languages whose memory, Chateaubriand said, was kept alive only by a few old parrots on the Orinoco river?" he asked.
