To: maceng2 who wrote (113472 ) 9/16/2015 11:14:14 AM From: Elroy Jetson Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 220172 Being French above all else has been a very long process and is stalled. In 1539 Middle French was made the official language for court and legal actions, but it was clear from the short French summaries of court testimony that the actual trials were still taking place in other languages. This was the beginning of the Shame (La Vergonha), an ever increasing effort to make French speaking a requirement for state jobs, and speaking other languages ignorant. Napoleon who spoke Corsican, also spoke Italian and French quite badly. At this time roughly 10% of the French population spoke and understood French fluently. So the leader of each Platoon had to be able to speak both French and the local language and dialect of his troops, whether Occitan, Breton, L'Oranaise or many others. It was not until 1880 when Jules Ferry made school in France free and compulsory, that all children were required to learn to speak French and typically had their knuckles rapped with a ruler if they spoke any word in the local language. Ferry also supported colonialism like most politicians of his time. Many citizens of French colonies spoke French, but were not French citizens which effectively created segregation in France. When France lost Algeria in 1962 the Évian Accord gave Algerians in France citizenship and continued free passage of Algerians into France, but the repressions of the 1950 continued. The end result is few French citizens consider those whose family was originally from Algeria to be French, resulting in poverty as few are willing to employ the decedents of Algerians, even today. This refusal by the French to integrate the grandchildren of immigrants, let alone immigrants, is the source of France's problems today with Arab nationalism.