Some of you might remember that I grew up going to a French school here in Toronto. My mom had rightly decided that I should be able to speak both of Canada's official languages. But truthfully, I never really loved it as a kid. I started midway through elementary school and so I always felt a little insecure about my French abilities. Which is partially why in the fall of 2023,
Generally speaking, the classes are pretty relaxed (sometimes we learn grammar and sometimes we just talk about delicious cheeses), but at the end of last year I decided to register for the DELF exam. DELF stands for Diplôme d'études en langue française and it's a diploma for non-native speakers of French offered by France's Ministry of Education. It's offered at various proficiency levels and I registered for level B2, which France describes in the following way:
One of the reasons why I registered for this particular level is that it will soon become the minimum level of language proficiency required to become a French citizen. Currently you need the equivalent of B1, but starting January 1, 2026, I understand it will jump up to B2. I, of course, don't know if I will ever need this, move to France, and/or seek to become a citizen, but it became a goal. I told myself that I wanted the diploma that proves one's French is good enough to be an actual citizen. I guess it was a way to conquer my childhood insecurities.
So I'm happy to report that I ended up taking the exam in early March and that last week I received my passing grade. I scored just under 90%. (My weakest section was the handwritten essay.) After I got the news, I came home to the below book sitting on the kitchen counter with a bow and thoughtful handwritten note from Bianca — in French I would add — congratulating me on achieving this goal. One of the first things I said was, "wait, when did you buy this? How did you get it so quickly?" And she responded with, "I ordered it a long time ago, because I knew you'd pass."
The book is called Paris Haussmann and it's a comprehensive look at Haussmann's 19th century plans for the city. It covers every scale, from the city's boulevards (morphological scale) down to individual floor plans for each building type (typological scale). It's a truly extraordinary book and it's also highly relevant to one of the things that Globizen is focused on right now, which is the building of infill housing on Toronto's major streets. The urban context isn't exactly the same, of course, but there's a lot to be learned from this human-scaled building type. So even if you aren't trying to overcome some childhood insecurity related to the French, I highly recommend you check out this book.
Cover photo via Pavillon de l'arsenal
I started a new French class his week. Most of my classmates are regulars, but since we have a new teacher, we were all asked to introduce ourselves. And to spice things up, we were asked to talk about whether we're glass half full or half empty kind of people.
When it came to my turn, and before I could answer, one of my classmates jumped in and said "Brandon est un optimiste." And you know what, this made me happy. I took it as a great compliment.
Because to be a real estate developer, I think you need to be an optimist. I have argued this before on the blog.
This is not to say that you don't need to carefully manage risk, and think about all of the things that can and probably will go wrong. It is say that the inertia working against you is so great, that you really need to believe in the future you are trying to create. If not, you're liable to not make it.
So this morning, when my partner Lucas showed me the below quote from Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, I immediately thought, "yeah, this is going on the blog."
"If you are allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer.
Optimistic individuals play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the political and military leaders – not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge… the people who have the greatest influence on the lives of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks than they realize."
This excerpt is from Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. I haven't read it. But now I want to.
The two official languages of Mallorca are Catalan and Spanish. However, there is also a local dialect of Catalan spoken on the island called mallorquí. Many of the locals we met last week spoke all three. At the same time, it was also our experience that everyone spoke English.
In Morocco, the two official languages are Arabic and Berber. Berbers are an ethnic group that predate the arrival of Arabs to the Maghreb region of North Africa. And today, about a quarter of Moroccans still speak it according to Wikipedia.
French colonial rule in Morocco (which lasted from 1912 to 1956) also means that a large percentage of the population speaks French. The "official" number was above 60% in 2012, but our experience in Marrakech has been that it's virtually everyone.
This has also been our experience with English. Though, interestingly enough, some of the locals have told us that this was not the case as recent as 10 years. English is a new phenomenon in Marrakech. Anecdotally, it means that many of the locals seem to speak a minimum of 4 languages.
This is, of course, par for the course in this part of the world. But as a Canadian who is working diligently to try and master only two languages -- I take a weekly French class at Alliance Française in Toronto -- it's an easy way to feel linguistically inadequate.
Languages are difficult. They're relatively easy to learn when you're young, but if you don't use them consistently and if you're not immersed, they're also easy to lose. Which is why some estimate that by the end of this century, at least 50% of the languages currently spoken will become critically endangered or completely extinct.
Here is how UNESCO classifies endangered languages:
The simple takeaway is that it starts with children. A "vulnerable" language, for instance, means that kids still speak the language, but that it may be restricted to only certain domains, such as at home with relatives. A "definitely endangered" language means that kids are no longer learning and speaking it. This is a kiss of death.
So to get a sense of where things are headed, it's a good idea to ask people, "what languages do kids learn in school and/or at home today?" And the answer to that question in Marrakech seems to suggest that English has overtaken French as the preferred second language after Arabic.
As we all become more globally connected, it only heightens the need for a lingua franca -- a common language that we can all use to communicate with each other. And today that global language is English. That certainly makes things easier and more efficient, but it also comes with negative consequences.
It is going to mean sacrificing the local languages and dialects that emerged at a time when the world wasn't so small.
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