In person(s)

Francophonie week: which French language today in Côte d'Ivoire?

Audio 29:00

Our guests with students from the Jean Mermoz international high school in Abidjan © Guillaume Ploquin / RFI

By: Pascal Paradou

1 min

On the occasion of the week of the French language and the Francophonie: from Villers-Cotterêts to Abidjan, French, a plural language!

While French remains the official language in Côte d'Ivoire, it differs greatly from French in France.

In contact with the sixty local languages ​​in the country, the language has been transformed into “nouchi”.

Although so-called academic French remains the norm of the elites, part of the Ivorian youth has appropriated this slang.

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Long despised and considered the language of the poor and delinquents, this mixture of French, Dioula, Baoulé, Bété is found today in all social strata How do French, Nouchi and local languages ​​coexist today?

Should the French language remain the academic language?

How to teach it?

Jean Martial Kouamé

, Full Professor in the Department of Language Sciences

and Director of the Institute of

Valérie Djé

, Doctor of Language Sciences, specialist in sociolinguistics and language didactics, currently teacher-researcher at the

in the Department of Modern Letters.

She is also a French teacher at the

Séraphin KOUAKOU,

Lecturer at

, grammarian and linguist

Program recorded on the occasion of the 2022 edition of

 at the Lycée International Jean Mermoz, in Abidjan. 

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• Ivory Coast

• Africa culture

• Culture

• French language

• Francophonie

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