During a conference on the Francophonie organized on June 18, 2025, at the National Assembly, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise, suggested that the French language should no longer be called that.
According to him, French is now a "creole" language, the result of numerous external contributions, and it would be "truer to say that we speak Creole than French." Mélenchon defends a dynamic and open vision of the language, inherited from the process of "creolization," meaning cultural and linguistic mixing.
He believes French has been built by borrowing from numerous languages — Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian — and can no longer be considered an exclusively French language. He also recalls that the language has spread widely outside of France, particularly in French-speaking Africa, and therefore cannot be the sole property of the Hexagon (a reference to France).
This declaration immediately sparked an outcry from the right and far right. The Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, reacted by denouncing an attempt to "destroy French identity" and to despise "the most modest French people." The philosopher Jean-Loup Bonnamy, a columnist on RMC, sees it as "a program of intimidation" and a desire to "eradicate all traces of French culture."
In contrast, some teachers and intellectuals, such as French professor Fatima Aït-Bounoua, consider this speech stimulating: it allows for questioning citizens' relationship with their language, often neglected, and reminding that French is a living language, constantly evolving.
Mélenchon's provocation touches a sensitive point: language as a vector of identity and symbolic power. Behind the controversy, a fundamental debate is taking place on the universality of French, its colonial heritage, and the place of minority cultures in the republican space.