French

Le Petit Prince — in its original French language, published by Gallimard in 1946.

French / Le Français, often heralded as the language of Molière, occupies a singular position in the global linguistic landscape, distinguished by its innate elegance and analytical precision. As the most widely spoken of the Romance languages after Spanish, it traces its lineage to the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, yet it evolved into a uniquely gallic form, shedding many of its ancestral inflections in favour of a rhythmic, stress-timed cadence. Its history is one of remarkable cultural expansion, serving as the lingua franca of European diplomacy, science, and the arts for centuries. It is a legacy that continues today as it remains an official language of the United Nations, the Olympic Games, and the International Red Cross.

Among its Romance siblings, such as Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, French is notable for its significant phonetic departure, particularly its distinctive uvular “r” and nasal vowels, which lend it a sophisticated, melodic quality. Its uniqueness lies in the formal rigour of its grammar and the protective oversight of the Académie Française, which strives to preserve the purity of the tongue. Yet, despite this institutional caution, French has exerted an extraordinary influence on other languages; nearly thirty per cent of modern English vocabulary, for instance, is derived from French roots: a remnant of the Norman Conquest that forever changed the texture of the Anglophone world.

In the context of global culture, French remains an indispensable pillar of human expression, particularly in the realms of philosophy, gastronomy, and high fashion. It is a language deeply intertwined with the Enlightenment and the universal pursuit of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. For a collector and investigator of scripts, the French language represents the source code of the original Le Petit Prince: the foundational orthography from which all other four hundred translations emerge. It is not merely a means of communication, but a vessel for a specific brand of existential inquiry and romanticism that has tamed the hearts of readers on every continent.