ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief history of Paris and its suburbs as it relates to language issues. Together with London, Paris, whose original name was Lutetia, is one of the oldest capitals of Europe. By the seventeenth century, Paris hosted the political, administrative, religious and cultural power of France, and it also attracted many foreign traders and travelers. Montreuil is part of eastern Paris, and it has retained some of its historical population and their historical professions. Located south of a bustling street that has linked for centuries the center of Montreuil to Paris, the Place de la Republique gives a peaceful impression. Rue de Paris has all the heterogeneous and chaotic aspects of a prototypical Parisian quarter. In the space of the Rue de Paris, ornaments are meaningful, gestures often mysterious, music exotic, scripts unknown, foreign voices all of a sudden open and close universes of meanings that are constructed in a blind search.
