The people in this story suddenly realize how precious their language is to them. What shows you this? Why does this happen?

The language of a community is directly linked to their identity. It is their language that makes them unique. As Mr. Hamel has pointed out that one’s own language is the only key to the prison of enslavement. Thus, when people of Alsace and Lorraine become enslaved, they suddenly realized that holding on to their language depicts how free they were. This shows us, the importance of one’s own language and culture and this happened because another foreign language, German was imposed upon them.