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Why Learn French? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Person1235 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 16 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Sign Language | Message 1 of 20 11 June 2010 at 5:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For ages now, my friends (all of whom study French) have been telling me to learn
French. They always try to win me over with how "romantic" the language sounds, and how easy it is. Personally, I see it as English in disguise. The spelling system is absolutely terrible. It's worse than English. Let's look at the word "Deau", meaning "God". We have four letters in the word, however we only pronounce two of them. Not to mention that "Deau" "deux" and "du" all sound the same. Furthermore, the "sound" of the language has got to be the worst way to convince me to learn it. It doesn't even sound close to romantic (in the sense of involving love) to me at all. When I hear native French speakers, it sounds like they're trying to convince me to do something that I morally disagree with, or even worse- telling me a bold faced lie. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against France or French people; I just have no idea why I should learn that language other than the fact that I read classic/older generation books, and I need to be able to fluidly understand the French terms that the author uses. Other than the above reason, are there any non-opinionated "because French sounds soooo romantic" like, factual reasons to learn French? I'd appreciate reasons such as "French is spoken by X% of the world's population" or "Knowing French will help you get into college". Like I said, French is already on my language "hit list", but any other reasons that can be given I will take as motivation. Thanks in advance, and I hope I didn't offend anyone, Scott 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 20 11 June 2010 at 5:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In no particular order:
1) Yes, it's annoying when people try to convince you to learn a language for specious reasons. 2) French isn't English in disguise; English is largely mangled French. Not that this particularly matters. 3) How you perceive the sound of the language is rather subjective. 4) France was a major language of diplomacy, still is one of the 6 languages of the United Nations, is widely studied, is very useful in Africa, etc. Wikipedia has far more information about this, such as that 26% of EU citizens can apparently speak French, most non-natively. It's apparently 4th in number of speakers of all the languages of the world, because it's so widely studied as a second language (it's 14th as a native language). 5) It's incredibly useful for language study. Assimil courses are published first with French as the base language; they're published later or never, and often in lower quality, for English speakers. A huge range of other language learning material is only in French. 6) French culture. This may or may not attract you, but French does have a long cultural and literary tradition, including an international tradition outside of France. 7) If you still don't want to learn it, life's too short - don't learn it. If you just have a negative opinion about it because it's been pitched to you badly, reconsider. Good luck. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5924 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 3 of 20 11 June 2010 at 5:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Believe me, French is definitely not English in disguise. Maybe Spanish in disguise (MAYBE) but certainly not English.
The French spelling system has a lot of digraphs to represent sounds. However, I think it's more consistent than English. It may not be like Spanish, but once you learn the patterns you can pronounce almost much every word accurately. The same can not be said for English where native speakers can mispronounce words they've read but never heard before. As for the second part, those three words are completely different. There is no word 'deau'. You mean 'dieu', which is pronounced /djø/. Deux is pronounced /dø/. Du is pronounced /dy/.
There is a lot of great literature in French, and a lot of language learning material is in French, too. If you love books, you can't go wrong with French.
If you like French, then you need to look up reasons instead of asking us to motivate you. Learning a language because X percent of the world knows it isn't much of a reason to learn it... do you care about French? As in, do you feel a drive to learn French? Do you really truly WANT to learn French? All the statistics in the world about French won't mean anything unless you want to learn French... otherwise, you are in for a painful journey. As someone who studied French in Middle School and lost interest, I can say that knowing that French is an official language of the U.N. or that it's spoken on three continents did not motivate me at all; I didn't feel any personal attraction to French. I mean, you say that the sound of French is "like someone trying to tell you a bold- faced lie." I can't imagine wanting to learn a language which disgusts you. Why is French on your hit list? It doesn't sound like you like it at all. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Person1235 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 16 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Sign Language | Message 4 of 20 11 June 2010 at 6:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm mainly learning it due to seeing French terms and phrases in books that I read (like "bon mot" from Animal Farm- George Orwell), and in a particular series of books I read there is a character who speaks French a lot and while the author (who writes in first person) understands or at least shows some skill in French, does not bother to translate, meaning that entire conversations in the book are left a mystery to me. Unfortunately the Latin connection between Spanish and French isn't cutting it anymore. I'll admit that I'm slightly interested in French, mainly for the literature and to see what the hype is about, but other than that- I foresee many difficulties and very little opertunities to use it. I do appreciate your understanding though, :) Scott 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hobbema Senior Member United States Joined 5743 days ago 541 posts - 575 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch | Message 5 of 20 11 June 2010 at 6:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I understand the question, but for me why I choose French? I like Volte's list. #s 4 and 6 resonate the most for me personally, but for the study of any language I say amen and thank you for no. 7. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 20 11 June 2010 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Because it's a great pleasure to see the trails of words that have travelled through Europe, the Americas, the rest of the world and back. Honestly, the more Spanish I learnt, the more interesting became every other Romance language, and to a certain extent also Germanic languages because I suddenly began to understand more or the connections, because I realized that concepts had wandered across linguistic borders, had been adapted, formed and deformed. - But I might be alone in that opinion.
Also, no English speaker should ever argue against the orthography of any other language. If you ever need to come up with an example for a weak excuse - there you have it. If you don't want to learn it, don't. You don't need to justify yourself. Life's too short to waste it on studying a language you don't have sufficient motivation to study. If you're still set on trying anyways you might try to just listen to French podcasts and audiobooks every day. As long as you don't actively hate the sound of the language you're quite likely to get used to it rapidly, and thanks to Spanish and, to some extent, English, you'll start to understand just enough to be annoyed that you don't understand anything at all. And if you ever are frustrated with your progress in French, do some Korean. It helps. Edited by Bao on 11 June 2010 at 6:57am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 20 11 June 2010 at 9:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In French you can almost always guess the pronunciation from the writing, but in the writing there are some historically motivated details which can't be guessed from the pronunciation. In English you have problems both ways. If you can't deal with that then you should settle for something like Finnish or Bahasa, which have a totally transparent writing.
It is not a law that you should study French, and as an Anglophone you don't have many chances of convincing the French that their orthography needs a reform. Edited by Iversen on 11 June 2010 at 9:38am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6044 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 8 of 20 11 June 2010 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbell1975/2275112715/ 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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