What I Learned From Taking Two Years of French Classes

Most of the people that know me, including friends, family, and classmates, will say that I’ve spent well above my fair share of time complaining about the fact that I am required to take two full years of a foreign language as a part of my core curriculum for my degree. As an English Major, I always felt that this was unnecessary. I am a student of the English language, not of French or Spanish or German. I didn’t come to college so that I could spend four semesters sitting in a classroom suffering through verb conjugations, vocabulary, and whole knew sets of grammar rules. I did that enough in high school. But as it were, I happen to be in the process of achieving my Bachelor of Arts—meaning that, even though my focus is on English, I’m stuck taking math, science, and foreign languages classes because my degree is essentially a liberal arts degree and encompasses more than one subject of study.

And perhaps my frustration with the idea of taking so many foreign language classes stems from the fact that I am not good at learning them. I took three years of Spanish in high school and, today, could barely have a three-minute conversation with a native speaker at best. I only got A’s in my first two classes because I had easy teachers that graded based on completion and participation. I dragged my heels through every required class and the minute I finished what I needed, I dropped foreign language from my mind, thinking I would never have to deal with it again.

So when I came to college and found out that I had to study French, Spanish, or German, I wanted to bang my head on the wall and cry out of frustration. I wanted to take Spanish, since I had experience with it, but after looking at the classes before registering, I realized that my chance of getting into a Spanish class was slim. German was only offered every other semester, and I didn’t want to spend my entire four years of college taking it. So, I was left with French. 

My first class ended up very much the way I thought it would: I stumbled out with a C thanks to the generosity of our teaching assistant and learned next to nothing. But then my second semester rolled around and I happened to pick a professor who taught the class in a way that worked well for me: It was structured, activity-based, engaging, and she liked to do lots of pantomime when speaking, which only helped to increase my understanding (I am a visual and kinesthetic learner).  Over the course of the following year, I found myself no longer dreading French class and actually becoming interested in what it was that we were learning. I took a History of the English Language class which helped me to  not only understand where my own language came from, but that French is actually more connected to English than we think.

With that in mind, here are some things that I learned from taking three semesters of French:

French is hard. As I said before, I’m terrible when it comes to comprehending and applying foreign languages. I can conjugate verbs all day long, but speaking casually strikes me dumb every single time. French itself is a challenging language because it isn’t very phonetic—most of the last letters or groups of letters in their words are not pronounced. For example, the verb “parler,” to speak, would be conjugated as “parle, parles, parle, parlent” for “I, you, he/she/it, and they,” respectively. You know how they’re all pronounced? “Parl.” Just like that. I can’t explain why this happens, but it takes a long time to get used to it. Their sounds are also very nasal, which isn’t often found in English, and therefore their vowels sound much different to us. “Je,” for “I” is pronounced more like “Juh,” than “jee” or “jay.” 

William the Conqueror

French is, in large part, where our connection to Latin comes from. The Norman Invasion of England brought about the introduction of the language to native English speakers in, well, England. An Anglo-Norman dialect, which was a northern dialect of Old French, became common amongst the nobility and very few people learned to speak English, not even William the Conqueror, the guy who was responsible for the invasion. However, the poor and other classes of people that relied heavily on trading between the two peoples began to integrate French words into English, and in some cases, it’s likely that many were bilingual. French itself is a Romance language, which means that it was a decedent of Latin. The French words that were added to our lexicon are the source of most of our Latin roots.

There are a lot of cognates in French. As anyone who has taken a foreign language will know, there are often times where a word in another language bears a strong resemblance to an English word. English has the unique quality of being a bit of mutt—it’s blending of Romantic and Germanic histories gives us a massive vocabulary, one of the largest in the world. Here are some examples of just a few French cognates:

Commencer (to commence or begin)

Dormir (to sleep; be “dormant”)

Finir (to finish)

Ètudier (to study)

Fumer (to smoke)

Lever (to get up; “levitate”)

beige 

bible

absence

accent

adolescent

applicable

attention

le campus

la cigarette

le crime

la culture

le film

gourmet

pardon

bleu (blue)

aimable (friendly; amiable)

beau (beautiful)

l’estomac (stomach)

du bœuf (beef)

du poulet (chicken)

la glace (ice/ice cream)

comprendre (to understand)

And the list goes on. There are literally thousands of French/English cognates, many of them spelled the exact same way (but pronounced differently). This makes vocabulary often easy to grasp, but the matter of applying it can be a bit more complicated. It’s also interesting to think of the French words as the origin of many English root words. 

You don’t truly learn a language until you envelope yourself in it. This is why so many teachers and professors stress to their students that studying abroad is important. There is no better way to become fluent in another language than to actively be speaking with people who have it as their native tongue. When you learn a language in a classroom setting, it’s giving you the bare basics to begin the real understanding. Many times, the concepts you learn in class are extremely formal and not used on a casual, day-to-day basis by native speakers.

Case in point: The way you say something negative in French is “ne + conjugated verb + pas.” While this is still one-hundred percent acceptable, I found out in my History of the English Language class that many casual French speakers are dropping the “pas” and only saying the “ne.” In a formal paper, this probably wouldn’t be acceptable, but in everyday conversation, it’s becoming more common. That’s something you would never be taught in a standard language class (this particular point was not only not made in my French class, but it was a side note spawned by a completely different conversation about something in English).  

French is beautiful. Two or three years ago, I would have laughed if you told me that French was either pretty or fun to listen to. Now, my perspective has changed. Sure, their sounds are far more nasal than ours and spending a long time speaking in French can make your entire nasal cavity hurt, but listening to someone speak in another language than your own is not only cool, but it’s beautiful. Language is one of the things that make the world so diverse and amazing. Limiting yourself to just your own language takes away your opportunity to appreciate the way people in another part of the world communicate. Before I took a French class, I thought that we all essentially spoke the same words in the same way, just with a different vocabulary—but that’s not the case. Each language has its own rules, grammar, and sentence structure that make it differ from any other. And that individuality is what makes language amazing.

English is beautiful. I never really took the time to think about my own language on a regular basis. It’s something that becomes so ingrained in you, such a part of your daily life that you don’t even think about looking at objectively. But when you sit back and begin to see just how English is structured, how parts of speech and intonation and inflection all play a part in constructing just one sentence, it’s awesome. You gain a new appreciation for what you speak that trickles down into appreciating your own identity. English may not be the prettiest sounding language, but it’s definitely unique.

Taking a foreign language class is worth it. In spite of all the tests, all of the studying, all of the homework and bad grades and long classes and expensive textbooks, I’d still say that it’s a good idea for anyone to take some time to look at another language. Even if it isn’t in the classroom setting, browsing the web or watching a movie in French or Spanish or German or whatever only adds to your understanding of the world. Studying another language IS studying your own. And knowledge for knowledge’s sake is better than a high GPA.