Deciding to learn French puts you in the company of 200 million people who have recognized with its enormous canon of literature, important history and many speakers that French is certainly a language worth learning. This makes French the third most-studied language after Spanish and English. With 136 million who speak French as a first language and about the equivalent who do so as a second, there are in total about 500 million speakers.


French is considered an official language in 30 countries but the majority of native French speakers hail from France and Canada (particularly Quebec). French is also a rapidly growing language in Africa where it operates as a lingua franca. A lingua franca is a bridge language which allows different native speakers to converse and refers originally to the Frankish language (a major influence of today’s French).


French is a Romance language meaning it derives from the language of ancient Rome called Vulgar Latin. It has significant influences from the original Celtic inhabitants of Gaul, however, which has determined the syntax and phonology of modern French. In addition, from the 3rd century onwards invading Germanic tribes settled in areas nearby present-day France which also modified Vulgar Latin into the form France took. One of these tribes were the Franks whose land they occupied became known as Francia in Latin. It is from this that the language and the country have derived their present name.


Study French AbroadThe first surviving French text is the Oaths of Strasbourg from 842 and developed till the 11th century where it became one of the oldest non-Latin body of literature. In 1539, by the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, French was made the official language of the government. In 1634 the Académie française was founded in the interests of preserving and regulating the French language which is still active today adapting foreign and modern terms. During the 17th to 19th century France was the most powerful nation in Europe and French became the language of international diplomacy and affairs as well as the preferred language of the educated classes. Only relatively recently, with the rise of the United States during the World Wars, has French lost this position of influence.


The Study of French

The French uses the Latin alphabet that English does but includes five diacritics, or accents, and two orthographic ligatures, fused vowels. Also similar to English is that pronunciation of French follows rules older than the spellings. While Old French for foot was spelled as it sounds “Pie” the spelling has be changed to reflect its Latin origins to “Pied”.


French is moderately inflected which means words are modified to show grammatical categories. For example, nouns and many pronouns are inflected to signify whether singular or plural while adjectives also are inflected to correspond with the gender of the nouns they describe. Verbs are inflected creating the many conjugations of French verbs. many of which, thankfully, follow similar patterns.


We are already familiar with so many French words and terms that you will likely hear “bon voyage” as you leave to France. Even entire sentences such as “Je ne sais quoi” are in common usage. When you arrive it may be a more challenging language than you expected but just remember “Impossible n’est pas français!”