By: Maranda Wabik
French,

Studying French

Today I want to discuss my love of the French language.   Since I was in eighth grade I have been studying French!   I studied French for a total of five years in school (eighth through twelfth grades), and I am now quite fluent in the language.    It is one of the most beautiful languages, and I am so happy to be bi-lingual in English and French!

It is great to be able to listen to French music, watch French films (without subtitles), and read novels in their original French!    It makes me feel special, and it always seems to impress people to know I know more than one language.

I personally love the idea that by knowing this beautiful language, I am following in the footsteps of some of my favorite royal historical figures. Many of them not only spoke French, but spoke it as a second language! Anne Boleyn, for example, spoke the language fluently and lived at French court for years before coming back to England. She was considered more French than English by the English court. Both her daughter Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of Scots, would also speak the language (although in their cases it was one of six they spoke)! Interestingly, for several centuries French was the universal language, and this started in royal courts. The English court spoke mainly French for years after the Norman invasion, but this had gone out of fashion by the time of the Tudors.

Studying a second language is a rewarding thing in my life.    I fully believe that everyone should try to learn other languages.    Not everyone is able to become fluent in a second language, but it is still rewarding to try.    Research even has stated that challenging yourself intellectually, like with learning a language, may help prevent memory loss as you age!

Knowing more than one language makes traveling easier.    I do one day want to travel to France, so knowing the language already will make that much simpler.   With my knowledge of French I can also glean information written in other romantic languages.     I can certainly understand a bit of Italian, and even some Latin phrases (as both are based on Latin, hence the meaning of the phrase romantic language).

I hope this short post will inspire some of my readers to pursue learning new languages!   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the Eiffel Tower.   I found the image on bigseventravel.com.

Further Reading