5 Reasons Why You Should Maintain A Good Work-Life Balance
In parts one and two, we learned how many native speakers of English are proud of their own language after studying the intricacies of it whilst many of those who haven’t at least feel content that the world is speaking their language. Younger native speakers of German, however, don’t seem to have as much respect for their language given the contemporary influences of English. What’s the story with Romance languages?
French
French has long been at battle with English for linguistic hegemony in Europe, often as the first choice of most pan-European institutions as a co-official language with English.
I feel that the French have always been a proud nation. Regional languages are prevalent across the land, from Brittany to the Basque Country and from Alsace to Occitania. Nonetheless, national unity is still apparent, strengthened by the Revolution and by De Gaulle. Does this sense of pride stretch into their own language?
Valentin Gréselle is studying English at university in Toulouse. “Yes, I believe most French people have respect for the French language because of the way foreigners see it: the language of love, the language of French cuisine and of mode [fashion].
From my point of view, French is great because of its former international status and “francophonie” [the union of French-speaking countries]. It might also be simply because it’s our native language after all. So, I think they are definitely proud to speak it!”
As young Europeans are embracing English more and more, to what extent is this happening in France then?
“I’m pretty sure that, no, they wouldn’t prefer to speak English, first because of pride for the country, but also because a lot of people just don’t care about the English language in France.”
This is better news, sort of. Personal experience also proves that, unlike in some countries, a French person will speak back to you in French rather than English. I hope that France continues to set this example by holding its head high and saying ‘yes – we believe in our language’.
Part four will examine how the hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers over the world see their own language.
Author bio
Lloyd Bingham (@Capital_Trans) is an in-house translator based in North East England. He graduated from Newcastle University in 2011 with a BA in Modern Languages (French, German and Spanish) and also studied Dutch, Catalan, French language variation, Iberian history and German linguistics.
In 2009, as part of a university project, he investigated the extent to which Occitan language and culture is still relevant to contemporary life in Toulouse and the south west of France. He has travelled extensively around the countries where these languages are spoken and has lived in Cardiff, Newcastle, Toulouse, Munich and Alicante. He blogs on his website (http://capital-translations.co.uk/) about matters relating to Western European culture, language and linguistics.
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The French are definitely proud of their language, and respect languages overall. I feel that for a lot of Francophones, that respect extends to a fear of making mistake and butchering English. They are just not comfortable speaking the language because in school, we learn to read and write a language but hardly understand it verbally and much less speak it fluently.
As a phone interpreter, I deal with many Québécois every day who demand customer service in French, not because they are arrogant, but because they had to preserve their language in an English-speaking environment. And if a company is marketing themselves in French, then they should also speak the language of their customers… Interesting discussion for sure!
Thanks for the blog.
Having lived in Paris for some years as a native Russian speaker, I have studied the peculiar attitude of the French towards their own language. It seems to me that, among other things, the French are great perfectionists about language.
If you are a foreigner and speak French, your French is often expected to be faultless. At the same time, even those French that know English faily well will not speak it for fear of their accept or minor gramatical errors being ridiculed. So FrenchNad’s observations are definitely correct there!
Many French seem to think that speaking French is the easiest thing in the world – they do it all their life – but speaking any other foreign language fluently is a great achievement. Nobody ever commended me for speaking French in France. On the contrary, my mistakes were often angrily pointed out to me and my accent was sometimes sniffed at. However, my knowledge of English, German and Dutch always greatly impressed my French interlocutors. Go figure!