La langue française: The French Language

be sure to subscribe to lange focus and click the notification button hello everyone welcome to the lange focused channel and my name is paul today's topic is the french language or language lessons as it's called in French French is a language that really needs no introduction it's the official language of France of course but it's an official language of 29 countries in total that includes other countries in Europe namely Belgium Switzerland Luxembourg and Monaco numerous countries in Africa Canada where it's spoken mainly in the province of Quebec the Caribbean South America and the South Pacific it's estimated that French is spoken by between 80 and 110 million native speakers but that number doesn't give us a full picture because between 140 and 180 million people speak it as a Second Language the majority of them in Africa French is also an important language of international diplomacy and used to be the main global lingua franca French is a member of the gallo-romance branch of the Romance language family which descended from vulgar latin just like all Romance languages did it's also part of a smaller subset of gallo-romance called lung the doyen a dialect continuum in northern France southern Belgium and the Channel Islands which includes frosty on the dialect from which standard French derived and its closest relatives history in the second century BCE present-day France was part of the Gaul region which also included Belgium Switzerland northern Italy in parts of Germany and the Netherlands the Gaul spoke Gaulish which was not a unified language but rather a series of Celtic languages and dialects but very little is known about Gaulish the Roman Republic conquered Gaul in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE and in order to become Roman citizens Gauls were required to adopt the Roman way of life including their language Latin being able to speak Latin became a way to gain social status economic opportunity and employment in the civil service over the next few centuries Gaulish latin bilingualism became more common and eventually latin dominated in the Gaulish languages disappeared the common people spoke vulgar latin of ocular form of Latin that differed from the formal written language and also differed from place to place throughout the Roman Empire and I'm feeling deja vu right now because I think I talked about this in every video about a Romance language beginning in the year 375 C II the Germanic invasions began and gradually replaced the Western Roman Empire with Germanic kingdoms the fall of the empire accelerated the divergence of vulgar latin into distinct romantic dialects the dialects of northern Gaul which would later develop into the lungs oil changed more than others because of frequent contact with Germanic languages like Frankish spoken by the elite the Frankish elite spoke both Frankish and romantic and after a while they spoke mainly romantic dialects but Frankish left an important footprint on those dialects French which developed from one of these romantic dialects got approximately 550 words from Frankish or around 13% of the total number of lone words in French and its phonology was greatly influenced as well this is a large part of why French phonology is so distinct from other Romance languages it developed from the germanized romantic speech of the Frankish Eiland but I'm getting ahead of myself let me back up for a minute old French romantic dialects gradually grew into distinct languages and by the 8th century the dialects of the northwestern part of the Frankish Kingdom grew into a number of dialects that are collectively referred to as old French which later began to be called the long the dog as they developed further there was no standard form of old French but rather a dialect continuum one of those dialects Francia was spoken in a small area around Paris and it's the old French variety from which standard French developed France young is a modern word at the time the dialect was actually called France wit that name later evolved into francais the name of French today the king in the upper classes spoke Frankish Latin was the language of writing and the common people who were mostly illiterate spoke one of the various dialects but over the next few centuries the upper classes began to speak false young under King Louis the ninth Francia gained new prestige and was adopted by the upper classes in cities around the kingdom the common people continued to speak local dialects and Latin continued to serve as the language of Education the courts and academia throughout the Catholic world under King Philip the fourth French began to be used as the language of official documents and government and began to compete with Latin as a written language middle French during the middle French period French changed dramatically particularly in its phonology but scholars tried to maintain the language which means that the written French of today often reflects the pronunciation of French before those changes took place old French had two cases retained from Latin but those also disappeared in middle French and this resulted in the word order of French being more fixed this was during the Renaissance period when the cultural dominance of Italy influenced French 8,000 Italian vocabulary words entered French 800 of which are still in use today in the sixteenth century King Francois the first signed the ordinance of vehicle claim which made French the official language of administration instead of Latin the Catholic Church fought hard against this move and didn't want the Holy Scriptures to be translated into common languages but their efforts ultimately failed the printing press also helped to spread French because more people could read and understand it than they could Latin so publishers printed more books in French modern French in the 17th century French took the place of Latin as the lingua franca of Europe and the Catholic world this was also the century in which grammarians sought to standardize proper French with the publishing of French grammars and the Academie Francaise was founded in 1635 with the mission of promoting proper French and preserving that form of the language at that time only a small percentage of the people in France actually spoke French most of them spoke other Atlanta Doyle the other regional varieties of speech later in 1880 universal education would be established and French would be made to the sole language of Education and the only language permitted to be spoken at school this measure would push standard French to be near universally spoken throughout the country in the 18th century French became the language of international diplomacy used in international legal documents and so on reaching a status similar to the status of English today French maintained the status until the time of the First World War French may not currently be the most widely spoken global lingua franca but it's still an important diplomatic language it's one of the official languages of the UN of the European Union international courts as well as eight agencies and NGOs why is French spoken in so many countries around the world that's because in the 17th century France began establishing colonies all over the globe after losing most of these colonies in wars with other colonial powers France began a second colonial empire establishing mainly colonies in Africa Southeast Asia and the South Pacific aside from a few overseas departments and territories of France these colonies no longer exist but French is still spoken in many of those places so what is French like French naturally shares a lot in common with other Romance languages and speakers of Romance languages we'll find it familiar and comprehensible in many ways especially in its written form but its phonology is quite distinct from other Romance languages and it's pronunciation is often not intuitive based on the spelling because its orthography often reflects pronunciation from an earlier time pronunciation and orthography in Old French there were diff thongs and triphthongs but these became simple vowels so today in French there are vowels that look like diphthongs or trif thongs but represent simple vowel sounds for example boo boo Fleur girl you can see that all of these words contain a single vowel sound but are spelled like diphthongs or trif thongs there are also a number of nasal vowels typically when an N or an M comes after a vowel it's not pronounced but the preceding vowel is nasalized for example fun huh she'll come here's a phrase with several nasal vowels boom van blown there are some exceptions for example when an adjective or noun takes a feminine ending II there's Xiang with a nasal vowel but then there's Shin with an oral vowel and an end zone there are also a number of diacritics or written accents in French four of these appear on vowels the first is the axial Teague Xie or acute accent which is used on the letter e this represents an a sound for example Luke Fe then there's the excellent Grove or grave accent with a and you it's used mainly to distinguish between otherwise similarly looking and sounding words for example ooh meaning where versus ooh meaning or with E the grave accent indicates that the sound is like the en bet as opposed to an e with an acute accent which sounds like a then there's the accent Clemmie this shows that two side-by-side vowel symbols are pronounced independently for example currency DOS meaning coincidence then there's the circumflex accent which can appear on any vowel this indicates that the vowel was historically followed by an S for example in fact meaning a party just to illustrate let's look at the Italian cognate of this word una Festa notice that there's an S in the Italian word in an earlier form of French there was an S after the E and before the T TIGI or cedilha which indicates that the C sounds like an S becomes ax please note that the cedilha is not used when the consonant comes before an i or an e because a C in that position is always pronounced like an S anyway there are also silent consonants in French consonants that are written but not pronounced this includes most consonants that come at the end of a word for example shop Pope there there is the masculine form of an adjective but in the feminine form of adjectives the final consonant is pronounced and in writing and E is placed after it so there's fair but vest but not all final consonants are silent certain consonants are often but not always pronounced at the end specifically see our F and L the consonants in the word careful for example Aveline avec positive grammar let's look at word order in very simple SVO sentences the word order of French is basically the same as English for example here's a sentence meaning he likes movies elem listen word-for-word 'it's he likes the film's so we have subject verb object but already we see that something is different from the English sentence because there's a definite article in English the definite article would only be used to refer to specific films but in French the definite article is also used for general statements like this articles in French are somewhat complex we'll come back to those a little later the word order starts to become more different from English when there are object pronouns in the sentence so there's the sentence meaning I see the building you've read about this month but then there's jus revoir meaning I see it word for word it's I it see you see that the object pronoun comes before the verb not after it and then there are sentences with a direct object pronoun and an indirect object pronoun ballmer done do locks on this means paul gives me money paul to me gives some money now let's change the direct object to a pronoun Bern we're done this means Paul gives it to me word-for-word it's Paul to me it gives and if we make it negative it becomes even more different from English Burnham ela dança the nut and pot constitute the negative it's a word for word is Paul negative to me yet give not there are more differences beyond these but that gives you a bit of an idea for now basically the word order is more similar when there are no object pronouns let's briefly look at a few other grammatical features of French gender all nouns have either a masculine or feminine gender in French the gender of the noun is also reflected in articles before the noun and adjectives that modify it for example the word for hat shabbu is masculine Lucia Pooh blue means the blue hat the definite article and the adjectives are masculine the word for shirt shoes is feminine la chemise blue means the blue shirt the definite article and the adjectives are feminine articles there are three types of articles in French definite indefinite and part all three types of articles have masculine feminine and plural forms and definite and positive articles have special forms before a vowel what are positive articles you might ask well they're indefinite but they refer to a vague unspecified quantity often for food or abstract qualities for example buddha-head you get two meaning I would like some cake the amount of cake is vague so we use the partitive article nouns are almost always preceded by articles in French unless there's a different determiner before the noun such as a possessive pronoun like my or a demonstrative pronoun like that negation before we saw the phrase bond Nomura denpa which is negative with the negation in two parts na and pop but it's not always pot that's used no shammy means never for example even Ottaviani means he never works no real means nothing for example an emotion Jung means she eats nothing or she doesn't eat anything no best son means nobody Geneva pet son means I saw no one or I didn't see anyone Leah and pest son can also be the subject of a sentence their son never knew means nobody came and Riaan sebasi means nothing happened verbs the verb system of French is fairly complex if we include all of the compound tenses moods and aspects there are 14 tenses plus the imperative form let's look at a couple of the basic tenses in la chemise this means he's wearing the shirt Paul is the present tense third-person masculine singular conjugation but let's change this to the future tense he's dr. Holly chemise this means he will wear the shirt now let's change this to the imperfect tense imperfect to mean he was wearing the shirt he's baaack de la chemise the imperfect shows that the action was ongoing at a certain point in the past if you want to express that the action was completed at a certain point in the past you can use the passe compose a passe compose e ela doc de la chemise that means he wore the shirt you can see that in the past a composite there is auxiliary verb avoir which means to have and it's followed by the past participle of the main verb bhakti for some verbs in the past I compose a particularly reflexive verbs and those showing movement a different auxiliary verb is used at con to be for example elicited enemies on this means he left the house you can see that the auxiliary verb is a form of Ethel rather than evoi vocabulary as a Romance language most French vocabulary is of latin origin and some of the more modern vocabulary or hybrid words built from both latin and greek roots english vocabulary has been greatly influenced by French so English speakers will likely notice a lot of French words that look like English ones the way they're pronounced however is quite different for example information samus danger Don G double dubler licensed resource and there are a significant number of false friends between French and English words that look the same but actually means something else for example actually actually more active Elmo doesn't mean actually it means currently or right now assist assist e a sea state means to attend then there's attend act on a tone doesn't mean to attend it means to wait there are quite a lot of false friends like this so you can never assume that a French word has the same meaning as a similar-looking English word now let's look at one final sentence and see what we find here's a sentence meaning she went for a walk to the park yesterday it's a pun new back yeah word-for-word it's she herself took for a walk to the park yesterday L is the third person feminine singular pronoun next we have the verb phrase and this year is a reflexive verb ser' is the third person pronoun used for reflexive it means herself or himself next we have the third-person singular present tense form of Ethel this is used as the auxiliary verb for the pass a composite or reflexive verbs honey is the past participle of the main verb this is the feminine singular form which takes an extra e at the end by itself it's a transitive verb meaning to take for a walk but the plexiform used here means to go for a walk here we have a preposition meaning to the two by itself is aa but when used before the masculine singular definite article they are replaced by all four feminine singular it would be a lot and for plural it would be all back is the noun meaning park so this whole phrase means to the park yeah is the adverb meaning yesterday as you can see French is a very interesting language for speakers of English or Romance languages there are probably many elements of French that seem familiar but then when you get into the details of the language there might be aspects that seem complex or challenging but French is a highly rewarding language and by learning French you will not only be able to communicate with French speakers but you will also open the door to a whole new world of culture literature cinema and history the question of the day for native speakers of French in this video I focused mainly on standard Parisian French but what regional differences are you aware of are there any differences in the French spoken at Belgium Switzerland Quebec etc and for learners of French what aspects of French have you found challenging and how have you dealt with those challenges leave your answers in the comments down below be sure to follow Lange focus on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications if you want to know whenever I publish a new video and once again thank you to all of my patreon supporters especially these people right here on the screen for their monthly pledges thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 928,619

Rating: 4.9347014 out of 5

Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, linguist, linguistics, phonology, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, french language, verbs, français, la langue francaise, france, Langues d'oïl, history of french, history of france, history, europe, european languages, european history, romance languages, latin, francophone, francophonie, Académie française, langfocus french

Id: Tfxf4pV-zJg

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2017