French language

French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages.

Quotes

 * Good afternoon. Bonjour, Canada. I must tell you, I took 4 years of French in school. First time I attempted to make a speech in French, I was laughed at. So that's as good as I can get right now.
 * Joe Biden, Remarks to the Parliament of Canada, 24 March 2023


 * Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français.
 * What is not clear is not French.
 * Antoine de Rivarol, De l'universalité de la langue française: Discours qui a remporté le Prix a l'Académie de Berlin (Berlin, 1784), p. 49


 * When King Gustaf III was preparing an attack on Denmark in 1783 he wrote to his chief aide-de-camp, Colonel Toll, that he was extremely busy and needed to write in French rather than in Swedish because it took so much less time. It is true that he was unusually good at French: even Vergennes, who did not like him at all, acknowledged his exceptional command of the French language. But he was not unique. The whole of northern Europe was dominated in the same way by the French language and French culture. Frederick II of Prussia, the Empress Catherine II of Russia, the Emperors Joseph II and Leopold II of Austria, the kings of Denmark and Poland – all of them spoke and wrote French fluently; and some of them, like Catherine II, wrote it in a fine, literary style. King Adolf Fredrik of Sweden and his queen both came from Germany as adults, but their son Gustaf never learned to understand German. French was the language in which he was educated, and Queen Louisa Ulrica insisted in his youth that he should write one letter in French to her every day. Indeed correspondence between members of the royal family was generally carried on in French at this time.


 * I include in my salutation my Canadian friends who speak the French language. Although I am more than bold to attempt even this slight venture into the speaking of that tongue, I ask your forgiveness for errors both in expression and in pronunciation as I take this means of conveying to you personally and directly my sentiments of friendship and high esteem. Likewise, I salute you for the great contribution you, together with your English-speaking brethren, have made to the growth of this great country.
 * Dwight D. Eisenhower; Remarks to a Joint Session of the Parliament of Canada, The American Presidency Project; 14 November 1953


 * A university teaches. What does it teach? It must obviously teach all the languages in which the great literatures which have been preserved were written — Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Scandinavian, and English.
 * Charles William Eliot, as quoted by


 * The written language at the heart of Chinese civilization was designed for the production of a conservative elite and the exclusion of the masses from their activities. The contrast could scarcely be greater with the competing vernaculars of Europe – Italian, French and Castilian as well as Portuguese and English – usable for elite literature but readily accessible to a wider public with relatively simple and easily scalable education.
 * Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011)


 * The creation of Modern France through expansion goes back to the establishment of a small kingdom in the area around Paris in the late tenth century and was not completed until the incorporation of Nice and Savoy in 1860. The existing "hexagon" was the result of a long series of wars and conquests involving the triumph of French language and culture over what once were autonomous and culturally distinctive communities. The assimilation of Gascons, Savoyards, Occitans, Basques, and others helped to sustain the myth that French overseas expansionism in the nineteenth century, especially to North and West Africa, was a continuation of the same assmilationist project.
 * George M. Fredrickson, Race, Ethnicity, and National Identity in France and the United States: A Comparative Historical Overview, November 8, 2003.


 * Сердцеведением и мудрым познаньем жизни отзовется слово британца; легким щеголем блеснет и разлетится недолговечное слово француза; затейливо придумает свое, не всякому доступное, умно-худощавое слово немец; но нет слова, которое было бы так замашисто, бойко так вырвалось бы из-под самого сердца, так бы кипело и животрепетало, как метко сказанное русское слово.
 * Translation: The sayings of the Briton resound with the wisdom of the heart and sage comprehension of life; the Frenchman's short-lived phrase is brilliant as a sprightly dandy and soon fades away; the German fancifully contrives his intellectually thin sayings, not within the grasp of all; but there are no sayings of so wide a sweep and so bold an aim, none that burst from the very heart, bubble up and vibrate with life like an aptly uttered Russian saying.
 * Nikolai Gogol. Originally written in 1835—1852, the "Poem in prose" Dead Souls, Chapter V finale, in the 1922 translation by Constance Garnett


 * With respect to modern languages, French, as I have before observed, is indispensible. Next to this the Spanish is most important to an American. Our connection with Spain is already important and will become daily more so. Besides this the antient part of American history is written chiefly in Spanish.
 * Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Mann Randolph (6 July 1787).


 * The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for all humanity. The two meanings of the French word "épreuve" captures the dual significance of what we now confront: épreuve in the sense of an ordeal, an immense and painful undertaking, but also a test, an evaluation, or a judgment. The pandemic, in other words, is now testing the capacity of our political and economic systems to cope with a global problem situated at the level of our individual interdependence, which is to say at the very foundation of our social life. Like a dystopia made real, the current situation provides us with a glimpse of what soon awaits humanity if global economic and political structures are unable to radically and rapidly transform in order to confront the climate change crisis.
 * Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot, The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons (March 28, 2020), 


 * Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin.
 * Emmanuel Macron, Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness"


 * I have been trying to think of something that I could pick out as a mistake, you know, so that we could do better next time. But I found only one thing: I found on one of my schedules---I don't know who happened to prepare this, but nevertheless, the schedule said, with regard to the first dinner, the dinner that President de Gaulle was the host--the second one, as you know, was in Ambassador Shriver's residence, and I was the host there--but at the first dinner where he was the host, he was supposed to make a toast and I was supposed to prepare one to him. On my schedule it said: "President Nixon will speak for 10 minutes and then his speech will be translated into English." I knew I had troubles in communicating, but not that much. But whether it was my French or English or whatever the case might be, that was the only thing I could find--and we need to have a little humor in a trip. I think it was put in deliberately for that very purpose. But could I go one step further? Also, in this room are people who have dedicated their lives to the service of the Government of the United States, some in the Foreign Service and some in other branches of the service. You have been in this post; you have been in many others.
 * Richard Nixon, President Nixon's remarks at the American Embassy in Paris. (March 2, 1969). The American Presidency Project.


 * A theorization of what it means to look like a language and sound like a race can be found in the opening chapter of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, titled "The Negro and Language": “The problem that we confront in this chapter is this: The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately Whiter-that is, he will come closer to being a real human being-in direct ratio to his mastery of the French Language.... What we are getting at becomes plain: Mastery of language affords remarkable power.... The Black man who has lived in France for a length of time returns radically changed. To express it in genetic terms, his phenotype undergoes a definitive, an absolute mutation.” (1967:18-19) Fanon's evocative description of interactions in the French Caribbean context speaks to the powerful ways that categories of language and race become iconic of one another, such that linguistic practices can shape one's racial ontology.
 * Jonathan Rosa, Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019)


 * It is crucial to build from Fanon's account to rethink the construction and navigation of boundaries associated with categories of language and identity. The status of French in particular Caribbean contexts in the previous Fanonian example is not entirely unlike English language hegemony in the United States, which relies heavily on schools as flagship institutions for language standardization. This positions standardized English both as an institutional norm and aspiration. While school actors used different varieties of Spanish and English, standardized English was understood as the normative language variety for official business. Most school-wide announcements were made in English, and all formal staff meetings were conducted in English. Meanwhile, the majority of school employees perceived as Spanish-dominant occupied subordinate hierarchical positions as security guards, custodians, and lunchroom workers. This reflects the structural stigmatization of the Spanish language.
 * Jonathan Rosa, Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019)