Learning French
Salut!
La grande vieille dame
What comes across your mind if you hear someone speaks French? For some, it's the sexy, romantic language of love. For others, it might be that rapid gibberish language with super inefficient orthography. Well the first opinion prevails in my country Indonesia. But this might rather be influenced by prevailing opinion imported from the West, as I doubt that many Indonesians who support this view could point out things associated with France other than Paris and the Eiffel Tower!
Nevertheless the language is relatively popular here, especially among the younger generation. Aside from its unofficial status as the language of love, many consider the alien nasal sounds as 'sexy'. Unfortunately, while many Indonesians nowadays take basic French course offline and online, most quit after some time, as the Romance grammar is not something very pleasant to deal with when you're already struggling with English. Well, maybe that's more because our language, Indonesian, is linguistically unrelated to Indo-European languages such as English and French. While it's true that Sanskrit once occupied a very important position in this region in the past, we only inherit loanwords and not the grammar. That's what I know.
Now, I also took French course back in 2008. Actually my first French course was through YouTube with this channel called FrenchTastic (link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMjmhApOHGb0y-5Yho_6dQ). Sadly the last video was uploaded four years ago, but from his later videos I saw that he has some udemy content (https://www.udemy.com/course/frenchtastic-2-minute-french-vocabulary-lessons-for-the-lazy-learner/), will visit it later for sure. The professeur, Herman by name, was a very nice guy. We went through numerous discussions via email concerning the language (I've been quite a grammar geek from the very beginning lol). That was when I still lived in my native city of Medan, where French course was a rarity. After moving to Jakarta (the capital city) in 2009, I enrolled in this Centre Culturel Français (CCF, now Institut Français d'Indonésie or 'IFI') to properly start my adventure with the language. Here I learned that the YouTube lesson was so significant, in my first day my CCF professeur actually asked me whether I had lived in France before. Of course she was referring to my mediocre-but-better-than-my-friends pronunciation, as I knew nothing else than 'je m'appele' and 'je suis' at that time haha.
Now you might wonder why I wanted to learn this particular language. The reason is, I am a fan of history. Will talk about this particular interest in a separate post later, but there was time when I was so fascinated by the European Middle Ages. The Kingdom of France was one of the most powerful political entity at that time. Moreover, many Frenchmen became ruling elites of other countries, such as the Anglo-Normans, the Italo-Normans, the Burgundian monarchs of Castile and Portugal, the Angevins monarchs of Hungary, and the rulers of Crusader states. Reading many Wikipedia articles on this subject, it intrigued me how to pronounce names such as Thibaud and Blanche, or places such as Montfort-l'Amaury. I looked up my email to Herman (the YouTube guy) and saw me telling him that my motivation to learn French was to know how those words sound like. :')
Aside from the historic reason, I do find the language beautiful. To me, the beauty might arise from the contrasting combination of the mellifluous Vulgar Latin sounds with the efficiency of Germanic influence. Personally I am very eager to see the beautiful transformation of Germanic name/word into French, which, if you're into medieval history, it's very prominent on personal names. It's fun to see how Adalheidis (adal: noble, heid: appearance) became Adelaide, then Adelais and finally Alice/Alyx. Or how Raginwald (ragin: counsel, wald: ruler) became Reginald and then Renaud. On the other hand, whenever I feel like to see the transformation of a French word from its Latin original, I often compare it with other Romance language, most often with Italian and Spanish. For example, how Latin caballum (horse) gave rise to cavallo (Italian), caballo (Spanish), and cheval (French). Or how filium (son) became figlio (Italian), hijo (Spanish), and fils (French). Super fun!
However in general my French is pretty lame, especially when it comes to listening. To make things worse, I could not put the language into practice in my daily life. I remember I took my DELF B1 certification sometime in 2012 I guess, and stopped the course due to my job. After a long hiatus I took preparation course for B2 in 2015 but failed to take the exam due to my job, and haven't tried that again up to the present. Day by day, my French is deteriorating. Now I'm trying to ameliorate it by listening to French podcasts on Spotify, hope it helps. And to make this post a bit more positive, you should know that the remnants of French in my head came in handy when I visited the country in 2016 and 2018. Not only in France, but it helped me (and my travel mates) a lot also when we were in Italy and the Netherlands! Lol.
I would also love to hear your experience with French and/or other languages, if you will :)
Cheers!
Nevertheless the language is relatively popular here, especially among the younger generation. Aside from its unofficial status as the language of love, many consider the alien nasal sounds as 'sexy'. Unfortunately, while many Indonesians nowadays take basic French course offline and online, most quit after some time, as the Romance grammar is not something very pleasant to deal with when you're already struggling with English. Well, maybe that's more because our language, Indonesian, is linguistically unrelated to Indo-European languages such as English and French. While it's true that Sanskrit once occupied a very important position in this region in the past, we only inherit loanwords and not the grammar. That's what I know.
Now, I also took French course back in 2008. Actually my first French course was through YouTube with this channel called FrenchTastic (link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMjmhApOHGb0y-5Yho_6dQ). Sadly the last video was uploaded four years ago, but from his later videos I saw that he has some udemy content (https://www.udemy.com/course/frenchtastic-2-minute-french-vocabulary-lessons-for-the-lazy-learner/), will visit it later for sure. The professeur, Herman by name, was a very nice guy. We went through numerous discussions via email concerning the language (I've been quite a grammar geek from the very beginning lol). That was when I still lived in my native city of Medan, where French course was a rarity. After moving to Jakarta (the capital city) in 2009, I enrolled in this Centre Culturel Français (CCF, now Institut Français d'Indonésie or 'IFI') to properly start my adventure with the language. Here I learned that the YouTube lesson was so significant, in my first day my CCF professeur actually asked me whether I had lived in France before. Of course she was referring to my mediocre-but-better-than-my-friends pronunciation, as I knew nothing else than 'je m'appele' and 'je suis' at that time haha.
New year banquet of Duke Jean of Berry as portrayed in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 14th century
Now you might wonder why I wanted to learn this particular language. The reason is, I am a fan of history. Will talk about this particular interest in a separate post later, but there was time when I was so fascinated by the European Middle Ages. The Kingdom of France was one of the most powerful political entity at that time. Moreover, many Frenchmen became ruling elites of other countries, such as the Anglo-Normans, the Italo-Normans, the Burgundian monarchs of Castile and Portugal, the Angevins monarchs of Hungary, and the rulers of Crusader states. Reading many Wikipedia articles on this subject, it intrigued me how to pronounce names such as Thibaud and Blanche, or places such as Montfort-l'Amaury. I looked up my email to Herman (the YouTube guy) and saw me telling him that my motivation to learn French was to know how those words sound like. :')
Aside from the historic reason, I do find the language beautiful. To me, the beauty might arise from the contrasting combination of the mellifluous Vulgar Latin sounds with the efficiency of Germanic influence. Personally I am very eager to see the beautiful transformation of Germanic name/word into French, which, if you're into medieval history, it's very prominent on personal names. It's fun to see how Adalheidis (adal: noble, heid: appearance) became Adelaide, then Adelais and finally Alice/Alyx. Or how Raginwald (ragin: counsel, wald: ruler) became Reginald and then Renaud. On the other hand, whenever I feel like to see the transformation of a French word from its Latin original, I often compare it with other Romance language, most often with Italian and Spanish. For example, how Latin caballum (horse) gave rise to cavallo (Italian), caballo (Spanish), and cheval (French). Or how filium (son) became figlio (Italian), hijo (Spanish), and fils (French). Super fun!
Blanche of Castile and her husband, Louis VIII of France, 13th century
However in general my French is pretty lame, especially when it comes to listening. To make things worse, I could not put the language into practice in my daily life. I remember I took my DELF B1 certification sometime in 2012 I guess, and stopped the course due to my job. After a long hiatus I took preparation course for B2 in 2015 but failed to take the exam due to my job, and haven't tried that again up to the present. Day by day, my French is deteriorating. Now I'm trying to ameliorate it by listening to French podcasts on Spotify, hope it helps. And to make this post a bit more positive, you should know that the remnants of French in my head came in handy when I visited the country in 2016 and 2018. Not only in France, but it helped me (and my travel mates) a lot also when we were in Italy and the Netherlands! Lol.
I would also love to hear your experience with French and/or other languages, if you will :)
Cheers!
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