French language

“ The French language has no power of expressing truths of birth and germination; it paints effects, results, the caput mortuum, but not the cause, the motive power, the native force the development of any phenomenon whatever. ”

“ The French, to do them justice, attend very minutely to the purity, the correctness, and the elegance of their style in conversation and in their letters. ‘Bien narrer’ is an object of their study; and though they sometimes carry it to affectation, they never sink into inelegance, which is much the worst extreme of the two. Observe them, and form your French style upon theirs: for elegance in one language will reproduce itself in all. ”

“ Those of us who have grown weary and perplexed over the peculiarities of the French language, and who have wished that our parents and school-teachers did not consider that language necessary to our education, will rejoice at this item from an English newspaper, which shows that the Frenchman has as hard a time mastering our tongue as we have in mastering his. ”

“ Among these forms I might number the fluent use of the French language, which my mother early bestowed upon us as if its acquisition was mere sport-bestowed; for, unhappily, I know of no German grammar school where pupils can learn to speak French with facility; and how many never-to-be- forgotten memories of travel, what great benefits during my period of study in Paris I owe to this capacity! We obtained it by the help of bonnes, who found it easier to speak French to us because our mother always did the same in their presence. ”

“ And the monstrous Affectation of our travelled Ladies and Gentlemen to speak in the French Air, French Tone, French Terms, to dress, to cook, to write, to court in French, corrupted at once our Language and our Manners, and introduced an abominable Gallimaufry of French and English mixed together, that made the Innovators ridiculous to all Men of Sense. The French Tongue hath undoubtedly its Graces and Beauties, and I am not against any real Improvement of our own Language from that or any other; but we are always so foolish, or unfortunate, as never to make any Advantage of our Neighbours. ”

“ A second shining example is found in the history of the rise of the French language. This marvelously lucid tongue had its origin in a little island in the Seine, at present the heart of the great city of Paris. The language of the inhabitants of that tiny isle, to be sure, was at first a rude lingo no whit superior to the various patois of Romanized Gaul. But the inhabitants of that vigorous district soon gained the political ascendency over their neighbors and gradually extended their speech throughout the whole of Ile-de-France. ”

“ The French suffer from the excessive development of the logical faculty in them. This same definite quality in the French language, whilst delighting both my ear and my intelligence, rightly or wrongly prevents French poetry from making any appeal to me; it is too bright and sparkling, there is no mystery possible in so clear-cut a medium, added to which, every syllable in French having an equal value, no rhythm is possible, and French poetry has to rely on rhyme alone. ”

“ The French will not allow their language to be so difficult to speak properly, as the English language; and perhaps they are in the right; for how often do we meet with Englishmen who speak French perfectly? how seldom do we hear a Frenchman speak English without betraying his country by his pronunciation? ”

“ There is something pathetic in his frankly envious admiration of the French, who can and do convey their thoughts to one another in a language wrought up to be "the perfect medium of wit and wisdom,—the wisdom of the serpent,—the incisive medium of the practical intelligence." ”

“ The French language is taught to those who wish to study it, and the English language is professed and taught by a Frenchman. The other branches of an ordinary country education in Europe are also more or less provided for. ”

“ Some critics have even gone further, and have maintained that admirable as the French language is as an instrument for writing prose, it cannot properly be used as a vehicle for writing poetry, and that French poetry cannot be considered as being in the same category or on the same footing as the verse of other nations. ”

“ Now every person at all acquainted with Philology, knows that foreign language to be easiest to himself which bears the greatest resemblance to his vernacular tongue in its structure, syntax, the sequence of its words in sentences, and the identity or similarity of many of its terms with corresponding ones in his own language. It will be evident to any individual, that in these particulars the French resembles our language much more than the Latin. ”

“ The English student of French at first thinks in English and laboriously translates phrase for phrase into French; and in hearing or reading the foreign language, he translates the original, word for word, into his native tongue before he can understand its sense: he has mastered the language only when he has reached that point where English is no longer present to his consciousness: he thinks in French and understands in French. ”

“ Surely the mental habit of people who express their thoughts in so very different a manner, the one rapid, the other slow, the one plain, the other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other striding, cannot be essentially the same. The English language, strange compound as it is, with its want of inflections, and with all the difficulties which this want of inflections brings upon it, has yet made itself capable of being, in good hands, a business-instrument as ready, direct, and clear, as French or Latin. ”

“ The universality of the French language is the best ally France has in assisting her to conquer a universal dominion. He wished, therefore, that when we were in a situation to dictate in England, instead of proscribing Englishmen we should proscribe the English language, and advance and reward, in preference, all those parents whose children were sent to be educated in France, and all those families who voluntarily adopted in their houses and societies exclusively the French language. ”

“ Because of the obvious fact that French is not so poetic a language as English or German, in scale, sonority, or richness of vocabulary—it is, indeed, in the last respect the poorest I believe of all European languages as English is by far the richest—people, and even those who should be better informed, jump to the conclusion that therefore all French poetry is artificial or monotonously alike, or, at best, far inferior to English. ”

“ We know, or think we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method or habit of the French; we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the French are "more critical" than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous. ”

“ There is a certain language of conversation, a fashionable diction, of which every gentleman ought to be perfectly master, in whatever language he speaks. The French attend to it carefully, and with great reason; and their language, which is a language of phrases, helps them out exceedingly. That delicacy of diction is characteristical of a man of fashion and good company. ”

“ In its construction Old French is distinguished by a freedom strongly contrasting with the strictness of the modern language, and bears, as might be expected, a much stronger resemblance than the latter to the other Romanic dialects. In many features, indeed, both positive and negative, Modern French forms a class by itself, distinct in character from the other modern representatives of Latin. ”

“ Languages are termed rough and smooth, weak or expressive, frequently without reason.—As these are comparative terms, they change their application according to circumstances. The French is said to be a smooth or rough language, when compared with the German 17 or Italian. ”

“ To the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary—vigorous, but harsh, limited in extent, and lacking in fine discriminations and power of abstract expression, was now added nearly the whole wealth of French, with its fullness, flexibility, and grace. As a direct consequence the resulting language, modern English, is the richest and most varied instrument of expression ever developed at any time by any race. ”

“ Why should it be considered less strange for Englishmen to teach French and lay down rules and principles for the French language, a thing very few of those who have the language "by nature" are able to do? That these presumptuous Englishmen may be well read, and possess a good knowledge of French—"au moins pour non estre natif du territoire et pais"—does not alter the case; for Art, though it follow Nature closely, can never overtake her. ”

“ The French language being more studied and better understood by the English than our language is by the French nation, we find many of our [255] countrymen who relish the beauties, and pay the just tribute of admiration to the genius of Corneille, while there is scarcely a single Frenchman to be found who has any idea of the merit of Shakespeare. ”

“ The study of the French language and literature has been too much neglected in our American colleges and higher schools. Every person of liberal education ought to read and speak the French language. We recommend this book to the attention of teachers, parents, and all persons occupied with the study of French, and also to intelligent tourists, to whom it will prove an invaluable companion on a visit to La Belle France. ”

“ That not one, in one thousand of our citizens, ever has occasion to write or speak Latin.
3. That not above one in a hundred of those who learn Latin in this country, is capable, were it necessary, of correctly writing or conversing in that language.
4. That lads of moderate capacity and no very extraordinary application, frequently acquire the French language in twelve or eighteen months, so as to be able not merely to read it understandingly, but to comprehend it when spoken, and to make themselves tolerably well understood in conversation. ”

“ The rest of the method consists in translating from Latin or some other language into French, and in conversing with a tutor who should correct bad grammar or pronunciation. When once a fair knowledge of French is acquired, it should be strengthened by reading and reflecting upon some good book every day. Such reading is the shortest way of learning the language perfectly. Excellence and fluency in speaking may be attained by repeating or reciting aloud the substance of what has been read. ”

“ There is much talk on the education of children, and we are spectators of the French tutor's (Erondell) arrival and of the French lesson, which forms the fourth dialogue. Each of the two girls in turn reads in French and then translates. The more advanced is given some English to translate into French, and the beginner is asked to conjugate certain French verbs. ”

“ In the pursuit of this dignity of speech the prose writers of the 16th century ventured to borrow not words merely but grammatical terms and peculiarities of syntax from the ancient literature’s of Greece and Rome. The genius of France, however, and the necessity of remaining intelligible checked excess in this tendency, and after a few wild experiments the general result was discovered to be the widening of the capacities of the language, but at the temporary expense of some of the idiomatic richness of the old French form. ”

“ The native language of the country is treated like a vulgar and provincial dialect, while the French is cultivated as the only proper language for people of fashion.—Children of the first families are instructed in French, before they acquire their mother-tongue, and pains are taken to keep them ignorant of this, that it may not hurt their pronunciation of the other. ”

“ But, as I said before, your young men do well to come to us and learn our language; for, not only does our literature merit attention on its own account, but no one can deny that he who now knows German well can dispense with many other languages. Of the French, I do not speak; it is the language of conversation, and is indispensable in traveling, because everybody understands it, and in all countries we can get on with it instead of a good interpreter. ”

“ Summary.—Looking at the internal history of the French language as a whole, there is no such strongly marked division as exists between Old and Middle English, or even between Middle and Modern English. Some of the most important changes are quite modern, and are concealed by the traditional orthography ”

“ If it goes on, the question as to which is to become the dominant language of the world will settle itself by a natural process, and the necessity of inventing a special form of speech will be obviated. English is to-day the chief commercial language of the world, and is fast becoming the polite tongue of Europe, a position held a century ago by French. ”

“ In like manner, I would abolish the language-examination in modern languages, and give 250 marks for the literature of each of the three modern languages—French, German, Italian. The history would be taken as modern history, with an adequate total value. ”

“ All the larger countries of Europe provide us with exceptions; but we treat them all as exceptions. We do not ask why a native of France speaks French. But when a native of France speaks as his mother-tongue some other tongue than French, when French, or something which popularly passes for French, is spoken as his mother-tongue by some one who is not a native of France, we at once ask the reason. ”

“ As it appears to be our reasonable duty to improve our faculties, and by that means to render ourselves useful, it is necessary and very agreeable to be well-informed of our own language, and the Latin as being most permanent, and the French as being the most in general request. ”

“ The Grounds of the French Tongue, or a new French Grammar according to the present use and modern orthography. Digested into an easy, short and accurate Method with a Vocabulary and Dialogues. London, for Th. Basset, 1687.
The Great French Dictionary in two parts. The first part French and English. The second English and French. According to the ancient and modern orthography: wherein each language is set forth in its greatest latitude. The various senses of words both proper and figurative are orderly digested, and -426-illustrated with apposite phrases and proverbs. ”