French Language Courses

While rumors abound that French is the most difficult Romance language to learn, it’s simply not true. Like learning any new skill, several factors will determine how quickly you will grasp French, including how many languages you currently speak, your motivation behind studying French, the quality of the lessons, and, importantly, how much time you can devote to practice. As you begin, you’ll see a few similarities and differences between French and English. For starters, close to 45% of English words have a French origin. This means many words like “date” or “art” will look very familiar, although pronounced differently. Mastering the pronunciation of French words will take practice. But if you take the time to really learn how to enunciate the vowels and the letter “r,” you’ll be a few steps ahead. In the beginning, it’s easy to be shy about pronouncing a word, but keep working through it. Remember, you’ll learn more by making mistakes than not trying.

Approximately 300 million people around the globe speak French. It is the official language in 29 countries, including France, Belgium, Haiti, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monaco, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Canada, and Mali. In fact, the French language is spoken by more people on the continent of Africa than in France. It’s also used by many international organizations, including the European Union and the Olympic Committee, and is one of the six official languages used by the United Nations. French is even spoken regularly in parts of the United States like Louisiana and northern regions of New England.

French is one of the main Romance languages, along with Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Its roots, however, can be traced back to the Ancient Roman language of Latin. Philologists believe French evolved in the northern region of Gaul during the Roman Empire. Their native Gaulish fused with Latin and other influences from nearby Celtic and Germanic languages. Approximately 100 words in the French language are of Gaulish origin, including mouton (lamb) and tonneau (barrel). By 813, Emperor Charlemagne realized that most of the population couldn’t understand Latin. He decreed that the church must now give sermons in the “Roman rustic language” or an early form of French. In fact, French was not recognized as an official language until 1539 in the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts.