Introduction To French

BrainStorm French Language Classes

IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE :

French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 84 countries that share the official use or teaching of French. French is also one of six official languages used in the United Nations. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France, the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick as well as other Francophone regions, Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-
Capital Region), western Switzerland (cantons
of Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Vaud, Valais), Monaco, partly in Luxembourg, the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont in the United States, and in northwestern Italy (region of Aosta Valley), and by various communities elsewhere.

HISTORY:

French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language’s early forms include Old French and Middle French.

TYPES OF FRENCH:

  1. Old French: The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects.
  2. Middle french: Within Old French, many dialects emerged but the Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th century–17th century Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,
    the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of the law.
  3. Modern French: During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations (lingua franca). It retained this role until approximately the middle of the 20th century when it
    was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War. Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the “first diplomatic blow” against the language

WRITING system:

French is written with the 26 letters of the basic Latin script, with four diacritics appearing on vowels (circumflex accent, acute accent, grave accent, diaeresis) and the cedilla appearing in “ç”.

There are two ligatures, “œ” and “æ”, but they are often replaced in contemporary French with “oe” and “ae” because the ligatures do not appear on
the AZERTY keyboard layout used in French-speaking countries. However, this is nonstandard in formal and literary texts.

OUR TEACHERS:

Here at our institute, we provide the best tutors to our students and by “best”, we mean it!
Our tutors are expert French speakers as they have been speaking the language for the entirety of their lives, French being their mother tongue. They are equipped with all the necessary tools to teach and guide you throughout the learning process.
By the time you’ve finished, you’ll be a confident and well-rounded French speaker, ready to begin your study or work across the world.

ONLINE CLASSES:

Online education is preferred by individuals who may not be able to make it for classes in a traditional brick and mortar kind of college due to various reasons. Below we’ll examine some of the benefits this exciting education provides to such students

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL FACULTY

Albeit there are numerous, well-versed, capable French trainers in the country, there remain differences between learning a language from a local (Indian) faculty and that from a native French- speaker.
Doesn’t seem so? Well, consider this: From whom would you prefer learning Punjabi – a Punjabi or a Tamilian?
The same logic could be applied while considering learning any language including French.