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Speaker 1:          00:00          Be sure to subscribe to Lang Focus and click the notification button. Hello everyone. Welcome to the lane focus channel and my name is Paul. Today's topic is the French language or as it's called in French. French is a language that really needs no introduction. It's the official language of France of course, but it's an official language of 29 countries in total. That includes other countries in Europe, namely Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Monaco, numerous countries in Africa, Canada, where it's spoken mainly in the province of Quebec, the Caribbean, South America, and the South Pacific. It's estimated that French is spoken by between 80 and 110 million native speakers, but that number doesn't give us a full picture because between 140 and 180 million people speak it as a second language. The majority of them in Africa, French is also an important language of international diplomacy and used to be the main global Lingua Franca.

Speaker 1:          01:00          French is a member of the Gallo Romance Branch of the Romance Language family, which descended from vulgar Latin, just like all romance languages did. It's also part of a smaller subset of Gallo romance called Lung [inaudible], a dialect continuum in northern France, southern Belgium, and the channel islands, which includes Falciani, the dialect from which standard French derived and it's closest relatives history in the second century bce present de France was part of the goal region, which also included Belgium, Switzerland, northern Italy and parts of Germany and the Netherlands. The gold spoke Galician, which was not a unified language, but rather a series of Celtic languages and dialects, but very little is known about golish. The Roman republic conquered Gaul in the second and fourth centuries bce and in order to become Roman citizens, goals were required to adopt the Roman way of life, including their language, Latin, being able to speak Latin became a way to gain social status, economic opportunity and employment in the civil service.

Speaker 1:          02:02          Over the next few centuries, golish Latin bilingualism became more common and eventually Latin dominated and the golish language has disappeared. The common people spoke vulgar, Latin, a vernacular form of Latin that differed from the formal written language and also different from place to place throughout the Roman Empire. And I'm feeling Deja Vu right now because I think I talk about this in every video about a romance language. Beginning of the year three 75 ce, the GERMANIC invasions began and gradually replaced the western Roman Empire with Germanic Kingdoms. The fall of the empire accelerated the divergence of vulgar Latin into distinct romantic dialects. The dialects of northern goal, which would later develop into the lung, doyle changed more than others because of frequent contact with Germanic languages like frankish spoken by the elite. The frankish elite spoke both frankish and romantic and after a while they spoke mainly romantic dialects, but frankish left an important footprint on those dialects.

Speaker 1:          02:59          French, which developed from one of these romantic dialect, got approximately 550 words from frankish or around 13% of the total number of loan words in French, and it's phonology was greatly influenced as well. This is a large part of why French phonology is so distinct from other romance languages. It developed from the German ised romantic speech of the Frankish. He leads, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up for a minute. Old French, romantic dialects. Gradually grew into distinct languages and by the eighth century, the dialects of the northwestern part of the frankish kingdom grew into a number of dialects that are collectively referred to as old French, which later began to be called the [inaudible]. As they developed further, there was no standard form of old French, but rather a dialect continuum. One of those dialects from Sia, well spoken in a small area around Paris, and it's the old French variety from which standard French developed for [inaudible] is a modern word.

Speaker 1:          03:56          At the time, the dialect was actually cold. Frost sweat that name later evolved into Francais, say the name of French. Today, the king of the upper classes spoke frankish Latin was the language of writing and the Coleman people who were mostly illiterate spoke one of the various dialects, but over the next few centuries, the upper classes began to speak from [inaudible] under King Louie. The ninth from Sudan gained new prestige and was adopted by the upper classes in cities around the kingdom. The Coleman people continued to speak local dialects and Latin continued to serve as the language of education, the courts and academia. Throughout the Catholic world. Under King Phillip, the fourth French began to be used as the language of official documents and government and began to compete with Latin as a written language. Middle French. During the middle French period, the French changed dramatically, particularly in its phonology, but scholars tried to maintain the language, which means that the written French of today often reflects the pronunciation of French.

Speaker 1:          04:56          Before those changes took place, old French had two cases retained from Latin, but those also disappeared in the middle French and this resulted in the word order of French being more fixed. This was during the renaissance period when the cultural dominance of Italy influenced French 8,000 Italian vocabulary words entered French 800 of which are still in use today. In the 16th century, King Francois, the first sign of the ordinance of vehicle which made French the official language of administration instead of Latin. The Catholic church fought hard against this move and didn't want the holy scriptures to be translated into common languages, but their efforts ultimately failed. The printing press also helped to spread French because more people could read and understand it. Then they could Latin. So publishers printed more books in French. Modern French in the 17th century, French took the place of Latin as the Lingua Franca of Europe and the Catholic world.

Speaker 1:          05:52          This was also the century in which grammarians sought to standardize proper French with the publishing French grammars and the Academy Frost says was founded in 1635 with the mission of promoting proper French and preserving that form of the language. At that time, only a small percentage of the people in France actually spoken French. Most of them spoke other along the oil. The other regional varieties of speech. Later in 1880 universal education would be established and French would be made to the soul language of education and the only language permitted to be spoken at school. This measure would push standard French to be near universally spoken throughout the country. In the 18th century, French became the language of international diplomacy, used an international legal documents and so on reaching a status similar to the status of English. Today, French maintained the status until the time of the first world war.

Speaker 1:          06:45          French may not currently be the most widely spoken global Lingua Franca, but it's still an important diplomatic language. It's one of the official languages of the UN and the European Union, international courts as well as aid agencies and NGO's. Why is French spoken in so many countries around the world? That's because in the 17th century, France began establishing colonies all over the globe. After losing most of these colonies in wars with other colonial powers, France began a second colonial empire establishing mainly colonies in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. Aside from a few overseas departments and territories of France, these colonies no longer exist, but French is still spoken in many of those places. So what is French like? French naturally shares a lot in common with other romance languages and Speakers of romance languages. We'll find it familiar and comprehensible in many ways, especially in its written form. But it's phonology is quite distinct from other romance languages and its pronunciation is often not intuitive based on the spelling because it's orthography often reflect pronunciation from an earlier time pronunciation and orthography.

Speaker 1:          07:52          In old French, there were diphthongs and trip thongs. But these became simple vowels, so today in French, there are vowels that look like diphthongs are trip thongs, but represents the vowel sounds. For example, fruit flir. You can see that all of these words contain a single vowel sound, but are spelled like diphthongs are trip thongs. There were also a number of nasal vowels. Typically when an n or an m comes after a vowel, it's not pronounced, but the proceeding vowel is nasal ised. For example, from shrimp pumps. Here's a phrase with several nasal vowels. Bovine below. There are some exceptions. For example, when an adjective or noun takes a feminine ending eat, there's shank with a nasal vowel, but then there's Shin with an oral vowel and an end zone. There are also a number of diacritics or written accents in French. Four of these appear on vowels.

Speaker 1:          08:51          The first is the [inaudible] Xle, or a cute accent, which is used on the letter e. This represents an a sound, for example, Luke ethic. Then there's the exome glove or grave accent. With Anu. It's used mainly to distinguish between otherwise, similarly looking and sounding words. For example, oop, meaning where versus Ooh meaning or with Ie. The grave accent indicates that the sound is like the Ian Bet as opposed to an e with an acute accent, which sounds like a, then there's the excellent dilemma. This shows that two side by side vowel symbols are pronounced independently. For example, chorus. He don'ts, I mean in coincidence. Then there's the circumflex accent which can appear on any vowel. This indicates that the vowel was historically followed by an s for example. In fact, meaning a party. Just to illustrate, let's look at the Italian cognates of this word, Huna. Festa.

Speaker 1:          09:51          Notice that there's an s in the Italian word in an earlier form of French. There was an s after the eat and before the tea siggy or Savilla, which indicates that the c sounds like an s. Please note that the [inaudible] is not used when the consonant comes before an I or an e because a c in that position is always pronounced like an s. Anyway, there were also silent consonants in French consonants that are written but not pronounced. This includes most consonants that come at the end of a word. For example, shut hope vet. There is the masculine form of an adjective, but in the feminine form of adjectives, the final consonant is pronounced and in writing and he is placed after it. So there's fair but that, but not all final consonants are silent. Certain consonants are often but not always pronounced at the end specifically see R,F and l, the consonants in the word careful.

Speaker 1:          10:49          For example, after the other positive grammar, let's look at word order in very simple Svo sentences. The word order of French is basically the same as English. For example, here's a sentence meaning he likes movies. [inaudible] word for word. It's he likes the films, so we have subject, verb, object, but already we see that something is different from the English sentence because there's a definite article in English. The definite article would only be used to refer to specific films, but in French the definite article is also used for general statements like this. Articles in French are somewhat complex. We'll come back to those a little later. The word order starts to become more different from English when there are object pronouns in the sentence. So there's this sentence, meaning I see the building, she was worried about smoke, but then there's jut have one meaning. I see it word for word, it's I it.

Speaker 1:          11:43          See, you see that the object Pronoun comes before the verb, not after it. And then there are sentences with a direct object. Pronouns end, an indirect object. Pronouns [inaudible] this means Paul gives me money. Paul to me, gives some money. Now let's change the direct object to a Pronoun Miller done. This means Paul gives it to me word for word. It's Paul. To me it gives and if we make it negative, it becomes even more different from English. [inaudible] the [inaudible] and pop constitute the negative. So word for word, it's Paul negative. To me it give not. There are more differences beyond these, but that gives you a bit of an idea for now. Basically the word order is more similar when there are no object pronouns. Let's briefly look at a few other grammatical features. A French gender. All nouns have either masculine or feminine. Gender and French.

Speaker 1:          12:36          The gender of the noun is also reflected in articles before the nouns and adjectives that modify it. For example, the word for hat shut boob is masculine Lou Shapiro. Blue means the blue hat, the definite article and the adjective are masculine. The word for shirt shimmies is feminine. Less should means blue means that the blue shirt, the definite article in the adjective or feminine articles. There are three types of articles in French, definite, indefinite and partitive. All three types of articles have masculine, feminine and plural forms and definite and positive articles have special forms before avowal. What are positive of articles? You might ask? Well there indefinite, but they refer to a vague unspecified quantity often for food or abstract qualities. For example, [inaudible] you get to meaning I would like some cake. The amount of cake is vague, so we use the part of article. Nouns are almost always proceeded by articles in French unless there's a different determiner before the now such as a possessive pronouns like mine or a demonstrative pronouns like that.

Speaker 1:          13:44          Negation before we saw the phrase bone in the middle of them, which is negative with the negation in two parts. No and pot, but it's not always pot that's used. No [inaudible] means never. For example, even a [inaudible] means he never works. Yeah, it means nothing. For example, an emotional yeah means she eats nothing or she doesn't eat anything. Best son means nobody. Zuni Zuni Besson means I saw no one or I didn't see anyone. Leon and pest son can also be the subject of the sentence best so never knew means nobody came and the end of CPC means nothing happened. Verbs. The verb system of French is fairly complex. If we include all of the compound tenses, moods and aspects, there are 14 tenses plus the imperative form. Let's look at a couple of the basic tenses. He's fucked. Liz shimmies. This means he's wearing the shirt is the present tense. Third Person, masculine, singular conjugation. But let's change this to the future tense means this means he will wear the shirt. Now let's change this to the imperfect tense buffet to mean he was wearing the shirt. [inaudible].

Speaker 1:          15:01          The imperfect shows that the action was ongoing at a certain point in the past. If you want to express that the action was completed at a certain point in the past, you can use the passe composition bicycle boozy, either Taylor shoney's, that means he wore the shirt. You can see that in the past a composite, there is an auxiliary verb of Y, which means to have and it's followed by the past participle of the main verb, Dok Day. For some verbs in the past, say composition, particularly reflexive verbs and those showing movement, a different auxiliary verb is used to be. For example, eat is salty dynamism. This means he left the house. You can see that the auxiliary verb is a form of ed rather than a voir vocabulary as a romance language, most French vocabulary is of Latin origin and some of the more modern vocabulary.

Speaker 1:          15:51          Our hybrid words built from both Latin and Greek roots. English vocabulary has been greatly influenced by French, so English speakers will likely notice a lot of French words that look like English ones, the way they're pronounced. However, it's quite different. For example, information, Phil Messer, danger g, double dewberry license, the salts, and there are a significant number of false friends between French and English. Words that look the same but actually mean something else. For example, actually actually more active and more doesn't mean actually it means currently or right now assist, assisting a sea state means to attend. Then there's attend at dawn. A thumper doesn't mean to attempt. It means to wait. There are quite a lot of false friends like this, so you can never assume that a French word has the same meaning as a similar looking English word. Now let's look at one final sentence and see what we find.

Speaker 1:          16:50          Here's the sentence, meaning she went for a walk to the park yesterday and sip on Neil back. Yeah, word for word. It's she herself took for a walk to the park yesterday. L is the third person. Feminine, Singular Pronouns. Next we have the verb phrase and this year as a reflexive verb, sip is the third person. Pronouns used for reflexives. It means herself or himself. Next we have the third person, singular present tense form of Ed. This is used as the auxiliary verb for the passe composite for reflexive verbs come [inaudible] is the past participle of the main verb. This is the feminine singular form, which takes an extra e at the end by itself. It's a transitive verb, meaning to take for a walk, but the reflexive form used here means to go for a walk. Here we have a preposition meaning to the two by itself is ah, but when used before the masculine singular definite article, they are replaced by bull.

Speaker 1:          17:43          For Feminine Singular, it would be alive and for plural it would be, oh fuck is the noun meeting park. So this whole phrase means to the park. Yes is the advert meaning yesterday. As you can see, French is a very interesting language for speakers of English or romance languages. There are probably many elements of French that seemed familiar, but then when you get into the details of the language, there might be aspects that seem complex or challenging, but French is a highly rewarding language and by learning French you will not only be able to communicate with French speakers, but you will also open the door to a whole new world of culture, literature, cinema, and history. The question of the day for native speakers of French. In this video I focused mainly on standard Parisian, French, but what regional differences are you aware of? Are there any differences in the French spoken at Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, et Cetera, and for learners of French? What aspects of French have you found challenging and how have you dealt with those challenges? Leave your answers in the comments down below. Be sure to follow Lang, focus on facebook, twitter, and instagram and be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications if you want to know whenever I publish a new video and once again thank you to all of my patrion supporters, especially these people right here on the screen for their monthly pledges. Thank you for watching and have a nice day.