Both English and French enjoy ever-lasting popularity among students of different countries of the world. Of course, the scope of popularity is not the same: any statistics you’ll find will testify clearly to the vast supremacy of English as the first foreign language choice anywhere. Sometimes they even speak of substitution of other languages in teaching, French included, by English, and for good reason: virtually all languages except for Shakespeare’s favorite pick suffer from lack of attention to a certain extent.
English and French have been representing two poles, confronting each other in many ways for quite a long time. Talks about civilization bearers of light and leadership battles aside, they used to have different philosophies, or at least they pretended to. That’s why learning both of these fabulous languages plays interesting games with your mind, and that’s a definitely priceless experience. Let me tell you a bit more about my personal one, as I was lucky enough to have them in my life, and one of them since the very childhood.
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Language of Voltaire and Other Greats in My Life
Well, it’s harder to associate the French language with just one great, be it Hugo or Voltaire or someone else, as the pantheon of greats is striking. I started learning French thanks to my father who was working as a teacher at the school with the in-depth study of foreign languages. English lessons began a bit later, several years after I had started school. From the very start, as far as I remember, this language appealed to me a lot: pronunciation and syntax, I guess, were especially suitable for my taste then. Afterwards, all of it developed into the real passion, and I took part in several French Nationwide Olympiads, not without some success, and this was important, as it really motivated me to progress.
Language of Shakespeare in My Life
As for English, it was quite the opposite. If French was my favorite, but somehow systemic, as there was always a watchful eye of my father and simply more time and effort spent on mastering it, English was more sort of “a free choice,” special kind of mythmaking out of both English and American culture. English was special in that it was responsible for the sense of belonging to the time I lived in. What’s more, English was the real identity builder, as it was the language of video games, pop and rock songs, just to name a few things. No need to ask for more, it was enough for me to feel forever connected to this language and its irresistible charms.
Different Logics Behind Linguistic Pleasure
In a sense, these two conceptions conditioned the ways of taking delight in each of the languages. French was pretty often associated with “bon usage,” a special kind of stylistic tricks and correctness and there’s…. As for slang and different dimensions of colloquial speech, it often seemed to me inappropriate to the extent that sometimes I caught myself thinking arrogantly that some urban catchphrase just doesn’t fit the language at all. It doesn’t mean that I was adamant of purism (in fact, as tempting as it may seem at first glance, it was clear to me that it was absolutely impossible), but this feeling shaped nevertheless a lot of…
It faded away after a while, but frankly speaking, I prefer the purified version of French to the fullest up to now. As for varieties of English, I held affection for American English at first, as more, but, with time, I related more to British English. A reaction to globalization is detected.
Globalization and New Stuff
The thing is that we come into this world with already some English off-flavor in our minds, you guess, of course, what I mean: we are all doomed to take at least some interest in globalized culture, there’s no escape from it. Buying essays is a part of it, too.
In these conditions, giving yourself some time to acquire other languages and culture and separating it from globalized stuff within this very culture (as almost everything is globalized to some extent nowadays) is something of a must if you really want to know that another culture.
That’s not to say that globalization is doing only harm to us: this cliché is beyond any reasonable critique as everybody’s bored already to death of it. But you’ve just got to remember that placing well-known realia in brackets for some time when learning new stuff is almost always a good thing.