FRENCH LANGUAGE 



2.332 



FRENCH LANGUAGE 



China; on the west is Siam and on the east 

 and south is the China Sea. In 1900 the Bay 

 of Kwang Chow Wan, with its islands and a 

 strip of coast land, was leased by the French 

 from China for a period of ninety-nine years 

 and incorporated in French Indo-China. 



The seat of government is at Saigon, in 

 Cochin-China. The provinces are administered 

 by a governor-general, appointed from Paris, 

 with a governor in charge of each province. 

 French influence over Indo-China commenced 

 in the seventeenth century. Annum and Siam 

 were visited by many missionaries, who were 

 well received. In 1774 the king of Annam 

 appealed to France for help against his rebel- 

 lious subjects. French forces established him 

 on his throne in 1802, and from that time 

 French influence has steadily increased. Total 

 population, about 18,000,000. For map, see 

 ASIA. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the following articles in these volumes : 

 Annam Cochin-China 



Cambodia Tongking 



FRENCH LANGUAGE, one of the eight Ro- 

 mance languages of Europe (see ROMANCE 

 LANGUAGES), a beautiful, harmonious tongue 

 which is so commonly used in interstate diplo- 

 macy in Europe that no young man thinks of 

 entering the diplomatic service without a 

 knowledge of it. It has always ranked as the 

 most "elegant" and "refined" of the languages, 

 and few girls in England or America have been 

 allowed to graduate from fashionable finishing 

 schools without at least a superficial acquaint- 

 ance with it. But this does not mean that it 

 is in any way superficial, for few tongues sur- 

 pass it in expressiveness, harmony and clear- 

 ness. It is the native speech of over 40,000,000 

 people, for it is used in most of France, in part 

 of Eastern Canada, and in much of Belgium 

 and Switzerland. 



History. Like all of the highly evolved 

 languages of the world, French has had a very 

 interesting history. The people Caesar found 

 in Gaul at the time of his conquest spoke a 

 rude Celtic language, the different tribes pos- 

 sessing different dialects. Gradually Latin took 

 the place of the old Celtic, but this was not the 

 classic Latin of Rome, but the so-called "vul- 

 gar tongue." This was modified still more by 

 Celtic habits of speech and by Teutonic in- 

 vaders who later conquered the country. It 

 was not that these latter introduced many of 

 their own words, but their half-barbarous minds 

 refused to be bothered with any intricacies of 



speech^sb inflections were neglected and the 

 simpler forms used almost exclusively. The 

 last of the Germanic invaders were the Franks, 

 from whom the country and the language took 

 their names. " 



In the ninth and tenth centuries two dis- 

 tinct dialects of the Romance language in 

 France came to be recognized, one of which 

 prevailed in the north, the other in the south. 

 To these were applied in popular speech the 

 quaint names of langue d' o'il and langue d' oc 

 because the word for yes was o'il in the north 

 and oc in the south. By the twelfth century 

 one of the o'il dialects, the one used in the 

 neighborhood of Paris, had gained the ascend- 

 ancy, and gradually it was accepted as the 

 classical tongue throughout the country. Dur- 

 ing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

 the standards were more definitely fixed, and 

 by the close of that period French was prac- 

 tically what it is to-day probably the clearest 

 and most precise of modern languages. 



The Study of French. Ever since educators 

 began to awaken to the fact that there is much 

 to be gained from the study of modern lan- 

 guages, French has been one of the favorite 

 tongues for study in English-speaking coun- 

 tries. It is attractive because it is an "elegant" 

 tongue, musical and refined, and therefore the 

 "finishing schools" took it up. Then, too, it 

 opens up one of the world's greatest litera- 

 tures a literature which has profoundly af- 

 fected that of England and America; and it is 

 the speech of a country to which travelers 

 from England and from America go in great 

 numbers two very practical reasons for the 

 study of French. Aside from these, there are 

 cultural reasons for its study. Its nicety and 

 precision, and the exactness with which it can 

 express varying shades of meaning, make it 

 a real help toward the perception of such 

 shades of difference. It is, too, better suited 

 than any other modern tongue to show the 

 historical development in language, so clearly 

 marked are the successive steps from the orig- 

 inal Latin. In fact, so thoroughly does French 

 fulfil all the purposes of a language that it has 

 a number of times been proposed as a general 

 international speech. 



Certam phases of the study of French are 

 comparatively simple. It is, for instance, far 

 easier to learn to read than German, so simple 

 is its sentence structure. However, learning to 

 speak French is a different matter. Not only 

 are many of the sounds, as the very common 

 nasal, the peculiar u, the ieu, and others, dif- 



