Why Should You Learn French? Five Good Reasons Revealed!
If you look around the web, you will come across a great many opportunities to learn French, especially through online courses.
But you may well ask, why learn French and not another language? After all, there are thousands of languages out there! And learning French CAN be tricky, as I outlined in a recent article.
Firstly, as someone who was brought up bilingual (not French, another MUCH less ‘major’ language), let me tell you that in a sense it’s not important which language you learn, just speaking any foreign language is a huge advantage. It massively broadens your outlook on life, gives you the ability to identify with people from other cultures (until you learn their language, you will be under the delusion that they think like you do – they don’t!) and last but not least, once you have learned one language it gets a whole lot more easier learning others.
So if you are thinking of signing up for a language course, perhaps online, why choose French? Well, try these five reasons:
1. French has a GREAT deal in common with English. Did you know that 30% of all the words in the English language originate from French?! So you already know a huge number of French words, you just don’t know it! If you sign up to learn French online you will quickly realise that you understand lots of French, which means learning it can be quicker than many other languages.
2. French is one of the official languages of the EU. The European Union cannot use all 23 of the languages of its member states for practical purposes, so they have what they call ‘procedural languages’. These languages are mostly used for communication in the EU, and they are German, English and… of course… French. Sign up for an online French course and you will have the chance to learn a language which is at the centre of European politics.
3. French is one of the official languages of the United Nations!Similarly, the UN has six official languages, one of them being French. Learn French and you will know a language of high-level international politics!
4. French is the key to learning other Latin languages. The French language originates from the Latin language, the same as Spanish, Italian and several others. Work through an online French course and afterwards you will find it very easy to learn a similar language such as Spanish.
5. Learning French improves your English!Learning any language improves your feel for language in general. Also, when we use a word of French origin in English it tends to have a ‘higher’ meaning. An ‘envoy’ is really just a messenger (from the French envoyer – ‘to send’), but is mostly used in international politics and diplomacy. There are many such examples but the point is that learning a word in French will often also teach you or refresh for you the meaning of a ‘high register’ English word. So learning French can actually have a positive impact on your English!
There are lots more ways that learning French could benefit you, (though of course ANY language is worth learning!), but hopefully if you are perhaps considering signing up for an online French course, this article will have convinced you to take a decision and go for it now!
