Last year's year-end summary was written in great detail, with ten thousand words, but I unexpectedly missed an important decision I made last year. Perhaps because I have persisted until now, it has become a habit, so I don't think it's very important. This matter is indeed significant, but when I tell others about it, they will still be surprised or impressed—I started learning French during the summer vacation after the college entrance examination.
Oui, vous avez bien entendu.
Fate with Languages#
I have always wanted to learn a foreign language other than English, and even more, because I think it's cool to master multiple languages. I saw a video on Bilibili before, where an up-and-coming host interviewed an elderly person who could speak more than twenty languages. It was interesting to see the two of them chatting in Chinese, English, and Japanese seamlessly, not only because they could switch between multiple languages during the conversation, but also because I could sense the "fun" imprinted in the soul of the elderly person. It truly showed the elderly person's erudition, as well as their confidence and love for languages when they spoke. At that time, I thought to myself, when I grow old, I must become an interesting old man.
As for why I chose French, it was not because of the stereotypical impressions about French (such as French being romantic or sexy), so I had always been longing to learn French. It was actually when I first opened Duolingo, among the few languages available for Chinese native speakers to learn, only French attracted me. Well, I just randomly chose it based on my feelings.
Speaking of the stereotypical impressions about French I mentioned earlier, there are indeed some, and I always feel that French is an elegant language. This may be because of the cultural influence. After the Norman Conquest, England was permanently changed in terms of its political system and language culture; during that era, almost all the nobles spoke French, and many common words in English are derived from French; even now, we can hear many French words in some more classical musicals or TV shows with distinctive characters. I remember in "The Phantom of the Opera," monsieur was often used instead of my sir (of course, this is also related to the fact that the original work was written by a Frenchman), and there is an important character who is French in "Hamilton," and many famous musicals are performed in French. At least for me, French is easily associated with words like classical and elegant.
On the one hand, it is because of this impression I have of French, and on the other hand, it is also because I have almost no impression of other languages. I am too lazy to memorize the hiragana and katakana if I were to learn Japanese, and I am not really into anime, so I chose French.
The Speechless Owl#
Now, my Duolingo streak has reached 238 days, but I still can't be sure if I have truly reached an intermediate level. At least, when trying to say a complete sentence, I still sometimes have to stop and look up certain words or grammar that I am not familiar with, but this process is still interesting.
At the beginning, Duolingo's teaching method gave me a sense of being ahead of its time, but also somewhat like a kindergarten teacher. After all, learning a language should start with children's language. That being said, Duolingo's exercises often have a strange feeling that goes against human nature. It's like combining the words you have learned according to the correct grammar, filtering out some nonsensical sentences like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously," but there are still some fish that slip through the net. When I saw a cartoon kid saying to me with a serious face, "J'ai besoin de seize salles. (I need sixteen halls)," I couldn't help but find it funny and frustrating at the same time.
What you gonna do with them, you freaking bastard.
Putting aside these trivial matters, Duolingo's learning method through listening and speaking is still quite good. The constant repetition between units helps to remember words and grammar more deeply. Although Duolingo provides a grammar manual for each chapter, I have hardly opened it because doing a few exercises and listening to a few sentences can give me a general understanding. It would be better to wait until I have a certain foundation in grammar before reading more professional and detailed grammar books.
When promoting itself, Duolingo often compares its teaching method to "playing games" in order to attract attention. Therefore, it is true that many people think learning a language on Duolingo is like playing a game. Recently, I read an article on a website called "少数派" about language learning, and the author expressed his views on Duolingo in this way. It is true that learning a language on Duolingo is not as serious, and there are indeed many game elements, but it is not completely ineffective "playing."
Of course, I am not defending the effectiveness of Duolingo's courses, because compared to the learning method that suits me best (which is yet to be found), its efficiency is indeed not very high. It is probably because it caters to the majority of people (I have always felt that I have some language talent). The biggest impact Duolingo's system has had on me is that it has cultivated the habit of learning a little every day. Its most successful game design is the leaderboard—users compete with each other every week, and those who rank high have the opportunity to enter the next level, otherwise they stay at the current level or drop back to the previous level; the ranking is based on the "experience" accumulated after each learning session, and the leaderboard is reset every week. This design not only motivates users to study every day in order to maintain their ranking, but also makes them study more content and earn more experience as their level increases.
In addition, from a business perspective, Duolingo's promotion is also successful. On the one hand, Duolingo has its own social media presence, and it not only posts daily to promote itself, but also leaves comments under tweets from other brands, products, games, and even celebrities (I found it quite magical when I saw the interaction between Duolingo, the language learning app, and "咩咩启示录，" the not-so-serious game, under a tweet). The funniest thing is that Duolingo also creates memes about its own brand image (their mascot is a green owl, and the most memorable one for me is when they parodied several popular album covers on Twitter, replacing the artists in the pictures with the owl; the one that parodied Taylor Swift's re-recorded version of "Red" became my new WeChat profile picture).
If you search for Duolingo on Bilibili or YouTube, you can probably find some funny videos about the owl kidnapping and killing people. This is because Duolingo sends "threatening" messages to users every day, urging them to study, and some of the sentences in these messages are meant to sound friendly, so they have a playful and complaining tone. If a user doesn't study for a day, they will receive several messages from Duolingo, so it seems like they are "demanding lives."
I seem to have gone off topic.
Unveiling the Truth#
After starting to learn French, the noble image of this language in my mind was shattered.
Not a Good First Impression#
In French, the words for "boy" and "son" are different—garçon and fils; but "daughter" and "girl" are the same word—fille. The word femme in French can mean both "woman" and "wife," but the word for "husband" and "man" (homme) are not the same, they are separate words—mari.
I don't know if I'm overreacting, but if this language were a living person, it would be bombarded on the English internet because of the differences in gender-related vocabulary. These differences reflect a certain mindset, which emphasizes the identity of women as daughters and wives, while considering that the identity of men as husbands and sons can be separated. This does not mean that it is allowed or considered normal for men not to marry or not to respect their fathers, but rather that when people discuss men, they tend to focus more on the person's character and achievements; whereas when discussing women, they tend to focus more on whether she, as a daughter, obeys her parents' discipline and whether she is a good and considerate wife.
I can continue to talk about gender-related issues, but I have decided to stop here. I also need to defend myself a bit. I am not criticizing the French language because of this, because most languages in the world have a long history and are inevitably influenced by the culture of the past; I am not criticizing the French people either, because it is not wise to criticize a person or even a group just because of one aspect that is not in line with your own views. I am just discussing the matter at hand, and the observations I have made have led me to these speculations, leaving me with a not-so-good impression.
In addition, French lacks the expressive ability of certain words compared to Chinese, and even English. For example, the word "pet" in English is simply three letters—pet, but in French, it is a long phrase—animal de compagnie, which translates to "animal of company."
Useless Verb Conjugations#
Like many European languages, French also has some frustrating and inexplicable grammar rules. If you have been spoiled by English grammar, learning French will definitely be a challenge. In French, each person has a corresponding verb conjugation: the first person singular form of the verb prendre is prend, the first person plural form is prenons, the second person singular form is prends, the second person plural form is prenez, the third person singular form is prend, and the third person plural form is prennent.
Let's take a look at the tenses in French, each person also has corresponding versions for each tense. This is the imperfect past tense:
- je prenais
- tu prenais
- il/elle prenait
- nous prenions
- vous preniez
- ils/elles prenaient
This is the future tense:
- je prendrai
- tu prendras
- il/elle prendra
- nous prendrons
- vous prendrez
- ils/elles prendront
The conditional tense:
- je prendrais
- tu prendrais
- il/elle prendrait
- nous prendrions
- vous prendriez
- ils/elles prendraient
And there are also simple past tense, past perfect tense, future perfect tense, and past anterior tense. If the sentence is in the subjunctive mood, these verb conjugations have a completely new set of versions.
Baffling Gender#
Now let's talk about the maddening gender of nouns in European languages. In French, all nouns have gender, which means that in this language, everything in the world has a gender. For example, jardin (garden) is masculine, idée (idea) is feminine, and banque (bank) is also feminine.
What impact does this have? In a sentence, all sentence components related to this noun, except for the verb, are influenced by the gender of the noun. In other words, if you are a beginner, you have to think carefully about the gender of such nouns before writing or speaking, and then think about the corresponding feminine or masculine forms of other sentence components. For example, since vie (life) is feminine, the definite article used should be La, and you cannot say Le vie; if I want to say "a good life" using the adjective excellent, it also has to be in the feminine form, so you have to say La vie excellente.
Contrary to the logic in Chinese, for possessive adjectives, whether to use the feminine or masculine form depends on the gender of the noun being modified, not the gender of the possessor. For example, if I want to say "my mother," and I am male, I cannot use the masculine form mon mère, because mother is feminine, so I have to use ma mère.
As for adjectives, you not only have to pay attention to gender, but also to singular and plural forms. If you want to say "my sister is interesting," because sister is feminine, the adjective also has to be in the feminine form—ma sœur est amusante; but if I say "my sisters are interesting," since sisters are plural, you have to say mes sœurs sont amusantes.
The funniest thing is that in French, except for the letter f, the final consonants in words are not pronounced, which means that amusante and amusantes have no difference in pronunciation. Then why bother changing it.
Not the Elegance I Expected#
Okay, I've had my rant, let's get serious.
To talk about the beauty of French, I can't say much about syntax and grammar, but there is one thing that I find interesting. Because French does not have a pronoun like "it" or "它" and every noun has a gender, in French, pronouns referring to objects and people are the same. Men use il, and women use elle.
Therefore, even if you don't write poetry, you can casually refer to the moon (la lune) as "she."
Il y a pleine lune ce soir. Elle est trės belle.
I'm not sure if others have the same thought as me, but after learning about gender in French, I gradually began to see vivid characters from between the lines, and I found them quite cute. The word idée (idea) looks small, and it is feminine, giving the impression of a girl. The word banque (bank) is also feminine, and from its appearance, it seems like a very elegant person who always wears formal attire, doesn't wear skirts, doesn't talk much, but is very capable (the meaning of the word "bank" and the suit of coins in tarot cards are quite fitting). Jardin (garden) is masculine, and from the shape of the letters, it gives me the impression of someone in their twenties or thirties, somewhat thin, standing upright, and with a sense of humor (the curved hook at the bottom of the letter j gives a less serious feeling) as a gardener.
However, words like station de mėtro (subway station) are also feminine, so sometimes it feels strange.
In terms of pronunciation, the most distinctive sound in French is probably the pronunciation of the letter r. This sound is not a rolled r, but more like an h sound. It is actually a uvular trill or a uvular fricative, but the uvular trill in French is not as pronounced as in other European languages like Spanish, and it is more like a uvular fricative. This sound is difficult to produce because the airflow is concentrated in the throat and the back of the mouth, and if exaggerated, it sounds like spitting.
French also has fewer sounds that require the mouth to be completely closed, like the sound /i/, even words like importante and simple, which already have an i in their spelling, have the sound /am/ for im. The common sounds in French require a large amount of airflow.
After listening to some French songs, I found that the difference in pronunciation between French and English is not that big, but it is clear that French is more "passionate."
Afterword#
Actually, I wanted to talk about topics related to humanities, but I don't know much about them myself, and Duolingo just sent me a message urging me to learn French again, so I will stop here.
The title of this article, "Profitez de votre vie.," comes from a video I watched on Bilibili. An old lady who was living on the streets said this to a Chinese girl who had temporarily sheltered her for the night before leaving. It means "Make the most of your life."
Enjoy your life.