Last year's year-end summary was written in a lengthy manner, but I unexpectedly missed an important decision I made last year. Perhaps because I have been persisting until now, it has become a habit, so I don't feel it is very important. This matter is indeed significant, but when I tell others, 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 is 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 feel the "interest" imprinted in the soul of the elderly person. It truly showed the elderly person's erudition, as well as his confidence and love for languages when he spoke. At that time, I thought to myself that 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 simply because when I first opened Duolingo, among the few languages available for Chinese native speakers to learn, only French attracted me the most. Well, actually I just randomly chose it based on my intuition.
Speaking of the stereotypical impressions about French I mentioned earlier, they do exist to some extent. 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 political system and language culture; during that era, almost all the nobles spoke French, and many commonly used words in English originated from French; even now, we can hear many French words in some more classical musicals or TV dramas 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 in "Hamilton," there is also an important character who is French. There are also many famous musicals performed in French. At least for me, French is easily associated with words like classical and elegant.
On one hand, it is because of this impression of French, and on the other hand, it is 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 into anime, so I chose French.
The Speechless Owl#
Now my Duolingo streak has reached 238 days, but I still cannot be sure if I have truly made progress. At least, when I try to say a complete sentence, I still sometimes have to pause 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 vernacular. That being said, the exercises in Duolingo often have a strange feeling that goes against human nature. It feels like combining the learned words 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 child solemnly saying to me, "J'ai besoin de seize salles. (I need sixteen halls)," I couldn't help but find it both funny and annoying.
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" 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 opinion on Duolingo in this way. It is true that learning a language on Duolingo is not as serious as some people think, and it does have 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 takes into account the majority of people (I have always believed that I have some language talent). The most significant impact of Duolingo's system 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 they reach higher levels.
In addition, from a commercial perspective, Duolingo's promotion is also successful. On one hand, Duolingo has its own social media accounts and not only posts daily to promote itself, but also leaves comments under tweets from other brands, products, games, or even celebrities (it was quite magical to see the interaction between Duolingo, a language learning app, and "Genshin Impact," a not-so-serious game, under a tweet). The funniest thing is that Duolingo also creates memes related to 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. Among them, the parody of Taylor Swift's re-recorded album "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. Some of these messages are meant to be 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, which can make it seem like Duolingo is "demanding their life."
I seem to have gone off on a tangent.
Unveiling the Mystery#
After starting to learn French, the noble image of this language in my mind was shattered.
Not a Good First Impression#
In French, there are different words for boy and son—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, and there is a separate word for husband—mari.
I don't know if I am overreacting, but if this language were a living person, it would be bombarded on the English-speaking internet because of the differences in gender-related vocabulary. These differences in gender-related vocabulary reflect a certain mindset, which emphasizes the identity of women as daughters and wives, and considers 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 get married or not to respect their fathers, but rather, when discussing men, people tend to focus more on the person's character and achievements; when discussing women, people 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 most languages in the world have a long history and are inevitably influenced by the culture of the past; I am also not criticizing the French people, because it is not wise to criticize an individual or even a group just because of one aspect that does not conform to our expectations. 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 is not as expressive as Chinese or even English in certain aspects. 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."
Verb Conjugation that Tortures People for No Reason#
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.
Now 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 it should be 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 a male, I cannot use the masculine form mon mère, because mother is feminine, so I have to use ma mère.
For adjectives, you also have to pay attention to not only the gender but also the singular and plural forms. If I want to say "my sister is interesting," because sister is feminine, the adjective should also be in the feminine form—ma sœur est amusante; but if I say "my sisters are interesting," since sisters are plural, it should be mes sœurs sont amusantes.
The funniest thing is that in French, except for the letter f, the consonants at the end of words are not pronounced. In other words, amusante and amusantes have no difference in pronunciation. So why bother changing it, damn it.
Not the Elegant Beauty#
Alright, I've had my rant, let's be serious now.
If I were to talk about the beauty of French, I cannot 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 it, and every noun has a gender, in French, pronouns referring to objects and pronouns referring to people are the same. The pronoun for males is il, and for females, it is 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 don't know if anyone else has the same thought as me, but after learning about gender in French, I gradually began to see vivid characters through the gaps between the letters, and I find 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 lady with a lot of temperament, always wearing formal attire, not wearing a skirt, not talkative but very capable (it seems quite fitting to describe it as the Queen of Pentacles in tarot, as the meaning of "bank" and the Pentacles suit are quite compatible). Jardin (garden) is masculine, and from the letter j, it gives me the impression of a gardener in his twenties or thirties, somewhat thin, standing straight, and having a sense of humor (the curved hook at the bottom of the letter j gives a less serious feeling).
However, it is still strange that words like station de mėtro (subway station) are also feminine at times.
In terms of pronunciation, the most distinctive sound in French should be 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. If exaggerated, it sounds a bit like spitting.
French also has fewer sounds that require the mouth to be completely closed, like /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 differences in pronunciation between French and English are not that great, 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, 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 homeless 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.