Is the French language overrated?

 Tara van de Laak

Updated on January 25, 2019

Lived in s-Hertogenbosch, North-Brabant, Netherlands.

Is the French language overrated?

Oh man, how many times I've heard that the French language is overrated is insane.

Here in the Netherlands you typically get taught four languages: Dutch, English, German and French. And generally you choose whether you want to keep either French or German. So there are two types of people here: people that pick German and hate on French, people that pick French and hate on German. I personally would be categorised in the last catagory, purely because I choose to continue French. However, that's not entirely how I feel!

Anyway, France has a very intricate and interesting history - also linguistically. France always belonged to one of the richest, most influential nations of Europe, and therefore French as a language was spoken by loads of people. This however doesn't have a link to it being overrated.

Many people fetishize the French culture and its people. They like the cool, laid-back attitude French people seem to exude. Even though this tends to count for Paris rather than the whole of France. Also Romance languages are perceived as one of the most beautiful sounding languages. The way French people talk, how they connect their words, the way it sounds, were they put the stress on words, along with the attitude of French people makes for a very attractive pair.

French just sounds very melodious, and would be perceived as sophisticated. With Germanic languages, you don't connect your words, which makes it sound less melodious. The sounds in Germanic languages are generally perceived as harsh-sounding, which makes it less attractive for most people.

My opinion about the French language is that it does sound very pleasing to my ear. I do think it does sound extremely 'formal’ and sophisticated, which I like. Even when they curse it still sounds nice :p. The basic grammar is quite simple, but because of the exceptions it makes it a whole lot more confusing. Colloquial French is very different from text-book French. Spoken French is very hard to understand since it's very fast-paced; combine that with the way they speak, it makes it very difficult to understand as a learner of the language. It might be overhyped rather than overrated in sense of popularity but I have to say, I think we shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of the language since it isn't all that easy, French is very confusing. :P

But any language is beautiful in its own way and for French just happens to be a powerhouse language back in the day.

La langue française est-elle surfaite?

 Oh mec, combien de fois j'ai entendu dire que la langue française est surfaite est insensé.

 Ici aux Pays-Bas, on apprend généralement quatre langues: le néerlandais, l'anglais, l'allemand et le français. Et généralement, vous choisissez si vous souhaitez conserver le français ou l'allemand. Il y a donc deux types de personnes ici: les gens qui choisissent l'allemand et qui détestent le français, les gens qui choisissent le français et qui détestent l'allemand. Personnellement, je serais classé dans la dernière catégorie, uniquement parce que je choisis de continuer le français. Cependant, ce n'est pas tout à fait ce que je ressens!

 Quoi qu'il en soit, la France a une histoire très complexe et intéressante - également linguistiquement. La France a toujours appartenu à l'une des nations les plus riches et les plus influentes d'Europe et, par conséquent, le français en tant que langue était parlé par de nombreuses personnes. Cela n'a cependant pas de lien avec le fait qu'il soit surestimé.

 Beaucoup de gens fétichisent la culture française et ses habitants. Ils aiment l'attitude cool et décontractée que les Français semblent dégager. Même si cela a tendance à compter pour Paris plutôt que pour toute la France. Les langues romanes sont également perçues comme l'une des plus belles langues à consonance. La façon dont les Français parlent, comment ils connectent leurs mots, la façon dont ça sonne, où ils mettent l'accent sur les mots, ainsi que l'attitude des Français font une paire très attrayante.

 Le français semble juste très mélodieux et serait perçu comme sophistiqué.  Avec les langues germaniques, vous ne connectez pas vos mots, ce qui les rend moins mélodieux.  Les sons des langues germaniques sont généralement perçus comme un son dur, ce qui le rend moins attrayant pour la plupart des gens.

 Mon opinion sur la langue française est qu'elle me plaît beaucoup à l'oreille.  Je pense que cela semble extrêmement «formel» et sophistiqué, ce que j'aime.  Même quand ils maudissent, ça sonne toujours bien: p.  La grammaire de base est assez simple, mais à cause des exceptions, cela la rend beaucoup plus déroutante.  Le français familier est très différent du français des manuels.  Le français parlé est très difficile à comprendre car il est très rapide;  combiner cela avec la façon dont ils parlent, il est très difficile de comprendre en tant qu'apprenant de la langue.  Il est peut-être surestimé plutôt que surestimé en termes de popularité, mais je dois dire que je pense qu'il ne faut pas sous-estimer la difficulté de la langue car ce n'est pas si facile, le français est très déroutant.  : P

 Mais toute langue est belle à sa manière et pour le français se trouve être une langue centrale à l'époque.

COMMENTS: 

Bernard Bel

February 28, 2019

I agree that colloquial French is hard for understand, and I even find it hard to follow dialogues on recent films or TV series due to approximate articulation by young actors…

Nontheless, when I tried to learn Dutch I also noticed that the language was easy to read (thanks to a previous study of English and German) and quite difficult to listen to!

These difficulties are much less with South-European languages. I can write Spanish, Italian and Portuguese under dictation even though I almost understand nothing!

Fred Yung

February 17, 2019

In Belgium the situation is as follows: The population in the north (commonly referred to as the Flemings) is obliged to learn French in school. In the south (commonly referred to as the Walloons), Dutch is not obligatory and most French speakers choose English as the second language. Generally speaking, the Flemings speak better French than the walloons speak Dutch but that's more a political than a cultural choice.

Jeongguk

November 14, 2019

Hi! I'm French and I read your post. Indeed, French is not an easy language to learn, even French people have difficulty writing it haha.

It's funny to see that foreigners find our language melodious or "sophisticated" (even with swearing), but there's nothing exceptional about it! x)

To all those who learn French, good luck, especially for the very difficult spelling between verbs, adjectives, determinants and all hihi

Your post is really interesting, it's true that German is not really a language that sounds good, we'll say, I preferred to choose Spanish.

Alexandre Belleville

January 31, 2019

I agree, it’s a difficult language and even when it’s our mother tongue we still struggle on some rules and exceptions as adults.

For foreigners the genre is also a pain in the *** because there’s no general rule to know if some thing is “masculin” (le) or “féminin” (la), you basically have to learn the genre of each word... We even have people saying “la wifi” while most say “le wifi” and we can fight about it.

Also, we can be very hard to understand for foreigners if we speak really fast, which is easy to achieve.

Then there’s accents like the one from the Nord or the southern accents for which even us can struggle to understand sometime.

And you even have other accents and a few different words used in parts of Belgium, Swiss and Canada where they speak French and in French speaking African countries.

But I have to agree, it sounds nice (except for some accents that sound like they don’t go to school there, which is obviously not the case).

Alasdair Smith

February 19, 2019

I've lived in france for the majority of my life (originally I'm from scotland) but I still make mistakes. The gendered nouns really get you.

Marc Chanliau

January 16, 2019

Interesting post. I’m assuming you’re a Dutch speaker, and as such, I’d also assume you’d be more drawn to German.

Liaisons are a phenomenon quite specific to French due to its extremely unpredictable spelling, particularly when you compare French to Spanish.

English also has some level of liaison (e.g., “for ever” vs “for good”) due to the same type of accidental orthography.

Hugo R. Sagran

April 30, 2019

Just to contrast, I would rather prefer German a most mathematical language. For me of course. Good day!

Jaime Gutierrez Salazar

January 19, 2019

Particularly, if you happen to be interested in writtings which were published in the 18th. or 19th. century chances are they have been published in French as well as English, German and Russian as is the case for some Chess related books…

Alberto Baeza-Rojano

February 6, 2019

For dutch people I would say it is more usuful german than french. Also generally speaking Dutch is closer to German. Unfortunately, the history of the Netherlands and Germany has been like Spain and Portugal kindof it is a mix of hate-love.

Anyway I went to Hertogenbosch in August. It is a lovely town highly recommend to visit I would say better than Arnhem or Nijmegen.

Dian Norby

Jul 17

I think it is based more on the opportunity for usage and there are more countries world wide that use French as a second or governmental trade language than German, or other European languages other than English. (countries in West Africa, Central Africa, North Africa, Asia (Vietnam), South America and the Caribbean all have countries that use French as a second language for trade and governmental use—and don’t forget Canada (mainly Quebec, but it is a second language for the country in general as well).

Brigitte Pauzé

January 25, 2019

You should come to Quebec, Canada. We speak French like the French people but without the attitude !!!!!

Ronald Piwele

March 2, 2019

I am sorry but French from Quebec does not sound at all like French from Europe. French speaking Belgians speak like French people without the attitude.

Alain Verreault replied,

You’re right. I’m Québécois and our accent is very different from the ‘standard’ European French. What is interesting though is that we, Québécois, understand European French really well (except for some expressions), but most French Europeans have a hard time understanding us. Too bad! :)

Mathias Roemer

February 4, 2019

Your last sentence say it all, Italian, Spanish, Farsi, Japanese or German there is a beauty in every language , don’t forget the speaker also he/she can give emotions to the words

Damien Colas

January 31, 2019

Isn’t the English language overrated?

Kathy Beech

Jan 31

Maybe English is overrated but everyone speaks it , even all these comments are in english

Terence Petersen-Ajbro

April 17, 2019

Swedish and Norwegian, being Germanic languages are very melodious!

Marco Polo

May 24

As a native french guy I felt very proud and surprised by your analysis which was rather good on the gramatical part. So, thank you for that comment ;)

Catherine Dang

February 11, 2019

Thank you for your comment on French language. Living in France, I never thought about French as a cool foreign language to learn, I just view it as such a dfficult language to master !

Arnauld de La Grandiere

January 30, 2019

( Transcript from a video: " Château Haut Brian 1959, Magnificent wine! I love French wine. I have sampled every language! French is my favorite. Fantastic language! Especially to curse with Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta e It's like wiping your ass with silk...I love it!!! :) – Matrix Reloaded "

Astrid Vandenbergh

February 1, 2019

In Flanders, also a Dutch speaking region, we DO connect our words !

Roger Mathews

April 2, 2019

Very well said. Mind you I do not remotely understand the concept of an overated language.

As an Englishman I would add that while I do not find Dutch very attractive, I am, however, lost in admiration for the Dutch who speak English rather better than my children. Also most of my Dutch friends speak German and French fluently as well. A great nation.

Shirley Savva

Feb 13

French is the most beautiful language on Earth. Also, when French people speak English, it is the mot beautiful accent of foreigners speaking English!!!

Tom Graves

June 11, 2019

It’s now one of the dominate languages of Africa too.

Mantar Singh

Jul 10

French is by far the worst sounding Latin language when compared to Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It’s up tere with Slavic languages tbfh. And yes it’s massively overhyped and over learned mainly due to their empire. Nothing else.

Charley Custer

January 28, 2019

Also, anyone who doesn’t speak a language has no idea how to rate it.

Adam M-Ski

February 6, 2019

Two provocative remarks. Ukrainian is one of the best sounding languages on earth (cf the recent global hit Plakala by Kazka). If French is so attractive to you Dutch - why do you look down on Belgians?:)

Michael Srba

February 22, 2019

I appreciate your preference for your French, but what you describe on Germanic languages, is utterly nonsense that is based on rather keeping distant to them and not having sufficient varied experience with them. 

If you state that any language is beautiful on its own way, than you provided quite  some contradictions to that. 

GO Be

February 1, 2019

Understood what you meant, for instance, as a french, I got 16/20 at my english oral exam out of highschool, then went to Australie. I met a lot of Scots and Irish and didn’t get a fucking word what they were saying for a long time. Living among those bastards was the only lesson I needed. Now I sometimes get it. 

Oumarou Dia

February 4, 2019

What I would like to know is the definition of “overrated”. By the way there is no diglossia in French like in Arabic or German for example. You are either fluent in French or you are not. And I agree with you although it is probably very subjective: French sounds nice to my ears, better sounding th … than English and the other languages I know.

Goreux Francois

Jun 18

During my 10 years in Amsterdam I was surprised and impressed how good some Dutch people were at speaking French, with a very light Dutch accent. Not a small achievement given how differents Dutch and French are, by contrast learning german seems very easy for the dutchie. Generally I find the Dutch to be quite good at foreign langages and curious of other countries/culures, more so that we the French!

Gauthier Guillard

October 1, 2019

My favorites are French, Russian and German. Not English.

Mannone Guillaume

March 6, 2019

if you think french is fast paced ho boy ! you’ve never learnt spanish i presume ?

Tara van de Laak

June 30, 2019

Oh boy, don’t get me started on Spanish. It’s incredible the way they speak!

Joseph Gemin

Aug 12

To me, French sounds like someone trying to dislodge a public hair from their throat. Italian is less sophisticated than French, but more pleasant to the ear.

Håkan Storsäter

January 27, 2019

I guess words get connected in English all the time, though, even as a Germanic language.

Marc Antoine

November 11, 2019

I’m a french man, but I consider that it’s a very difficult language, but so rich. When I write songs or poems, I usually use English ’cause I feel it more musical.

James Dolan

Sep 23

What does “over-rated” even mean. It's a beautiful language spoken by 29 countries all over the world. What a stupid question!

Maxime Fidaire

October 3, 2019

Furthermore, most of Africains know it, which makes one of the two languages of this continent (alongside with english)

Marz Kayinja

September 21, 2019

I don't think so….Here in Africa its English, Arabic and Swahili Especially in east Africa.

Stefan Schwabe

October 25, 2019

Just one comment: France is one of the great cultures/countries of the world, not “just” Europe! ……….as are all the countries in Europe in some way………..

Alex Verbergt

February 10, 2019

the worst thing is a Dutch who thinks he/she speaks French.

Pascal Llau

February 3, 2019

French is the language of Love .

Stephane Malric

Feb 3

I know two sentences to help you,even my translation is not perfect ! “the German language spits, English is vomit, Italian is sung, French is spoken.” and 

“I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my dog ”

Valentin Arschinkov

Jul 2

… an english proverb : “If you don’t know what to say… say it in French…”

Adrian Ball

February 18, 2019

Italian?

Laurent Thouvenin

October 4, 2019

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Julie Jana

October 28, 2019

You are right , French is really a great and beautiful language

Nadia Sobilou

Sep 4

French is a good language ,i speak french and 5 others languages .Its not disfficult to say things ,like merci ,bonjour ,and little words .But to speak french litterature proprelyits hard ,but with works everybody can do it ,but you must work .I learn Gremany and Grammar is hard in German .But now its fashion to speak little words in frnch ,ill go to reataurant ,i heve rendez vous ,Merci beucoup ,another little words ,i was translator .You want to lear something ,you can do it but work and listen its very important to listen .Good luck .Bonne chance in french .