The Story of French:
By Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow
PC2075 .N33 2006
New Book Island, 2nd floor
I think that it’s pretty safe to say that all of us have taken a language class, whether it was a couple years in high school or a college major/minor. The focus of those classes is on the actual communication of the language, not the development of the language over time. This week’s featured book takes you on the journey through time with one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn, française.
Nadeau and Barlow, French-Canadian journalists, set out to investigate how the French language gained its influence in the world and retained it in the rise of English as the lingua franca of the world. The book documents their beloved language’s origins to its spread and later adaptation across the world. They also explore the present state of the language, one of only four that are official languages in over twenty countries, as well as its future. It’s an interesting read for those interested in how a language evolves into one of the most complex and respected in the world.
