by Stephanie Sadler

Created on: November 02, 2008   Last Updated: August 07, 2009

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Certain people, French-speakers or not, have better language skills than others. It is as an individual, not as an entire population, that can command a language; it would be impossible and unfair to generalise.

To the foreign ear, French may sound more posh, romantic and fluid than one's own language, but it may not always be the ideal language for expression, even to the native speaker.

I was in Paris this month where I met a woman born in the South of France. She had grown up speaking French, but also taught herself English. If I hadn't known, I would have assumed she was American because her English-speaking accent was just as American as mine.

During a stroll through the walnut trees lining the paths of the Jardin des Tuileries near the Louvre, we had a conversation about languages. I asked her in which language she preferred to write and speak and she said generally, she prefers to use English when she can because French can feel limiting. Of course, it depends on the situation.

Later, we visited the Pompidou Centre, the modern arts building made of Crayola-coloured pipes on one side and a diagonal line of escalators scaling up the other. Inside, the far wall had a list of words printed one above the other in both English and French. We walked along choosing which language sounded better for each word.

The French say corps where English-speakers say body. We both agreed the English was better there, but the French won over on the English word intertwine. For them, it is entrelacer. The woman I was with read this in French and the way it came out, the letters seemed to intertwine within the word itself and it brought to mind an image of trailing vines crossing over and under one another on a trellis. She said it again and I pictured the limbs of bodies intertwined under the stars. French wins there. But it is the language of romance after all.

Influential French writers easily come to mind, perhaps another reason the language is often assumed to be superior. Many are writers of erotic literature, others of love stories and some of philosophy: Victor Hugo, Catherine Millet, Anais Nin, Marquis de Sade, Albert Camus, Gaston Leroux, Honore de Balzac, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, George Sand, Voltaire, and the list goes on.

Maybe the idea of French-speakers being more in control of language comes from the infatuation many of them have with other languages. Many are bi-lingual, which is becoming more important in this shrinking world, and is a skill seen much more in Europe than America, perhaps out of necessity or perhaps because knowing another language is given more importance.

Though they are adamant about protecting their own language and culture and often pretend not to know English when many are fluent, French do have an appreciation for languages besides their own. By studying another language you learn the importance of the intricacies of language itself. It is these intricacies bring out the beauty in any language and give a person better language skills.

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