french classes in chennai: August 2016

Monday, 22 August 2016

Communiqua is one of the leading center for learning language courses in Chennai. For more details please contact

Mobile Number

7200077122

Email id

communiqua@gmail.com

Communiqua Address

#166-A, Purasaiwalkam High Road, Purasaiwalkam Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600010

Middle French

Middle French (French: moyen français) is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. It is a period of transition during which:

the French language becomes clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages, which are sometimes subsumed within the concept of Old French (ancien français)

the French language is imposed as the official language of the kingdom of France in place of Latin and other Oïl and Occitan languages

the literary development of French prepares the vocabulary and grammar for the Classical French (français classique) spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries.

History

The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension system . best french training institute chennai. There is no longer a distinction between nominative and oblique forms of nouns, and plurals are indicated simply with an s. This transformation necessitates an increased reliance on the order of words in the sentence, which becomes more or less the syntax of modern French.

Among the elites, Latin was still the language of education, administration, and bureaucracy; best french training institute chennai. this changed in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, in which François I made French alone the language for legal and juridical acts. Regional differences were still extremely pronounced throughout France: In the south of France, Occitan languages dominated; in east central France, Franco-Provençal languages were predominant; while, in the north of France, Oïl languages other than Francien continued to be spoken. best french training institute chennai. The administrative language imposed in 1539 is generally thought by modern linguists to represent a generalised langue d'oïl shorn of distinctive dialectal features, rather than the triumph of one dialect over the others.

The fascination with classical texts led to numerous borrowings from Latin and Greek, sometimes to the detriment of the rich Old French vocabulary. best french training institute chennai. Numerous neologisms based on Latin roots were introduced, and some scholars modified the spelling of French words to bring them into conformity with their Latin roots, sometimes erroneously. This often produced a radical difference between a word's spelling and the way it was pronounced.

The French wars in Italy and the presence of Italians in the French court brought the French into contact with Italian humanism. best french training institute chennai. These tendencies would continue through Classical French.

There were also some borrowings from Spanish (casque) and German (reître) and from the Americas (cacao, hamac, maïs).

The influence of the Anglo-Norman language on English had left words of French and Norman origin in England. Some words of Romance origin now found their way back into French as doublets through war and trading contacts.

Also, the meaning and usage of many words from Old French were transformed.

Spelling and punctuation in this period are extremely erratic. The introduction of printing in 1470 highlighted the need for reform in spelling. best french training institute chennai. One proposed reform came from Jacques Peletier du Mans, who developed a phonetic spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550); but this attempt at spelling reform was not followed.

This period saw the publication of the first French grammars and of the French-Latin dictionary of Robert Estienne (1539).

At the beginning of the 17th century, French would see the continued unification of French, the suppression of certain forms, and the prescription of rules, leading to Classical French.

Modern French

For the period up to around 1300, some linguists refer to the oïl languages collectively as Old French (ancien français). french training institute in chennai. The earliest extant text in French is the Oaths of Strasbourg from 842; Old French became a literary language with the chansons de geste that told tales of the paladins of Charlemagne and the heroes of the Crusades.

The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, three years before France itself. french training institute in chennai. By the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 King Francis I made French the official language of administration and court proceedings in France, ousting the Latin that had been used before then. With the imposition of a standardised chancery dialect and the loss of the declension system, the dialect is referred to as Middle French (moyen français). The first grammatical description of French, the Tretté de la Grammaire française by Louis Maigret, was published in 1550. Many of the 700 words of modern French that originate from Italian were introduced in this period, including several denoting artistic concepts (scenario, piano), luxury items, and food.

Following a period of unification, regulation and purification, the French of the 17th to the 18th centuries is sometimes referred to as Classical French (français classique), although many linguists simply refer to French language from the 17th century to today as Modern French (français moderne).

The foundation of the Académie française (French Academy) in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu created an official body whose goal has been the purification and preservation of the French language. french training institute in chennai. This group of 40 members is known as the Immortals, not, as some erroneously believe, because they are chosen to serve for the extent of their lives (which they are), but because of the inscription engraved on the official seal given to them by their founder Richelieu—"À l'immortalité" ("to [the] Immortality [of the French language]"). The foundation still exists and contributes to the policing of the language and the adaptation of foreign words and expressions.

From the 17th to the 19th centuries, France was the leading power of Europe; thanks to this, together with the influence of the Enlightenment, French was the lingua franca of educated Europe, especially with regards to the arts, literature, and diplomacy; monarchs like Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia could both not just speak and write in French, but in most excellent French. french training institute in chennai. The Russian, German and Scandinavian Courts spoke French as their main or official language, regarding their national languages as the language of the peasants.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the French language established itself permanently in the Americas. There is an academic debate about how fluent in French the colonists of New France were. While less than 15% of colonists (25% of the women – chiefly filles du roi – and 5% of the men) were from the region of Paris and presumably spoke French, most of the rest came from north-western and western regions of France where regular French was not the primary native language. It is not clearly known how many among those colonists understood French as a second language, and how many among them – who, in overwhelming majority, natively spoke an oïl language – could understand, and be understood by, those who speak French thanks to interlinguistic similarity. In any case, a linguistic unification of all the groups coming from France happened (either in France, on the ships, or in Canada) such that, according to many sources, the then "Canadiens" were all speaking French (King's French) natively by the end of the 17th century, well before the unification was complete in France. Canada's reputation was to speak as good French as Paris did. Today, French is the language of about 10 million people (not counting French-based creoles, which are also spoken by about 10 million people) in the Americas.

Through the Académie, public education, centuries of official control and the role of media, a unified official French language has been forged, but there remains a great deal of diversity today in terms of regional accents and words. For some critics, the "best" pronunciation of the French language is considered to be the one used in Touraine (around Tours and the Loire valley), but such value judgments are fraught with problems, and with the ever increasing loss of lifelong attachments to a specific region and the growing importance of the national media, the future of specific "regional" accents is often difficult to predict. The French nation-state, which appeared after the 1789 French Revolution and Napoleon's empire, unified the French people in particular through the consolidation of the use of the French language. french training institute in chennai. Hence, according to historian Eric Hobsbawm, "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France', although in 1789 50% of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13% spoke it 'fairly' – in fact, even in oïl language zones, out of a central region, it was not usually spoken except in cities, and, even there, not always in the faubourgs . In the North as in the South of France, almost nobody spoke French." Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription, invented by Napoleon, and of the 1880s public instruction laws, which allowed to mix the various groups of France into a nationalist mold which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation, while the various "patois" were progressively eradicated.

Current status and economic, cultural and institutional importance

French remains one of the most important diplomatic languages, with the language being one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, the International Olympic Committee, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization of American States, the Eurovision Song Contest the European Space Agency, World Trade Organisation and the North American Free Trade Agreement. french language courses chennai. It is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Médecins sans Frontières, and Médecins du Monde. Given the demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, Forbes released an article in 2014 which claimed that French "could be the language of the future".

French is a court language. french language courses chennai. It is one of the official languages of the main international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies such as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Caribbean Court of Justice, the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organization Appellate Body, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the European Court of Human Rights.

In 1997, George Werber published in Language Today a comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In his article, Werber ranked French as being the second – after English – most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were not solely the numbers of native speakers, but also included the number of secondary speakers (which tends to be specially high for French among fellow world languages); the economic power of the countries using the language; the number of major areas in which the language is used; the number of countries using the language, and their respective population; and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Werber highlighted in particular that French benefits from a considerable linguistic prestige). french language courses chennai. In 2008, Werber reassessed his article, and concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged."

Knowledge of French is widely considered to be a crucial skill for business owners in the United Kingdom; french language courses chennai. a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most-sought after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%).

Communiqua is one of the leading center for learning language courses in Chennai. For more details please contact

Mobile Number

7200077122

Email id

communiqua@gmail.com

Communiqua Address

#166-A, Purasaiwalkam High Road, Purasaiwalkam Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600010

Modern issues

There is some debate in today's France about the preservation of the French language and the influence of English (see Franglais), especially with regard to international business, the sciences, and popular culture. french language training in chennai. There have been laws enacted which require that all print ads and billboards with foreign expressions include a French translation and which require quotas of French-language songs (at least 40%) on the radio. There is also pressure, in differing degrees, from some regions as well as minority political or cultural groups for a measure of recognition and support for their regional languages.

Once the key international language in Europe, being the language of diplomacy from the 17th to mid-20th centuries, French language lost most of its international significance to English in the 20th century, especially after World War II, with the rise of the United States as a dominant global superpower. french language training in chennai. A watershed was when the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, was written in both French and English. A small but increasing number of large multinational firms headquartered in France are using English as their working language even in their French operations, and to gain international recognition, French scientists often publish their work in English. These trends have met some resistance. In March 2006, President Chirac briefly walked out of an EU summit after Ernest-Antoine Seilliere began addressing the summit in English. And in February 2007, Forum Francophone International began organising protests against the "linguistic hegemony" of English in France and in support of the right of French workers to use French as their working language.

French remains the second most-studied foreign language in the world, after English, and is a lingua franca in some regions, notably in Africa. french language training in chennai. The legacy of French as a living language outside Europe is mixed: it is nearly extinct in some former French colonies (Southeast Asia), while the language has changed to creoles, dialects or pidgins in the French departments in the West Indies, even though people there are still educated in standard French. On the other hand, many former French colonies have adopted French as an official language, and the total number of French speakers has increased, especially in Africa.

In the Canadian province of Quebec, different laws have promoted the use of French in administration, business and education since the 1970s. Bill 101, for example, obliges every child whose parents did not attend an English-speaking school to be educated in French. Efforts are also made, by the Office québécois de la langue française for instance, to make more uniform the variation of French spoken in Quebec as well as to preserve the distinctiveness of Quebec French.

There has been French emigration to the United States of America, Australia and South America, but the descendants of these immigrants have assimilated to the point that few of them still speak French. In the United States of America efforts are ongoing in Louisiana and parts of New England (particularly Maine) to preserve the language.

French language

French or la langue française is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. french classes in chennai. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan and others. French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) has largely supplanted. french classes in chennai. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as "Francophone" in both English and French.

French is an official language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie, the community of French-speaking countries. french classes in chennai. It is spoken as a first language in France, southern Belgium, western Switzerland, Monaco, certain parts of Canada and the United States, and by various communities elsewhere. As of 2015, 40% of the francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania.

French is the fourth most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union. 1/5 of non-Francophone Europeans speak French. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. french classes in chennai. Most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, and 190 million secondary speakers. Approximately 270 million people are able to speak the language. french classes in chennai. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la francophonie, total French speakers will number approximately 500 million people in 2025 and 650 million people by 2050. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa.

French has a long history as an international language of commerce, diplomacy, literature, and scientific standards and is an official language of many international organisations including the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, the WTO, the International Olympic Committee, and the ICRC. french classes in chennai. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese.