When I began learning French in the eighth grade, I knew that I wanted to learn a language that is less-understood. Everyone told me that French is not useful, so I knew that I wanted to challenge that idea but also learn a language to see how it is. I think that based off of Aitchinson's linguistics diagram, language learning on the surface level consists of learning about sentence structure and pronouncing words. At least that's what it felt like to me. I was walking into a class to learn about different words, how to say them, and form sentences using these words. Middle School Charlie eventually got into it much more because my French teacher pushed us to incorporate Francophone culture in what we were learning. I never knew that French was spoken in Africa and in the Caribbean. That took me by surprise as a 14 year old.
I have always enjoyed learning about different countries, and I think that one of the best ways to learn about a country is the languages that are spoken within them. I think that Francophone countries in Africa and the Caribbean present an interesting case because of the sociological changes that have occurred over time. Colonization makes language acquisition interesting because different dialects form, and the struggle to keep indigenous languages alive prove to be a struggle as well. This is when a sociological perspective is incredibly important.
From an anthropological perspective, the co-existence among other languages is super interesting in the French language. I feel like pretty much every country and nation has some sort of co-existence with another language whether it is a dialect, creole form, or just a completely different language. A lot of Francophone islands have developed different dialects like in Dominica and La Réunion. The culture of the French language is different everywhere you go. My language partner, Sara, speaks Arabic, French, and English. A lot of educated people in Morocco tend to speak French, but Sara claims that almost everybody does because of Morocco's colonial ties to France. It is interesting to see how different colonized francophone countries adapt their indigenous cultures to a colonial one.
For me, I give preference to disciplines that are more humanistic and based around social sciences. Psycholinguistics and computational linguistics are not the first things that come to mind when I think about learning a language. My language learning plan centers itself around speaking French with someone from Africa, in this case Sara, and learning more about her culture through French conversation. I truly have enjoyed our conversations thus far, and look forward to the remaining part of the semester.
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