The difference between English and French
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A Language to shape our view
They say that language shapes our view. According to the structure of our language, our view of the world changes. That is at least what they say.
Until recently I never quite understood this concept despite being a native speaker of two languages. I couldn’t quite understand how the grammatical structure of English supposedly influenced our being. For this to be verified, we would have to propose a description of the personality of the English language and relate it to the average personality of native speakers of English. Could there be a common trait to all English speakers that is shaped by their world experience because of the language? Not easy to say yes or no to that. It’s a very unscientific question.
There would also be several variables that contribute to the personality of a language. Vocabulary, sentence structure but also intonation and rhythm. If we were to give human qualities to a language, the fact that English makes a selection between the words it chooses to turn up the volume on could indicate several things. It could mean that speakers of English are very concise. Or that they are pragmatic. Or fearful of misunderstandings. Or don’t bother with details. Or just focus on the larger picture. Or very polite because they pre-filter the message before saying it to someone.
The English language has words like “safe” and “waving” and “cuddling” that the French language does not. Does it say something about the psychological priorities of those native speakers? Why do speakers of English have a need to use the verb “creeping”? Why do we have a need to distinguish between chuckle, giggle and snicker? Why do things always have to be “nice”? Why is swearing looked down upon in English but not so much in French?
Compared to French, English produces more rounded sounds. The pitch goes up and down, like a melody. Could speakers of English be warmer people than the colder, more monotone and “sharper” French? Is English better designed to express emotions?
In all of these considerations there seems to be some plausibility while at the same time being very hard to justify with certainty. Part of the difficulty in getting to the bottom of the question is “who do we study?” Do we take all the bilingual native speakers of English and ask them about their feelings regarding their second native language? Do we go by statistics in the answers? Do we observe the level of socialization in one language then in the other? When would we do this? How? And with whom? It seems that however we approach this, there would be too many subjective influences.
And yet there's something to it
Until recently, I never paid much attention to what I thought was an overly idealized view of languages. How could they shape anyone’s world? But the more I think about it, the more I believe there’s something to be explored.
For example, when I speak French on the phone my wife tells me my personality, my facial expression and my tone changes completely. It’s as if I was becoming a speaker of French and acted in this way. She says I look more severe and less kind.
One day when we were watching the NBA they told me there was a French speaker on one of the teams. I said “don’t tell me, I want to see if I can recognize him”. It turns out I got it right. His name is Gobert and I could see he was French. How did I do it? His eyes. I could tell he was thinking French things. Speakers of English have a more lateral vision.
The player seemed to have a more analytical gaze. This brings us to a major trait of the English language as opposed to French. We automatically involve our emotion and our person into every message we speak. This means than when two speakers of English interact they are “feeling” how the other person feels about the message. There is a lot of perception involved. French doesn’t do that – it’s rather more what you say. Not how you say it.
In every English conversation, the speakers are delivering the verbal message according to very subtle rules and paying attention to how they want the message to be understood. The little variations in tone says a lot about how the speaker positions themselves in regards to the message. There are infinite tools to shape our sentence a certain way. We are as much listening to the contents of the sentence as to how it is said.
When I speak French (as a native), I notice that I can’t penetrate into the core being of the person. I cannot access their being. One probable reason is that the way French is meant to be spoken is with a tone that excludes any sort of emotion or personality. Even face-to-face, I leave the conversation not knowing “about” the person. It’s as if the message they were telling me was like a wall between be and them. But why didn’t I notice this earlier and why aren’t more native speakers of French raising this issue? Simply because it’s our “normal” and it would take understanding of English as a native to know that another way of communicating is possible.
Another point of interest is the presence of “vous” which acts as a sort of third person in the conversation and prevents speakers from connecting. Almost as if speaking to a person’s title instead of to them. “How is the king today? Is the king enjoying his day?” Could these two traits of French say something of how a language shapes the view of the world of its native speakers? It would seem to make sense.
Even in the smallest words, speakers of English are attuned to details and voice modulations. The way of saying “hello” in person or on the telephone tells us something about the other person. The equivalent information isn’t available to a speaker of French, who only has the contents of the message to go by. After all, there isn’t a variety of ways of saying “bonjour”. We just say it… not style it!
Another large trait of the French language is the sizeable presence of reflexive verbs compared to English. Why the need to specify who is doing the action? Why must we say “they are fighting each other” VS “they are fighting”? Why say “he is sitting himself down”? Why say “I am hiding myself” or “I am having myself some fun”? Why do we not assume it’s about the subject?
An answer to reflexive verbs
French reflexive verbs could very well offer an explanation to the biggest psychological difference between English and French, and in this illustrate how a language influences our view of the world.
Take “I was hiding” as an example. The sentence requires no explanation whereas “Je cachais” does. A French speaker wants to know what I was hiding. They don’t consider by default that the sentence is about me. Naturally we could argue to the contrary and say that the misunderstanding is rather due to the sentence being incorrect. But this is only partly true because any native speaker listening automatically wondered what I was hiding. They were not confused, they were rather curious about what “entity” the verb “hiding” was acting on. “Whats was being hid?” was their point of curiosity. They were not seeing “I” as the doer of the action. Their focus was elsewhere. On the receiver of the action.
Using a relatively rare verb such as “raser” (trimming/shaving”, If I were to hell someone “Je vais aller raser”, they would be confused and even wonder what I was going to trim. Partly because the sentence was unusual, partly also because their minds would wonder what I was going to trim or shave. “Je vais me raser” is the proper way of saying it to make sure we know whose beard we are going to shave. Again. the French speaking focus is on who is receiving the action.
These 2 small examples seem to indicate a tendency in French to not consider by default that “je” is the point of interest of the sentence but rather what or who the verb is acting upon.
As a native speaker of both languages I can compare the effect that SVO sentences have on my mental picture, which is radically different. In English we picture the subject. In French we picture the object.
The boy broke the window. What do you see in your mind’s eye? The boy or the window? native speakers of English usually see a boy with a football of something. They don’t see the window.
The cat caught the mouse. What do you see? The cat or the mouse? I can guarantee that speaker of French sees the mouse rather than the cat.
I cleaned the kitchen. Do you see a person cleaning or do you see a clean kitchen?
The biggest difference between English and french could well be our point of interest towards specific parts of the sentence. I would argue that English is a more “I” based language. French is a more “what is happening to the object?” based language. This feature is noticed when we analyze sentence and ask ourselves what we see mentally and where we place the focus regarding the information.
English and French in Love and poems
If my theories are true, French communication can have quite big impacts on the way native speakers of French perceive messages and relate to them.
For myself, the romantic sentence “Je t’aime” doesn’t mean anything because it doesn’t hit home. It is not a magical formula that means “love”. I just see the verb which also happens to mean “like”. I’m seeing the action of liking. But in “I love you” I’m seeing what “I” is doing, which is the action of loving. A big difference indeed. Is this also what all French speakers are experiencing without knowing it? Could it be that they are missing out of the feeling of experiencing the “I” as we do in English? Hard to say!
Whatever the answer is, I made a surprising discovery in the French poem “Nouveau venu, qui cherches Rome en Rome” by Joachim du Bellay. He’s speaking about visitors in Rome who are disappointed to not find the past glory of the Antiquity. As much as I read it, all I saw was Rome. I didn’t see the person walking through Rome disappointed. I saw temples and monuments but not the hero of the story. Not the human being experiencing the visit.
Completely by accident I fell upon a translation of this poem into English by Ezra Pound, and the mental picture I developed was radically different.
“O thou newcomer who seek’st Rome in Rome
And find’st in Rome no thing thou canst call Roman;” It is quite clear that it’s about a person. In this moment I realized that I had made up the wrong mental picture of the original French version. English is naturally focused on the “I” and what the human is experiencing.
It’s almost as if reading English automatically places the attention on the left side of the sentence while French places it on the right side.
To conclude on this idea, it is quite evident that there lacks a reliable methodology to prove the veracity of what I’m sharing. It would take several native speakers of English and French at the same level of bilingualism and compare their understanding of the same message. We would still be in the realm of the subjective and no definite proof would be brought to answer the question.
To conclude
If there was a conclusion to these considerations, I would say that English is a more emotional language that includes our being in the shaping of each message. We style the message according to how we feel about it and according to how we want others to feel about it. We do this instinctively as speakers of English and in this trait there may be a glimpse into the psyche of English speakers. In contrast, french doesn’t have even a fraction of the tools to do this. And besides, it’s not the makeup of this language nor its purpose. The message is the sum total of the words contained in the sentence. Very little subtext. English is all about the subtext!
I would also defend the view that English has a different interest in the actors of the sentence. It’s all about who is doing the action as opposed to what is being done to something. In “the cat caught the mouse” we see the cat. In “le chat a attrape la souris”, a French speaker rather sees the mouse – but some will say that this isn’t exactly true. There may be a middle ground and levels of complexity to be brought to this question.
Undeniably, we can say that English pre-filters the message by use of volume and sound modulation. French doesn’t go through the same trouble. The person is much less involved in the message.
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