When it comes to French, people can't help sighing that it is "elegant". Indeed, in the history of European countries, it is fashionable for nobles to speak French, and a few spoonfuls of fluent French are displayed in the etiquette of banquets to show the nobility of status and the extraordinary demeanor. However, people who praise the elegance of French are not all fashionable dandies, nor are they all language laymen who follow the crowd. Some of them are scholars and experts: pedestrians praise its beauty and elegance (1a beauté), some praise its clarity (1a clarté), and others praise its accuracy and preciseness (65438+). Others call it sa Majesté, 1a langue francaise. What are the characteristics of French? Is it really praised by people? To answer this question accurately, let's start with its three linguistic elements.
The voice style of diplomats
Many people ask, "Is French good?" How can I put it? It doesn't have the elegance of the British, the unique sense of music of the Italians, the decisiveness and sonority of the Germans, and it is even more different from the generosity and broadmindedness of the Arabs. But French is elegant but not vulgar, charming but not greasy, and unique, which is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful languages in the world.
From the perspective of phonetic system, French almost includes four characteristics: roundness, smoothness, clearness and crispness. The rich and symmetrical vowel system makes musical sounds dominant in the language. Among its 16 vowels, 10 is a pre-vowel, which is rare in major languages in the world. For example, the ratio of the front and back parts of English vowels is 6: 9, Spanish is 2: 3, and French is 10: 6. Moreover, French 17 consonants and three semi-vowels are almost all pronounced in the front of the mouth. This way of pronunciation can directly produce pleasant psychological feedback and clear sound effect. In addition, vowels in French are simple vowels, and the pronunciation parts are clear, neat and crisp, which makes it difficult for people to form tired language habits. Apart from Portuguese and Polish, its unique nasal vowels are really unparalleled. In most languages in the world, people usually use one of the two main devices in the pronunciation organs to pronounce, but in French, when pronouncing this nasal vowel, the air with sound flows out of the mouth and nose, which makes the sound extraordinary and charming, giving the language a deeper charm. These physiological and physical characteristics of French phonemes are unique, which lays a solid material foundation for diplomats' phonetic style.
Anyone who has listened to French radio has a feeling that the French are fast and clever, and a whip can be as fast as thunder. Indeed, according to the survey results, the French can make more than 250 sounds per minute at the earliest, ranking first in the world in speech speed. This high frequency is based on extraordinary pronunciation methods and speaking habits. We might as well make such an observation. When the French speak, pay attention to their mouths, and it is not difficult to find the mystery of "world champion". When they speak, their mouths are not very open, mostly oblate, with sweet pronunciation and tense muscles. They almost set the most favorable posture, so that the mouth, tongue, lips and teeth can play the highest efficiency in the shortest time.
The frequency of a language also depends on its intonation. According to the principle of physics, the greater the intonation fluctuation, the more detours you take, and the slower and lower the speed and frequency. French intonation is relatively simple, and the intonation difference is not very big; Its stress is fixed and regular, and it doesn't play an important role in the language. Usually its stress and long sound are not as prominent as other languages. These characteristics of French intonation make the sentence export concise and smooth, giving people a sense of solemnity. Although it is not as colorful as some famous sayings, it is still sophisticated and far ahead in speed. It can be said that the elegance, lightness and seriousness of foreign civil servants are the phonetic characteristics of French, which has made great contributions to the prominent position of French in the world.
Secondly, the syntactic structure of jurists.
French is famous for its rigor, which is mainly reflected in its syntactic structure. Although modern French is an analytical language, and word order is an important pillar of syntactic structure, French has a series of strict grammatical rules besides the standardized word order. Every grammatical phenomenon has specific, clear and strict rules from the coordination of sex and number, the unity of tense, the collocation of words and the coordination of subject and genus. People have rules to follow, no matter how long a sentence is, they can easily sort out the clues, no matter how many words, they can find their home with a wave of their hands, and there is almost no ambiguity in proofreading. Many people feel that the grammatical rules of French are simply better than Napoleon's code!
In addition, French detail parts of speech also occupy a considerable position in the sentence. French * * * has eleven parts of speech, and each part of speech is subdivided into various forms. These parts of speech are clearly defined in the sentence. Pronouns, in particular, have seven categories and nearly a hundred forms. Personal pronouns can be divided into eight kinds of persons, five functions, three kinds of gender differences, two kinds of quantitative differences, and the changes of light talk and stress forms. Its fineness, diversity and completeness are really amazing. These pronouns are widely used in French, because they are easy to replace concise words and cough, which not only shows the clear relationship between words, but also does not appear cumbersome and procrastinating. French parts of speech are not only complete, but also closely related to syntactic structure. Their grammatical usage in sentences can be tested in three ways. First, word order, look at the position of words in sentences; Second, the part of speech, the types and nature of search words; The third is the relationship, and it is necessary to find out what is the relationship between words. The three-pronged approach once again shows the high rigor of French grammar.
Because the French department evolved from ancient folk Latin, some parts of speech still have traces of internal inflections. The most obvious phenomenon is verbs. The inflections of French verbs are very complicated. A suffix represents a tense and mood, and eight people have dozens of forms, which opens the door for the delicate expression of various characters, time, voice and mood. For example, its direct past tense has more than ten forms: compound past tense, stored single past tense, previous past tense, past tense, incomplete past tense, recent past tense and recent past tense. Beginners of French may be afraid of this. In fact, as long as we cross this hurdle, people will find that French verbs are like speedboats near the shore. Once you bravely climb onto the deck, it will quickly send you to the other side and show you another fascinating new world.
Proper internal inflections, meticulous division of parts of speech, orderly overall structure, especially meticulous rules and regulations, all come from the hands of a jurist, which is flawless! Perhaps because of this, French is listed as one of the common languages in the meetings of various organizations in united press international, because some important international treaties are mostly written in French, and all the rules and regulations of the Universal Postal Union Congress are also written in French, thus making French a "world language".
The vocabulary system of three magicians
The superficial total of French vocabulary is only about 300 thousand, which is not much; But its total amount is far more than 30 thousand yuan, comparable to winning English. This is another miracle that the French can be proud of.
Lonely French words often have only conceptual value or definition value, just like pieces of original material, which can be transformed from one material into many products with practical value through the processing of word collocation or the comparison of different contexts. Therefore, most French words in language practice have multiple meanings, some of which can be as many as 80, such as 82 in faire, 80 in prendre, 67 in main and 64 in tête. This semantic feature of French vocabulary system greatly enriches the connotation of vocabulary, makes French plastic, and skillfully expands the existing vocabulary, and its skill is no less superb than the magician's amazing skill.
The morphological characteristics of the French vocabulary system are even more wonderful. By changing some training modes of words (or adding affixes before and after the stem, or combining more than two words), many cognates can be derived from one word. Taking the French intonation terre as an example, we can catch a glimpse of more than 20 similar words around it:
terra terra terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terraee，terraseier，terrass，terras，terras，terrass，terras，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra， terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terra，terre，terr，terr，terre，terre，plein
This feature of French vocabulary is not only derivative, but also regular, which can help people know, understand, remember and create French vocabulary. The affixes of French words are just like Chinese words. Knowing a hundred affixes is equivalent to knowing thousands of words. If you are familiar with this function, those French beginners may not be at a loss when remembering words.
In French, it is common that a word can have multiple parts of speech. For example, the word bon has four parts of speech: adjectives, nouns, adverbs and interjections. This grammatical feature of French vocabulary is a gift of French people's language practice, and it is also another way to enrich the vocabulary system by changing the grammatical meaning of words. With the development and need of tables, this usage is more and more frequent. A new adjective often appears in French newspapers, magazines and street advertisements, which is to use nouns as adjectives. Many nouns, such as clef (key), minute, buffer, type, fleuve (river), ecole (school), etc., are placed directly after another noun and play the role of adjectives.
The invention increases the number of adjectives and enriches the expressive force of language.
French vocabulary system has three characteristics: polysemy, variability and versatility. In view of the high dependence of French vocabulary on sentences, these magician-like transformation techniques generally do not bring confusion to the vocabulary system, but greatly enrich the connotation and extension of French vocabulary, fully expanding the only 300,000 words to one million, thus creating this unprecedented miracle.
Solid foundation, elegant appearance, rigorous structure and rich materials. A language master may write a masterpiece to praise the unique talent of French, and a literary master may write a long article to praise its extraordinary temperament; We can only draw a conclusion from this: these are the important features of French language, the mainstay of its survival and development, and the important factor of its foothold in the world language forest.