5 fun facts about the French language you may not know

That’s right—many French didn’t even speak their own language back in the day! Around the time of the French Revolution, 50 percent of French citizens didn’t speak the language, and only 12 percent spoke it “fairly,” according to historian Eric Hobsbawn. This was because French was seen as an elite language, and most peasants just stuck to their respective divergent dialects.

In fact, French was even more widely spoken in the neighbouring Germany and Holland than in parts of France, at least up until the 1800s. Obviously, the language has since more than made up for it, as it’s not just French citizens but people around the world who speak it presently, with many publications even describing French as the fastest-growing language in the world right now.

If you’ve ever considered a career in international relations, then taking French is most likely the way to go. It’s both an official language and a working language of the United Nations, the European Union, the International Olympic Committee, NATO, UNESCO, Médecins sans Frontière, Red Cross, multiple international courts, and various more such organisations. French remains an influential diplomatic lingua franca, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise considering how many countries use it.

Each language has its own way of tackling numbers and counting, but the French sure do start getting weird between the numbers of 70 and 99. The number 70 in French is “soixante-dix,” which translates to “sixty and ten” in English. The larger the numbers get, the wilder it becomes: 99 is written as “quatre-vingt-dix-neuf,” which is essentially “four twenty ten nine”!

The use of this vigesimal system—a numeral system based on the number 20, as opposed to the usual decimal system based on 10—was said to be first used by the Celts, consolidated in French after the French Revolution to unify their counting system. It’s definitely an interesting concept to wrap your head around, to say the least!

We bet that as an English speaker, you already have a sizeable French vocabulary—just maybe not with the right accent to go along with it. How are we so sure? Around a third to half of basic modern English words actually come straight from the French language, and much of these would definitely be vocabulary you’ve come across before. Such terms, where the meaning is the same across languages and the spelling is more or less also consistent, are called French transparent words, and they are much more prevalent than you may realise.

The fashion-conscious among us will definitely be more than aware of terms like avant-garde, haute couture, camouflage, and the popular adjective chic. Much of the food and beverage industry also take huge influence from French; examples of this include café, sauté, and of course, restaurant. Lastly, the term “RSVP” that’s often bandied around in emails also comes from French; an abbreviation of the phrase “Répondez s’il vous plaît”. Talk about getting a nice head start!