French Language In The United States
The French language is spoken as a minority language in the United States. According to year 2000 census figures, 1.6 million Americans over the age of five speak the language at home, making French the fourth most-spoken language in the nation behind English, Spanish, and Chinese (when both the Cantonese and Mandarin dialects are combined). Three major varieties of French developed in the United States: Louisiana French, spoken in Louisiana; New England French (a local variant of Canadian French spoken in New England); and the nearly extinct Missouri French, historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois. More recently, French has also been carried to various parts of the nation via immigration from Francophone regions. Today, French is the second most-spoken language in four states: Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Read more about French Language In The United States: French Ancestry, Dialects and Varieties, Newer Francophone Immigrants, Francophone Tourists and Retirees, Language Study, Francophone Communities, Counties and Parishes With The Highest Proportion of French-speakers, Seasonal Migrations, French Newspapers in The United States, French Radio Stations in The United States, French Schools in The United States
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“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one’s equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.”
—Georges, French novelist, critic. L’Abbé C, pt. 2, ch. 17 (1950)
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)