National French Week is a completely new experience here at Belleville High School. This is the 25th year around the nation that the American Association of Teachers of French have created. National French Week is during November 4-8, 2024 here at Belleville High School. The reason for this new tradition is to bring awareness and information about the French language, culture, history, and more.
Some occurrences that you can see in the French room here at BHS during the school year are the Catacombs, where we learn about famous people who have died walking around the room that is decorated as the French Catacombs, April fools (Poisson d’Avril) where you stick a fish on someones back, and All Saints Day (La Toussaint) which is dedicated to the loved ones who have died, and many more holidays. Madame Mulvey, BHS’s French teacher invites the whole community to participate in recognizing and honoring French culture. She believes learning about other languages and cultures is a responsibility of all. There are only benefits from learning about others. Madame’s philosophy on learning a language, “Connecting with other people is a key point of being a person. Willingly allowing any type of barrier to prevent you from forming that connection is an indignity on your part.”
Some events that the French influenced to the U.S. are political theory, where the Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who both served as U.S. ambassadors to France, where French Enlightenment ideals like Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced modern democracy. The Louisiana Purchase, which has given us a ton of land and states like Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, South Dakota, and many more for about $15 million. The Statue of Liberty was gifted by France as “universal symbol of freedom and democracy” in 1886. A ton of words were inspired by the French words like, ‘déjà vu, cliché, faux pas, fiancé, soufflé, chic, RSVP,’ and ‘bourgeois,’ which was recently shortened to bougie. The French also gave us words like, ‘fashion, hotel, juggle,’ and ‘vehicle.’ France is also the reason farmers raise cattle, pigs, and sheep. Even the word ‘language’ was influenced by France.
Some facts on the posters that were put around the school about National French Week is that French is the fifth most spoken language in the world, 88 countries belong to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, 29 countries have French as an official language, 321 million people speak French worldwide, $139 billion traded between the US and France alone, 60% of French speakers live in Africa, and French is the second most studied language in the world.
Continuing on facts, here are some other interesting facts about France that most people also don’t know. French was the official language of England for about 300 years, Louis XIX was the king of France for just 20 minutes which was the shortest ever reign, the worlds first artificial heart transplant and face transplant both took place in France, the tradition of wearing a white dress originated in France in 1499, and turning a baguette upside down is seen as unlucky in France.
