Book: The Story of French

From the La Trobe Library…

Book: The Story of French by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau.

Book cover from St Martin's Press edition

The Story of French dives into the history of the French language: the people, the places, the events, and its ongoing importance in an “anglophone” world. Why is French is the language of haute culture for English-speakers (when perhaps the opposite is true for much of the world?) Why do English and French share so many words? 

This expansive story (covering sixteen centuries) answers these questions and more over 483 pages, exploring the origins, spread and evolution of the French language(s) from around the year 400 CE up until today. (Today being sometime in 2006.) 

The creation of l’Académie française, Roman invasions, various people making up imaginary rules for language, colonisation, international diplomacy: it's all here in this amusing and globetrotting book.

See reviews on Goodreads (3.97/5), or the New York Times.  

The Story of French is available in the La Trobe Library (with a different cover to what is pictured above).