With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.
Some words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.
In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.
Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian.
French are what they are without excusing themselves to be.
French is the language that turns dirt into romance.
You know French means like sophisticated, well educated, so far.
The French, I think, in general, are strangely prolix in their natural history.
The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.
Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!