Letter to the Editor: National French Week

This week, Nov. 5-11, we celebrate National French Week.

People often ask me “Why should Americans learn French?” I am Kansas-born and bred, living in Wichita most of my life. I come from a working-class family and my parents were not college educated. But my life has been richly different from my parents’, and I attribute that difference to my knowledge of French.

Because I know French…

° I have become more tolerant of all people.

° I have dined in Wichita with foreign journalists and dignitaries.

° I have dragged an American teenager out of a French Merchant Marine bar.

° I have enjoyed snails and beef tongue.

° I have explored 10 countries and walked where kings, queens and popes have walked.

° I have gathered wild mushrooms and hunted wild boar in France.

° I have helped settle international insurance claims.

° I have hiked and skied in the Alps.

° I have hitchhiked from Dijon to Paris.

° I have learned two other languages more easily.

° I have made beds in an Italian hostel where no one spoke French or English.

° I have met people and made friends from five continents.

° I have studied and worked abroad.

° I have watched tennis on Center Court at Wimbledon.

° I have worked for the local aircraft industry and helped sell airplanes in Africa.

My favorite professor once told me it wasn’t important what she did for a living. In her words, she could have hauled bedpans all day because after a long day’s work she could still go home and read a good French novel.

Although French has directed my career, I cherish most the opportunities beyond my job that my language skills have afforded me.

I have enriched my routine life through international art, business, cuisine, history, literature, music, theater, travel and experiences of which English-only speakers can only dream.

Language proficiency improves résumés, opens professional doors, expands cultural horizons and spawns opportunities. Knowing another language will change your life.

Spring enrollment is starting soon. Sign up for a language class. If not French, try another language. You never know what adventure awaits!

-Gail Burkett, Fairmount Lecturer in French