Last week, my friend Luc and I took part in an event organised by “La Maison de l’Amitié Yaroslavl-Poitier” or "Дом Дружбы Ярославль - Пуатье", a touristic centre which links Yaroslavl with its sister town, Poitier. The center offers French classes and we visited a number of them to help students practice their oral skills and motivate them (Luc is half-French and although I am Moroccan, my first language is French). To mark our departure, the administrator of the center asked us to prepare presentations on a topic of our choice as part of an event organised for interested students and teachers. I decided to talk about my two homes: Morocco and Scotland. Of course, people knew some basic information about Scotland (bagpipes or волынка, kilts, Nessie and the Loch Ness…), but they were very happy to learn more about this beautiful country and were impressed by the beauty of the sceneries. (Interestingly enough, people here don’t seem to understand that Scotland is part of the UK. The post services actually searched on their system “Scotland” for “country of destination” and it took them a while to realise that it was actually under “United Kingdom”.) This centre itself is one of many in Russia that promote the French language and culture. There is a clear interest, and I would even say, fascination here for France. It took me a while to get used to hearing random and sometimes obscure French songs in cafés. You can easily find French classics at the Karaoke here and I even found some songs like Joe Dassin’s “L’été indien” adapted and released in Russian. Beyond music, the influence of French on the Russian language itself is quite important. It is very common to find words that stem or sound exactly like French (реноме, багаж, кошмар, этаж, мебель, душ, и т.д). Back in the 18th century, some Russian poets, amongst which Pushkin, would incorporate French or a Russified French in their productions. Since the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725), France has been a country that agitates much excitation and passion in Russia. The sovereign initiated a civilisational turn towards modernization and opened the doors to Europe (Petersburg was actually constructed and appointed as capital of the Russian empire for this very purpose). France was then the leading power of Europe and its influence in Russia was so strong that French became the language of conversation and correspondence of the Russian nobility. Later, Catherina II (1762-1796) was strongly inspired by Enlightenment writers, entertained regular correspondence with Voltaire, and even received Diderot at her court. However, the French revolution of 1789 undermined the relations of the two countries, as other monarchies felt threatened in their stability. Strong restrictions on foreign travel were adopted, but this situation was temporary and soon enough strong cultural, intellectual, economic, and diplomatic exchanges between French and Russian resumed. (of course, in between there was Napoleon's attempted invasion of Russia, but that did not seem to strongly damage Russians' sympathy for the French). Interesting fact, even during the Cold War the French influence did not completely disappear. In the 1960s, Charles de Gaulles’ stance on American leadership and the need of a particular and independent French foreign policy led to an easing of its relations with the USSR. A number of cultural agreements were signed, French teaching assistants were appointed in universities, the teaching of French was expanded at the secondary school level, and the distribution of French films was even allowed in the Soviet Union. Even today, many schools in Russia teach their pupils French from the age of 14. I hope this post was interesting!
The next one will be on New Year's Eve celebrations on Russia! Пока!
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AuthorThird year student at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Studies Russian, German and International Relations. Loves traveling. Loves languages. Loves to share. Hence, this BLOG! Archives
January 2018
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