That's interesting because, here in Canada, French is a very common second language - and even first language in some places. Perhaps because of this, it doesn't seem to be romanticized very much. Canadian French seems less much less glamorous than French French and I think a lot of people in France think so too.
I've been to both Canada and France...to me, even Canadian French sounds smoother than French French.
Pity that some people sort of look down on Canadian French. Canada is a beautiful country, BTW.
I was up there at Christmas one year and it truly took my breath away.
I always love, love Christmas/Hanukkah decorations with a backdrop of snow.
And I love wintry snow scenes even after Christmas...I love winter, period.
It's also interesting that the sitters who took French - AFAIR - are Stacey and Shannon - the sophisticated ones - and Mary Anne - the preppy, traditional daughter of a lawyer.
It is...I actually see Mary Anne becoming more bohemian or goth as she enters high school, though.
To me, she wasn't all that "traditional" and only her middle-school
clothing was preppy rather than her personality.
And I think it's only mentioned once in the entire series that she signed up for French...she could have changed languages in second semester.
I see Mary Anne and Stacey taking German or Russian in high school.
😊😊😊
So the series leans into the French = fancy thing too.
It did a little bit at the beginning, but as the series went on, it didn't as much.
And I think in
Mary Anne and the Little Princess, I vaguely remember even wealthy Victoria taking Spanish instead of French.
The Sweet Valley series, both the middle and high school series was the one that became carried away with romanticizing all things French and France.
Almost everyone at SV Middle School and SVH took European French and the twins take several trips to France.
One SVH trilogy, dubbed not surprisingly
royalty even has both twins fall in love with "sophisticated," smooth-talking, handsome French guys.
The blurbs for the trilogy uses the cliche of
royalty and romance in a French castle by the sea about five hundred times. 😅😅😅
Elizabeth even has an affair with a French prince and nearly marries him.
And it has the complete stereotypical drama of the prince being "arranged" to marry a young girl from another royal family, yada, yada.
Thank goodness the BSC series didn't fall into that cliched plotline.
Also, in the Fabulous Five series, almost "everyone" takes French.
I suspect that Shannon and Stacey probably took Canadian French instead of European French in the series.
In my high school, most of us took American Spanish, not Spaniard Spanish, so I highly doubt it would be different for those taking French.
Some, but not too many students in my high school took French.
I smile because in the Girl Talk series, Ran Zak takes Italian and Sabrina Wells...and I think Allison Cloud...take Spanish, which was a great break from teen series tradition.
I was so, so glad to see that the BSC series and the Girl Talk series didn't get carried away with the
European French/France=height of culture-fancy-high-class-ultra-sophistication mentality.