French is a very important world language, spoken in France, and other European countries as well as in former colonies of France in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. It is
considered an important diplomatic language and is one of six languages used at the UN. Anyone interested in international politics or in working in Africa would be advised to study French.
Because French is a Romance language, descended from Latin, it’s actually rather easy to learn it if you already know Spanish or Italian. I started French in middle school but then I started going to Italy regularly and learned Italian on my own and in college. I didn’t take French again until my senior year and was able to Frenchify my Italian well enough to place into an intermediate class and get an A. In graduate school, I took a more advanced class, and started reading novels about France. Because I spoke French and drove a standard, not an automatic transmission, I joined a research project in Morocco for five months and communicated with people almost exclusively in French. While doing my dissertation research, I discovered that French periodical indices were MUCH more organized than Italian ones, so I used French for my research.
But it’s easy for vocabulary and grammar to get rusty if it’s not used. When I started tutoring, I never thought about offering French because I thought I needed to relearn everything in order to teach it. Then two different people begged me for lessons, and I realized I knew a lot more than I thought.