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How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

nytimes.com

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Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#211

Post by _npe3 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #179
thriftwy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Meanwhile, France did... Where did I talk about France? I was commenting on your comment about movies portaying Russia has being "propaganda". > The rest of stuff is the same level of pathetic. Eastern Germans complaining they didn't get access to white privilege, that they deserve by birthright, for almost forty years is sure tragic. What does "white privilege" have to do with anything in post-WWII Europe? Are you…

by white privilege he means capitalist imperialism. as opposed to communist imperialism of course.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#212

Post by glandium »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #6

> Members of the French Academy, the 17th-century institution that publishes an official dictionary of the French language, have been working on the same edition for the past 40 years. This is nonsense. The French Academy is adding new words to the dictionary every year. The whole article is weak to say the least. Of course, the French spoken abroad is changed by the local influences. This is the sam case as with any…

French here, living abroad for more than 10 years.

> sa va koi

Phonetically, it's easy. "ça va quoi"

> vzy cr

vas-y... you lost me here. crève?

That kind of reminds me of a joke some rapper (I think) made about, I wanna say 20 years ago, when young people from the banlieue were starting to cut words. I don't remember it exactly, but it went from "arrête ça" (stop it) being verlan'ized to "teuarass" and when they'd go to cut to "te", he would say "arrête ça tout de suite" (stop it now).

> we are the champions of how to write something easy most difficultly

I guess you're thinking about things like "qu'est-ce que"?

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#213

Post by esperent »

kashunstva wrote: post #205
dudul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French people always get criticized for not understanding foreigners' broken French. It is not out of malice. It is because it actually is very hard to understand broken French. A lot of very different words sound similar. A very simple grammatical mistake can completely change the meaning of a sentence. And yeah, it's probably kind of the same in English, but French is not the linga franca English is today (see what…

> It is because it actually is very hard to understand broken French. Is there any evidence that French has some unique qualities that render it unusually difficult to understand when not spoken by a someone fluent in the language? I’m reasonably competent in French and if there is such a feature, I don’t see it.

No, I don't think so. In my experience of traveling around and trying to speak various languages in a broken fashion, the biggest difficulty is the native's receptivity to trying to understand you. The second biggest difficulty is ease of basic pronunciations, and this does vary a lot between languages. For example, currently I'm in Vietnam, and local people do not try to understand foreigners who speak Vietnamese at all. By locals, I mean people I meet around during the day like shopkeepers and service people rather than my friends. The pronunciation is also extremely difficult because of the tones and the very large difference in regional accents. It's frustrating and I have given up trying to learn the language because of this.

I would accept that France is slightly harder to pronounce than English but as a beginner/intermediate French speaker I don't personally believe it.

However, I definitely agree that people in France - especially Paris - are not receptive to foreigners speaking French at all. They don't support you, and you do feel looked down on for speaking badly (in comparison to Vietnam where you will never feel looked down on, you'll just receive looks of confusion). Again, I don't mean friends that you make. I mean the general French populace that you meet while going about your daily business, in shops, restaurants, and so on.

Spain, Italy, Greece are similar to France in that they are condescending towards non-native speakers. Mainland Greece was the worst for me. Meanwhile I would say that Portugal, Indonesia, Germany, and many English speaking countries (at least in cities) are quite helpful and friendly towards non-native speakers. Of course, I only have my own limited experience to go on so I may be wrong.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#214

Post by esperent »

frenchie123 wrote: post #190
dataflow wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> French people always get criticized for not understanding foreigners' broken French The main criticism I've heard is kind of the opposite - that they dislike foreigners not trying to speak French, and just starting communication in English. If both of these are true then I guess that puts foreigners in a tough place where they're damned if they try and damned if they don't?

When I was a little kid my school took me on a trip to paris. I got lost and tried to ask for directions. The locals literally ignored me as I was begging for help. Until I finally remembered my parents talking about how the french hate anyone who doesn't speak their language and I started my plea with "I'm sorry I don't speak your beautiful language" So yeah, they'd rather ignore a lost child than tolerate foreigner…

To be fair, this is Paris and should not be generalized to all of France. Paris is not a friendly city.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#215

Post by thaumasiotes »

gerdesj wrote: post #157
ekianjo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The normand invasion of England and political control for 400 years changed the English language for sure. The medieval English and the modern English are completely different. Medieval French and modern French, not so much.

I'm not sure what 400 years of Norman political control really means. There was an invasion of England in 1066 by William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, which ended up with King William I of England. Subsequent monarchs of England/bits of France were no longer Normans per se. At least one variety of a French language at the time was introduced, wholesale, and became the court language of England. Latin of course rema…

> Modern English can be very flexible, which is probably why it has become popular as a lingua franca.

You have the causality backwards here.

> Word order can be fiddled with mercilessly too. Officially, English sentences are subject - verb - object (SVO) for example: "I sat on the bed". You can say "I the bed sat on" or "On the bed sat I" or "sat I on the bed" and it still works fine.

This is just incorrect.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#216

Post by Veuxdo »

Dalewyn wrote: post #207
adev_ wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most people it's their 3rd or 4th or 5th language, and they were always so full of joy and happiness than I was trying my best. I think this is currently pretty typical in any language. In my experience, Non-native speakers are much more resilient to strong accents and broken grammar. Probably because they passed themselves by this step. I worked in a research laboratory with >100 nationalities: It was extremel…

>"Globish English" Yes yes. I English speak very easy. I English hear too very easy. Easy understand. Can talk each other good just simple words. English very good. *Ahem* Basically, the built-in error correction functionality in English is bloody phenomenal . Literally anyone with a passing understanding and skill in English can use it to communicate effectively. This feature is seldom seen in most other languages l…

> This feature is seldom seen in most other languages let alone lingua francas.

Source? On it's face this doesn't sound plausible...

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#217

Post by ttoinou »

coldtea wrote: post #187
ekabod wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in France is treating Quebec as a backwater colony, not even as a colony. It is all in your head. Quebec has a very good image in France.

You'd be surprised. Though I think you've misunderstood the parent's comment. THe parent doesn't literally mean that they think of Quebec as a colony. He means that they look down upon Quebec people, as if they are "ploucs" [from some backwater colony], without their French "sophistication" and accent.

But parisians think that of the whole world, so it's not particulary meaningful.

If you're hurt by parisian attitude, you've failed the "I shouldn't give a fuck" test they're making you pass ;)

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#218

Post by TaylorAlexander »

Veuxdo wrote: post #216
Dalewyn wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Globish English" Yes yes. I English speak very easy. I English hear too very easy. Easy understand. Can talk each other good just simple words. English very good. *Ahem* Basically, the built-in error correction functionality in English is bloody phenomenal . Literally anyone with a passing understanding and skill in English can use it to communicate effectively. This feature is seldom seen in most other languages l…

> This feature is seldom seen in most other languages let alone lingua francas. Source? On it's face this doesn't sound plausible...

Yeah this could just be a property of most human languages.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#219

Post by hydrok9 »

ekabod wrote: post #170
passwordoops wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also that Parisians treat them like a backwater colony. That really doesn't sit well with the narrative that Quebec was always an independent people who were only ever under colonial rule after the evil English came along. Oh, and there were never any issues with the natives until the Brits. Source: my grade school kids' history texts

Nobody in France is treating Quebec as a backwater colony, not even as a colony. It is all in your head. Quebec has a very good image in France.

just one example but I did meet a french guy once who said that all Quebeckers were racist backwater hicks who drank moose blood for fun

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#220

Post by imbnwa »

porknubbins wrote: post #209
dudul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French people always get criticized for not understanding foreigners' broken French. It is not out of malice. It is because it actually is very hard to understand broken French. A lot of very different words sound similar. A very simple grammatical mistake can completely change the meaning of a sentence. And yeah, it's probably kind of the same in English, but French is not the linga franca English is today (see what…

I have noticed that advanced mono lingual speakers (ie with higher education or some experience analyzing language) are aware of a huge amount of nuance and meaning in their language encoded in small inflections or grammar. They are thus not always good at narrowing down to the simple thing the accented foreigner is trying to say. It seems to require some 2nd language learning experience to realize “the 2nd language…

This reminds me of the early years of Mixed Martial Arts where you had lots of Brazilian second language speakers interacting with guys with journalism degrees in MMA journalism at the time who weren’t aware how confusing they sounded using American sports idiom after American sports idiom and the Brazilians would just do their best trying to make sense of what they’re being asked
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