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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

#271

Post by kergonath »

grecy wrote: post #33
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…

> People weren't correcting you to mock you. They wanted to understand and probably help you No. In France they openly showed their disgust at my French and refused even to speak to me.

> No. In France they openly showed their disgust at my French and refused even to speak to me.

No. It’s most probably in your head and is inconsistent with everything I have seen or heard. Or you were unintentionally rude, maybe. There are pricks everywhere so I don’t doubt that someone was like that, but I seriously doubt that the people in general were.

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

#272

Post by kergonath »

jgtrosh wrote: post #203
justanother wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Nice, I learned that nobody ever calls a toilet a "WC", but rather a "toilette", and that "ne" is generally optional in "ne .. pas" negation. But rappers like Dadju taught me Congolese slang like "kitoko." It took years to transform my American high school French into something less alien to people in France. Music was a huge part of that, though.

you can say « les vécés » (or « le vatér » if you're an old Belgian man maybe), but more common are « les toilettes », « les chiottes » (vulgar but very common)

> « les chiottes » (vulgar but very common)

Don’t use that word with people you don’t know, though… Being rude when asking for something is not the best strategy.

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

#273

Post by kergonath »

elforce002 wrote: post #199
h1fra wrote: post #31

It's always fun to see foreigners coming to paris discovering that the french they learned at school is basically useless. Not only we use africans or arabic words, but we also speak in reverse, with noises, everything is shortened, etc.

That's a bummer for me. I spent +2 years learning French and now you're telling me this is useless. I'd assume I can talk with older folks and try to practice at restaurants, museums, etc. Prob I won't be able to communicate with GenZ but probably that's not the case for millennials.

It’s not useless. It’s just that there is some vocabulary that you won’t learn without some immersion in the culture. Same with any language, to be honest.

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

#274

Post by petesergeant »

jgtrosh wrote: post #203
justanother wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Nice, I learned that nobody ever calls a toilet a "WC", but rather a "toilette", and that "ne" is generally optional in "ne .. pas" negation. But rappers like Dadju taught me Congolese slang like "kitoko." It took years to transform my American high school French into something less alien to people in France. Music was a huge part of that, though.

you can say « les vécés » (or « le vatér » if you're an old Belgian man maybe), but more common are « les toilettes », « les chiottes » (vulgar but very common)

Mmm, same word as "shitters" in British English, with what I have to imagine is an identical etymology

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

#275

Post by deputy »

ic_fly2 wrote: post #270

France has strong support for French (language) music. The end result is that a lot of it is pretty decent. (Sure there is complete trash, they don’t have better tastes than others) Some rappers write books that win literature prizes. Plenty of French language hip hop and rap has deep lyrics that go way beyond what most English language stuff achieves.

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by Exoristos »

okal wrote: post #146
arcticbull wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French colonialism ended a long time ago, like in the 60s. It’s been over 60 years. [edit] The French even regularly hold referendums in COMs like New Caledonia offering to cut them loose. But the last one they had 97% voted to remain part of France. Sometimes it’s good to be a dependency of a world power. I should correct myself, New Caledonia isn’t a COM (collectivité d'outre-mer) anymore but a sui generis collecti…

This is misleading in the extreme. The Kanaky separatists boycotted the referendum. Something I find equally interesting is how apologists for European colonialism are perfectly content to claim 60 years is a long time (with the implication that it no longer matters), when systems were designed to explicitly keep the former colonies subservient, often including co-opting, or cultivating a corrupt elite. At what point…

Why would they do that, except as a stunt?

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

#277

Post by Exoristos »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #152
arcticbull wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French colonialism ended a long time ago, like in the 60s. It’s been over 60 years. [edit] The French even regularly hold referendums in COMs like New Caledonia offering to cut them loose. But the last one they had 97% voted to remain part of France. Sometimes it’s good to be a dependency of a world power. I should correct myself, New Caledonia isn’t a COM (collectivité d'outre-mer) anymore but a sui generis collecti…

What a malicious lie. Former colonies were still paying debts for 50 years plus, and many of them are still paying them. France has first rights to the natural resources of many of its former colonies. Colonialism never ended, it has simply changed hands. Now corrupt African politicians trade the futures of their countries and constituents as servants of empire instead of the colonial powers having direct rule. And e…

That sounds like a country at the mercy of bad local leadership, which is the opposite of colonialism.

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

#278

Post by realusername »

alephnerd wrote: post #262
greatgib wrote: post #103

[flagged]

> I think that this article is diffusing "propaganda" maybe even without realizing (I hope). You know RFI is owned by the French government right? If there is propaganda, it's ways to make France look more hospitable.

I see you are not familiar on how it works in France, the most criticism you'll get from journalists are always from the public newspapers.

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

#280

Post by manmal »

qwytw wrote: post #110
manmal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Europe and have never been stolen from, and I‘ve been on plenty vacations abroad. And in many places you do get free tap water (eg London or Vienna) with food. IDK why you would care about the price of tap water though since that’s probably 0,1% of your traveling budget for a city trip. Taxes are country specific, you‘ll find some EU countries with lower taxation than your average US state, eg Bulgaria. Bei…

> why you would care about the price of tap water Because I have to ask and unless I'm explicit they'll bring a 330 mL glass bottle which is extremely annoying. That forces me to drink beer all the time just to avoid that which is not exactly ideal. > eg Bulgaria The VAT there is 20% which is much higher than any place in the US.

Oh I thought we were talking income tax. VAT rates are not a concern if prices are generally low, like in Bulgaria.

Drinking beer so you don’t need to drink water from a bottle - well ok, you do you.

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