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

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

#311

Post by Doxin »

dudul wrote: post #17
grecy wrote: post #11

Learning French while exploring West Africa was enormously good fun. 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. Nobody ever corrected my pronunciation or criticized me for my bad grammar and lack of vocabulary. (Cough, France, Cough). Thanks to all the encouragement and positivity I picked it up pretty quickly, and thoroughly enj…

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…

> French people always get criticized for not understanding foreigners' broken French. It is not out of malice.

Plenty of people seem to have anecdotes that are hard to explain in any way other than malice. I have one of my own:

I was out camping with the family in france, I don't remember where exactly. As is tradition we managed to forget to bring the can opener. Cue my dad in the campstore with a can trying to get the shop keeper to sell us a can opener. How can you possibly need more than someone miming a can opener with a can saying "ouvrir" to get what he was trying to communicate? Never mind that his french was plenty fluid enough to hold a conversation with plenty of other french people.

I'm sure most french people are perfectly nice and do their best to understand foreigners. But -- at least the last time I was over there -- there are also more than enough french people who just straight up refuse to understand foreigners to leave a bitter taste in peoples mouth.

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

#312

Post by hnbad »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #254
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…

In Germany they were happy to see me trying, but almost universally couldn't understand any of my garbled sentences. I put it down to German being one of those languages where the order of words matters less and conjugation matters more for inferring context (and context is key to making any sense). Because I mis-conjugated a lot, it came across as garbled nonsense. I've travelled a bit, and learning to speak Global…

The fun thing about those experiences in professional settings is that the non-native speakers struggling with $5 words will liberally use $10 words ($50 words? I don't know how this is deals with inflation) that are part of the specific domain.

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

#313

Post by aden1ne »

nicoburns wrote: post #94
Swizec wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had extraordinary luck with broken French in France. If you start in French and do your best, a lot of people suddenly speak fluent English. Especially in metro areas. But the experience does not compare to traveling with my partner who speaks fluent zero-accent French. Paris turns into a different much nicer city when you pair with a native speaker. That said, you’ll never get the level of service you see in US…

> The French (Europe in general) just don’t care that much about customer UX. You either do it their way or you can leave. I think Europe partly just has different preferences around service. We tend to find American servers annoyingly fake, and to be constantly needlessly interrupting us to ask if we need anything. And of course, one should also take into account the experience of being a server.

As an example of this: Americans tend to expect plates being picked up as soon as one is finished eating, even when others on the same table are not finished yet. In my native Netherlands this would be considered (very) rude, with plates only removed after everyone is finished and then some grace period. Picking up plates early here indicates the restaurant wants you out the door quickly.

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

#314

Post by hnarn »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #301
watwut wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-native speakers are much more resilient to strong accents and broken grammar. Probably because they passed themselves by this step You just don't feel foreign language the way you feel own. Swearing in foreign language is just a word woth another meaning. Not being bothered by bad grammar and what not is the same - butchered foreign language is not annoying nor more effort to understand. Butchered own language…

> Swearing in foreign language is just a word woth another meaning. I don't think so. Swear word is a swear word. It feels just as taboo to me.

That’s just partly true. While non-native speakers obviously recognize that something is a swear word, without immersion it’s often hard to gauge how it will be perceived by native speakers, simply because you don’t meet many, or any, to get reactions from.

I’m a non native speaker and it wasn’t until University when I met actual Americans that I realized my swearing could be ear-curling from time to time — I simply hadn’t noticed the reaction I got before in my life.

A simple example is the Swedish word “skit” and the English “shit”. In Swedish it’s actually pretty benign, for different reasons it’s not at all at the top of our swearing hierarchy: if you’d use “shit” in English in the same situations as you’d use “skit” in Swedish, English people will react.

So both in cases where there are cognates and a lack of actual experience with native speakers, there’s definitely a disconnect. I think any native speakers who have met good non native speakers have experienced this, they have 80-90% down but lack the cultural context (because where would it come from, movies isn’t enough)

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

#315

Post by prmoustache »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #302
jeromegv wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really? I know in Quebec it’s the government that decides what is thought in school and the French they use is definitely diverging from outdated académie française. Not sure about France

I Quebec maybe, because it is a different language (Canadian French) and they can decide what they want (though since they are fine with the Queen bing their ruler, I do not see reasons fro the French Academy not to be the source of wisdom when it comes to French /s)

The french that kids learn at school is different than the french they speak with their family[1] of the french they speak with their friends[2]. People adapt based on contexts.

I don't think it makes a huge difference on how the language evolve, as ultimately the French Academy cannot force french people to speak one way or another.

The only big effect it has is it brings additional hurdles for kids coming from another french speaking country when their country of origin has largely adopted simplified grammar and conjugations.

[1] regional expressions with sometimes a simplified/modified grammar on those [2] use of slang + verlan (reversing some words) + adoption of some arabic words

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

#316

Post by aden1ne »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #200
jimmaswell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe as a whole has always come off as unpleasant to visit as an American, from what I've read online such as this thread. In no American city I've been to do you have to be so vigilant for pickpockets as you apparently do in European cities, and virtually no one in America will complain about your accent or grammar. We have free water at restaurants, and the staff won't treat you like a mooch for asking about it;…

You have been piled on a lot already in this thread but let me add my 2 cents: - you don’t have to be particularly careful about pickpockets anywhere in Europe, at least not more than anywhere else in the world. - you always get free tapwater in restaurants if you ask for it anywhere in Europe, also most waiters are also generally pleasant (of course there can be unpleasant people anywhere) - not sure about the tax t…

> you always get free tapwater in restaurants if you ask for it anywhere in Europe

In the Netherlands you'd have a hard time. Most places will refuse, especially if that's the only thing you're ordering.

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

#317

Post by przmk »

hnbad wrote: post #309

I guess it's time the French gave up on the colonialist idea of the "Francophonie" and accepted that French is evolving independently in other countries just like English, Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch. I wonder how much of this being perceived as "changing French" rather than just other countries having their own variants of similar languages goes back to France holding onto its colonies and trying to keep them close…

Flemish is definitely not a separate language and nobody considers it so, even in Belgium.

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

#318

Post by n0n0n4t0r »

Hello,

I'm a french (non Parisian) reader, and was very surprised by the comments I read.

More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians".

I really don't feel it this way and am so surprised. I don't have more to add since I really never thought about this.

Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the process of becoming fluent: native speakers are the hardest to understand for me. The easiest being the french, but surprisingly, a strong Italian or Moroccan accent isn't stopping me at all. I think because they pronounce more of the words while native speakers use more contracted form where they don't even pronounce part of some words. The pace isn't a problem, it's really the absence of part of the phrase that is hard for me.

I have more trouble understanding Indian, Australian than Americans, but it may be due that I watch a lot of American made content and am more used to their accent.

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

#319

Post by jackjeff »

jjav wrote: post #299
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…

> 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. Here's an anecdote that suggests it is nothing but malice in Paris. My partner's mother is from France (not Paris) and extremely French. Has worked decades as a professor of French language. You'll have a hard time finding someone more prop…

I’d be curious to know where she is from.

I’m from Southern France but I have lived in Paris for a few years. I didn’t have a strong accent that would require subtitles on French TV like some people do, but I did have an accent. Nobody would mistake me for a local.

I think people over there are generally condescending and don’t care about you. I don’t think the accent is the issue. If not that they would find something else to complain about.

I was occasionally mocked for my accent but nothing that a stare and raising of my voice would not fix. Maybe staff is more likely to mess with a woman?

Anyway. Almost nobody is a local in Paris. People from all over France come there. They erase their accent and all pretend to be Parisians after a few years. Then they age and go back home to retire or raise a family in an affordable place.

These days I travel with my wife and switch from perfect English to perfect French and I get a bit of shock from the staff when this occurs. Nobody complains about my accent anymore, relieved they won’t have to deal with English for once. I must have a fairly weird and impossible to geographically locate accent nowadays after years of living abroad and speaking to expats. I’m no longer sounding like the caricature of the peasant from Southern France. Also my wife is a lot more friendly than me and generally would befriend staff members that can speak good English (foreigners or students) so I guess that helps.

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

#320

Post by throw_m239339 »

gobip wrote: post #310
throw_m239339 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Académie nowadays is (mostly) a bunch of old politically influent people with zero or little linguistic knowledge. Yet thanks to them we escaped that hellhole nonsense that is the so called "écriture inclusive". All evolutions aren't good. French grammar needs to be simplified though, but not made a trophe on the altar of intersectionality.

"Mesdames et Messieurs" is inclusive. You've heard that for as long as you can remember. "Statut : marié(e)" is also inclusive. Check your tax return. The median "." for example "marié.e" is also inclusive and is probably what you're against. Please hate it right, we all use inclusive, even in English (ladies and gentlemen for example). Being inclusive is good, you're doing it too.

> "Mesdames et Messieurs" is inclusive. You've heard that for as long as you can remember.

Oh so french was already "inclusive" then? LOL.

> The median "." for example "marié.e" is also inclusive

I don't care about "inclusivity", it's weasel word for intersectionalists. The "median ." isn't french language, it's unreadable when literred everywhere.

"l'écriture inclusive" is a canonical exemple of cultural vandalisme (and newspeak, absolutely nothing inclusive about that language, but intersectionality is first and foremost a war on language).

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