Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 502 posts

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

#321

Post by Leherenn »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #191
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 remember being at a bar in the 18th, and asking for "L'Eau". "Quoi?" "L'eau sil vous plait?" ..... long pause ..... I motion to picking up a glass and drinking it ..... "Ahhhh! DE L'eau!" I was like.... Dude... come the fuck on.

Well, maybe he was an asshole, but in his defence articles are much less optional in French than in English, thus you don't expect it standalone. It basically becomes one word in your consciousness. A bit like if someone asks you for "ater". And when you finally understand, you feel really stupid, because yes ultimately it was just missing a useless article, but it just didn't click.

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

#322

Post by throw_m239339 »

becquerel wrote: post #305
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.

I agree, top-down linguistive prescriptivism is good when it means not catering to marginalised people

> I agree, top-down linguistive prescriptivism is good when it means not catering to marginalised people

"marginalised" according to whom? The only thing that is marginalizing people trying to learn french here is text with .é.ée or so everywhere. That definitely excludes french language learners from reading french.

Anyway, that debate is over, back to intersectionalists attempting at another wave of newpseak nonsense.

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

#323

Post by twixfel »

unethical_ban wrote: post #231
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…

I'll take a guess. It's been a while since I've looked for ally at another language. But English has fewer cases of verbs, and a more rigid sentence structure. We have more special cases of past tense verbs and weird pronunciation, but I think it's easier to duck up and still make sense in English? Maybe.

English famously has relatively complex verb conjugation. What we don't have are cases (only a few words decline). German has cases for example, but much simpler verb conjugation.

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

#324

Post by eloisant »

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…

The first time I went to US, I was pretty confident in my English but natives didn't understand me. I could repeat the same, grammatically correct sentence 3 times and they still wouldn't get it.

Then I realized that in English (especially American English) you have to accentuate the right syllabus or they won't understand you. Say you're going to "mounTAIN view" instead of "MOUNtain view" and they have no idea what place you're talking about.

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

#325

Post by kubanczyk »

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.

> annoyingly fake

a small correction here: ANNOYINGLY FAKE

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

#326

Post by nicbou »

n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #318

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 proces…

I'm not surprised. I'm from Quebec. I am more comfortable speaking English with anyone than I am speaking French around French people. They just can't get over the accent, like I'm some sort of curiosity at the zoo. There are so many YouTube videos of French people mocking us. It's not curiosity but a distinctly French superiority complex.

My friends who learned French had similar struggles in France versus elsewhere.

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

#327

Post by thriftwy »

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…

Didn't it all start with what France accuses Wagner to be doing?

Invasion of Ukraine happened maybe 50 years later than "evil plottrrs in movies" so only the former could cause the latter but not vice versa.

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

#328

Post by eloisant »

dataflow wrote: post #61
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 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?

This is true in every touristic place, not just in France. Many people will get annoyed by tourists who don't even try to say "hello" or "thank you" in the country they're visiting. And they don't even make a majority but you'll more easily remember the one bad experience you had than all the good one.

However I don't think that it's common for French people to critized foreigner's French. On the contrary, they're very supportive of people trying to speak their language.

I'm sure you can find some people who would critize foreigners' bad French but probably not more than any other country.

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

#329

Post by eloisant »

esperent wrote: post #214
frenchie123 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes Parisians are dicks to other French people too - including Parisians.

It's not about Parisians ignoring foreigners because they don't speak the language, it's about Parisians ignoring people.

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

#330

Post by thriftwy »

csdvrx wrote: post #178
thriftwy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the critique that can be, Oxxxymiron is, like, the last big name in Russian music.

Лига Опасного Интернета was nice but Morgenshtern caught my eye again with ЧЕРНЫЙ РУССКИЙ (ПОЙДЕТ was boring) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7CIj-_uBk

Recently stumbled on Uratsakidogi

https://youtu.be/QcyEZOLn1rw?si=ZFYJzR600IuY9qD5

Post reply on HN