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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

#331

Post by carlmr »

nicbou wrote: post #326
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…

Quebec French is very different though. It's like Swiss German and German, the Swiss understand the Germans, but not the other way around.

It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.

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

#332

Post by eloisant »

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…

The thing about Europe is that it's large and diverse, you can't generalize by saying "in Europe".

There are a lot of pickpockets in Paris, I've never been victim of it but I've witnessed it several time. Never saw that in the 5 years I lived in Tokyo or the 3 years I lived in SF.

You always get free tapwater in France (that's the law) but not in Poland.

I agree in that I would recommend anyone to visit Europe - even European should visit other European countries! But it's important to remember that Europe is made of several very, very different countries.

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

#333

Post by xnorswap »

chimeracoder wrote: post #259
kergonath wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No despot on Earth has managed to stamp it out, unlike countless other languages. Any evidence of a language being stamped out by a despot? > You can say things like lingua franca and everyone knows what you’re talking about. Considering that the phrase is Latin, I am not sure what your point is. > There aren’t any pronouns that depend on social status. And many other quirks that are as alien to a native Japanese s…

> Any evidence of a language being stamped out by a despot? Many languages have been wiped out by genocides, and wiping out a language is a common explicit tactic in ethnic cleansings. English has never been the source of a serious campaign of this regard, though.

Quite the opposite, English has been the source of many such pressures, e.g. post Norman invasion, but it simply adapted in borg-like fashion to redefine what English was; retaining some of the previous language and moulding itself to fit in some of the new language.

Rather than rigidly fight against new influence, it took new words while retaining some of it's own. It does this constantly.

Even Chaucer's English is difficult to decipher for a modern English speaker, and that isn't even that old.

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

#334

Post by fauxreb »

mhkane wrote: post #155

[Commenting as an HN member born and raised in Côte d'Ivoire] Quite cool to see this topic trending! Some additional context: Two popular music genres that popularized nouchi in Côte d'Ivoire and then France are "Zouglou" (1990s) and "Coupé-Décalé" (2000-2010s). Both are past their primes but it's interesting to watch now the diffusion process into the French culture. In 2019, a few nouchi words were added to the Lar…

Exactly, I learned French working in Cote d'Ivoire/Mali and from listening to west African music like Magic System etc.

The Parisians cannot stand my (now terrible) French and it's great fun to tease them with it.

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

#335

Post by mk89 »

nicbou wrote: post #326
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…

I am not French but I heard good things from some colleagues from Quebec (exactly like you, surprisingly) that speak French to native French colleagues as soon as they get a chance to, because they like to do so and don't feel mocked at all.

Of course they are aware of the accents, but you can still have fun and talk to each other. Then, of course, if the French mock them behind their back when they are alone, I will probably never know.

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

#336

Post by carlmr »

uxp8u61q wrote: post #286
petesergeant wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not a daring conjecture that the slang word for toilet has an etymology related to shit.

In German there's "Scheisshaus" (shit house)

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

#337

Post by alejoar »

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…

> 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.

Interesting. I am not a native speaker either but I usually find french people the hardest to understand when speaking English. East coast Americans being the easiest.

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

#338

Post by blackshaw »

jaza wrote: post #221
blackshaw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are the champions of how to write something easy most difficultly, and crank weirdness of pronunciation to 100 Wurs than Inglish? I hav my dowts.

Where do you think the weirdest bits of the English language came from?

If we're talking about spelling, the biggest source of English's orthographic oddness is the Great Vowel Shift:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

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

#339

Post by Bayart »

carlmr wrote: post #331
nicbou wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quebec French is very different though. It's like Swiss German and German, the Swiss understand the Germans, but not the other way around. It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.

Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.

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

#340

Post by ekabod »

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…

Every time France wants to organize something with african countries, the world colonialism is thrown somewhere in the discussion. French colonialism died 50 years ago. Time to move on.

All countries in the world can participate in "Francophonie" initiatives or meetings. There are 88 countries who participate in it. It is just a club to promote french language.

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