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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

#421

Post by frenchie123 »

achenet wrote: post #344
eloisant wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ex-Parisian here (or perhaps Parisian in exile, I'll always be Parisian in my heart, but I refuse to live in the city while it's under the tyrannical mismanagement of Anne Hidalgo) We're nice to each other. The local social codes are perhaps not as obvious to visitors, but if you put some effort into befriending the city, Paris can be very kind. Agree with the whole "Parisians ignoring people" thing though. If you're…

[flagged]

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

#422

Post by foldr »

esperent wrote: post #213
kashunstva wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Like the sibling, I haven't found Spain too bad for this. Waiters and other service staff sometimes switch to English on me despite my Spanish being perfectly serviceable for that sort of interaction, but no-one's ever been rude to me about it. One waitress apologised when I said that I like to practice my Spanish, but explained that she also wanted to practice her English. I suspect that's quite a common dynamic.

One thing I've found is that fleeting interactions in shops and restaurants are a terrible way of practicing a language. I can have a full conversation with a Spanish person without too much difficulty, but I still find shops and restaurants quite challenging situations. So, don't go on holiday to practice language X. Pay $15 for a one hour online conversation class.

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

#423

Post by kraftman »

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 from England and moved to france 3 years ago, I've bought a couple of cars, rented an apartment, gone through the healthcare system, put my kids into school, all while slowly learning french. No one has ever been rude to me about it.

The most common reaction I get is people embarresment about not knowing english better, even if they speak fluently.

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

#424

Post by zorked »

kergonath wrote: post #253
junofan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence are you looking for? No despot on Earth has managed to stamp it out, unlike countless other languages. You can say things like lingua franca and everyone knows what you’re talking about. There aren’t any pronouns that depend on social status. It’s got a phonetic alphabet. It’s just a natural choice for commerce and knowledge-sharing.

> 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?

Brazil had a couple of instances of that. In the 18th century, the Marquis of Pombal implemented a program to extinguish usage of Tupi as the national language and replace it with Portuguese. That was successful. And then a second iteration when the Italian, German and Japanese communities of speakers in South Brazil were prevented from speaking their languages around the time of World War 2. This was successful too.

Police document declaring it illegal to speak German, Italian and Japanese in public:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brazil_-_Proibido_falar_a...

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

#425

Post by ciberado »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #372
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…

As a non native English speaker, the hardest to understand are people from England. The easiest to understand are people from the NL. The most comfortable to work with: germans, italians, spaniards… since they make the same grammar mistakes I make (so we all understand our mistakes)

A coworker told me some years ago that understanding my broken English was easy for him, as he had worked extensively with other Spaniards and my grammar and pronunciation was just like them :)

Honestly, I'm regularly surprised by how nice and patient people from everywhere are, paying attention to my words even if my English is not, even today, as good as I would like it to be. Including French people. Including British people.

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

#426

Post by ciberado »

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #378
Raidion wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was (at one point) fairly conversational in French by US standards (was taking 300 level French conversation classes). Did a fairly long trip in France, using as much French as I could. The speed of native French speakers meant comprehension was hard but manageable, and they seemed (almost intentionally at times), unable to make anything but what I would consider "travel French" work. I was fairly discouraged. I th…

I am French, the oral French is very different from what is taught in books. There are a lot of transformations like 'je' to 'che' or 'il' to 'i' (from a French perspective). Also, many liaisons between words are pronounced but others are not, sometimes astonishingly to me, a guy born a long time ago in Brittany. And young people learn to speak very quickly when they go to primary school (I don't know why). Also ther…

I think that is common in Catalan, too. But, curiously, not so much with Castilian Spanish: almost every word I can think of is pronounced just like it is written, if you do it properly.

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

#427

Post by twixfel »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #393
twixfel wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By complex, I assume you mean highly irregular?

I think I was being vague in my terminology. I wanted to say more broadly that German verbs are generally simpler than English ones because there are fewer tenses and aspects. There are however a greater number of strong verbs in German than in English.

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

#428

Post by mrfumier »

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…

Do you realize that, we are used to hear Quebec french only through singers and comedians you send us to France? Send us serious people instead, and it will stop sounding funny.

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

#429

Post by blovescoffee »

anthk wrote: post #413
PeterStuer wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24h definitely. Ananas is not so commonly used, but in informal speech, yes, as pineapple is also ananas in most of the EU languages (not in Spanish). Fruit regulation would typically use a more formal (sub)species nomenclature like 'Ananas comosus'.

Spanish too, just not in Spain.

Only in a few countries representing a minority of speakers.

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

#430

Post by strken »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #358
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 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. As an Australian who has lived in Europe you are not alone. I had to change the way I talked in order for non native english speakers to understand what I was saying. Australians tend to cut the end of the words off and mix vowel sounds e.g "dinner" get…

I have a friend who grew up in Australia, who's from a state capital while I'm from the country, and he once said that I sounded "more Australian" on the phone to my family than I do while taking to cosmopolitan Australians. I think a lot of us subconsciously suppress our accents and vocabulary when we're not around the exact dialect we grew up with.
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