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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

#451

Post by trgn »

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…

It's a european thing, not just french. Same in other languages. People are highly attuned to accents and geographical differences they imply. It's frustrating as a non-native speaker. English is "neutral" ground. Americans too are in general really patient with other people's accents, so just less used to that sort of provincialism.

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

#452

Post by Oreb »

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…

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

That’s what I read and hear everywhere, too. I find it very puzzling. I have visited Paris regularly since more than 20 years, sometimes for several months. I can’t remember even a single incident in all those years when I’ve felt despised or disrespected for my extremely rudimentary French language skills. Communication can be hard sometimes, but people are just as cooperative and helpful as anywhere else in the world.

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

#453

Post by ttoinou »

uxp8u61q wrote: post #288
ttoinou wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Beur was from Beurre and its yellow color

The (racist) stereotype is that Asians have yellow skin, not Arabs...?!

What color would be associated with the Arabic ethnotype ?

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

#454

Post by retinaros »

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…

HNEWS went woke a few years ago. and for the woke hivemind it is ok to be xenophobic toward french or other western nations. but you should treat over countries like you treat children you pretend to care about but in reality you still retain most of the colonial spirit of the left that wanted to go to africa to bring enlightenment to those people.

French people are proud that diverse countries and french dialects exist.

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

#455

Post by lelanthran »

pyeri wrote: post #405
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…

Indian English has to be one of the easiest accent/dialect to understand. The way we speak isn't much different than how a Spanish, French or Italian would speak English, a bit slowly and trying to emphasize each consonant as we want to get it right.

> Indian English has to be one of the easiest accent/dialect to understand.

I don't find this to be true at all. Maybe it's not the hardest, but it's certainly not easy for me to understand Indian accents.

As an Indian myself, this has, variously, confused, amused and annoyed Indians speaking English to me. Unfortunately I don't speak a word of any Indian language myself.

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

#456

Post by chimeracoder »

xnorswap wrote: post #333
chimeracoder wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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

What you are describing is the standard process by which languages change. It's not accurate to equate this with the systematic elimination of a linguistic group through ethnic cleansing, something which English has never experienced.

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

#457

Post by rollcat »

edwcross wrote: post #4
throwup238 wrote: post #3

https://archive.ph/nItnV I wonder what the Académie Française has to say about that...

The Académie nowadays is (mostly) a bunch of old politically influent people with zero or little linguistic knowledge. They stopped reforming the language almost two hundred years ago and now they can only hope that people will keep paying them attention. But the language will keep evolving and drifting, and they will keep resisting, until the divergence will be so large that they will just disappear into nothingness…

> But the language will keep evolving and drifting, and they will keep resisting, until the divergence will be so large that they will just disappear into nothingness, and people will ask: "why did people bother with them for so long?..."

I think it's a good occasion to bring up Katharevousa[0], an effort (more imho than an actual spoken language) to "clean up" contemporary Greek; the tldr net result was you couldn't file your taxes, because the language on the forms was not the language you spoke with your family and neighbors.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharevousa

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

#458

Post by femiagbabiaka »

Exoristos wrote: post #277
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you feel that way, then you literally know nothing about the characteristics of many colonial states as they actually existed. One has to wonder why you’re speaking so authoritatively on the subject of that is the case.

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

#459

Post by red-iron-pine »

ecef9-8c0f-4374 wrote: post #438
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 work at an international English speaking company. We all speak English. I even talk to my colleges in the office English and we are not from/in an English speaking country. Then there is our French site in Paris. You write them a mail in English, they will answer in French. You chat them up in English they will answer in French. They will hijack a group chat with +4000 people and just start writing in French. no f…

Similar experiences dealing with Quebec, though there are a lot of legal wranglings there, and it's a lot easier to find bilingual folks.

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

#460

Post by yawboakye »

samus wrote: post #304
yawboakye wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what makes a language isn’t the core vocabulary but, crucially, the syntax structure. when you say ‘je suis malade’ instead of ‘suis malade’ that’s the germanic roots of french mandating the structure. latin loan words don’t make a language romantic.

French is indeed a notable exception in that regard. However, the rest of the grammar structure is still overwhelmingly of Romance origin. This and some other odd things can indeed be explained because of the ancient Franks picking up the language of the people they ruled over, but incompletely so.

so i’m fairly familiar with latin’s grammar because i speak it, proficiently. first, there’s material difference between latin and modern french grammars. for example, the genetive, dative, ablative, accusative noun cases have been largely replaced with the nominative case + prepositions, which makes them no different from the (ultra-)modern german or english language. both german and english have conjugations too.

* i say ultra because proper german has more cases than french in fact.

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