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condor View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Reform French
    Posted: December 02 2017 at 13:34
If French is the best bet for a world lingua franca, how would you go about reforming it?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 04 2017 at 04:32
Maybe first by accepting it on Prog ArchivesWink  Seriously, i don't know if yourself are french speaking, but here in Paris we're right in the middle of a debate about the feminisation of terms. Solutions offered by la Mairie de Paris (city hall...) are quite counter intuitive to say the least, that said by a "Homme rose québécois" (what one would descript as hetero male quite sympathethic to feminism cause and acting in such a way in his everyday life...) for whom complexifying an already very difficult and subtle language is  not a good idea. True that french may be the language of diplomacy, as english with his directness and "to the point" efficiency is the language of business. Aside of that, there  is for years now  some debate on matters of simplifying it, ortograph reform , etc. This may be caused by the afflux of migrants in France for which, apart of the real traumatism of the conditions in which they arrive here, the apprenticeship of a difficult language is further cause of difficulties.

As english took over the world, french is still the learning language in many african countries where natality rates may enables anyone making any projections about the dominant "lingua franca" in the future, a debate not closed yet...

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 04 2017 at 05:06
Why does it need "reforming" (whatever that means)?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 04 2017 at 06:34
I studied French and although i don't speak it well, i can read it pretty good. Personally i don't think any language with too many funny markings over the vowels should be lingua franca. English is a bitch in many ways but at least we don't have to memorize random genders for nouns and have crazy things like á ç ê í œ ü

It seems that Mandarin Chinese will be the next lingua franca anyways. Europe's domination of the world is almost coming to an end. I do love French though. J'aime le lingue francais!

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 05:47
Originally posted by siLLy puPPy siLLy puPPy wrote:

English is a bitch in many ways but at least we don't have to memorize random genders for nouns and have crazy things like á ç ê í œ ü
No but we do have rough, cough and bough.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 08:37
Originally posted by chopper chopper wrote:

Why does it need "reforming" (whatever that means)?
reform = reshaping .... just like the protestants wanted the then-catholic faith reformed.
 
Well it's a lot to do with LBGT activists (especially the trans-genre) and the male/female genre nature of French (I suppose Spanish & Italian also have a problem that way). Unlike Germanic languages, you don't have a neutral genre (it) in Latin languages, and every word is preceded either by either le/un or la/une in French.
 
Another point is the masculine domination grammatical rule is that if you talk of 500 women and one man, the academy has enforced for centuries that you talk of them "ils", while if you have 20 men and one woman, it doesn't become "elles"
 
It's also a lot to do with finding the feminine to professions :
-some go naturally postier > postière),
-others are neutral (le or la ministre)
-others you have to create: auteur was often transformed to auteure (the québécois initiated that 50 years ago), but to most feminist decide today that it is not clear or audible enough and want to have "autrice" enforced, because its plainly audible ... Some peeved and fed-up males then say "autiste"LOL
 
it can really become a headache when you write to many as "chèr(e)s XYZ: this was accepted for centuries, but now many women feel that the parentheses for the "e" (addressed to women) are diminishing women, and so we may have to write in the coming future "chèr.e.s" as you would have done with auteur(e)s becoming auteur.e.s if you have it the Québec way.
But since of the audition of auteure is not strong enough, you may have to write "chèrs auteurs et chères autrices"...
 
So you can imagine that every time you speak of doctors or police agents , this will dramatically increase the length of your letter and make it difficult to decipher
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 08:53
Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

Originally posted by chopper chopper wrote:

Why does it need "reforming" (whatever that means)?
reform = reshaping .... just like the protestants wanted the then-catholic faith reformed.
 
Well it's a lot to do with LBGT activists (especially the trans-genre) and the male/female genre nature of French (I suppose Spanish & Italian also have a problem that way). Unlike Germanic languages, you don't have a neutral genre (it) in Latin languages, and every word is preceded either by either le/un or la/une in French.
 
Another point is the masculine domination grammatical rule is that if you talk of 500 women and one man, the academy has enforced for centuries that you talk of them "ils", while if you have 20 men and one woman, it doesn't become "elles"
 
It's also a lot to do with finding the feminine to professions :
-some go naturally postier > postière),
-others are neutral (le or la ministre)
-others you have to create: auteur was often transformed to auteure (the québécois initiated that 50 years ago), but to most feminist decide today that it is not clear or audible enough and want to have "autrice" enforced, because its plainly audible ... Some peeved and fed-up males then say "autiste"LOL
 
it can really become a headache when you write to many as "chèr(e)s XYZ: this was accepted for centuries, but now many women feel that the parentheses for the "e" (addressed to women) are diminishing women, and so we may have to write in the coming future "chèr.e.s" as you would have done with auteur(e)s becoming auteur.e.s if you have it the Québec way.
But since of the audition of auteure is not strong enough, you may have to write "chèrs auteurs et chères autrices"...
 
So you can imagine that every time you speak of doctors or police agents , this will dramatically increase the length of your letter and make it difficult to decipher

This is a fine statement about the contemporary issues , concerning the feminisation of terms in our mother tongue, this being said by a former quebecois to another one. As long as you consider that the initial question on this post had that issue in sight! I can't miss your opening statement  refering to religious wars of days long gone  as this is almost turning to modern schism. 

As ever , right on the spot Mr Chantraine, from a silent follower, for years on Prog Archives, and hopefully as long in the future.
45 years of prog listening and still movin'
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 09:03
^^ I read somewhere that members of the francophone transgender community now demand to be referred as "iel". As far as it's a polite request I have no problem but some consider trying to apply it legislatively (don't ask me how) and regulating the way people think and talk is not right.

Anyways, even if historically it's been the case, I think French is about one of the worst choices for a lingua franca. As a native francophone speaker, I can't stress enough how big of a pain French grammar is. Don't forget the songs you learned in little school listing the dozens of exceptions to every damned grammatical rule or else you're pretty much f**ked. Keep it to English, the easiest language to learn I'd say.
"Larks' tongues. Wrens' livers. Chaffinch brains. Jaguars' earlobes. Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely. Dromedary pretzels, only half a denar."
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 09:14
Originally posted by chopper chopper wrote:

Originally posted by siLLy puPPy siLLy puPPy wrote:

English is a bitch in many ways but at least we don't have to memorize random genders for nouns and have crazy things like á ç ê í œ ü
No but we do have rough, cough and bough.
French is worse when it comes to similar words, especially because of all the silent consonants.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 09:19
Now this is turning to a post where french speaking adress one to the other in a second learned language , saying mostly that english is still easier!

But in the end i will always think that french allows you more "pump and circonstance"...

45 years of prog listening and still movin'
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 09:24
" As a native francophone speaker, I can't stress enough how big of a pain French grammar is." 

I don't think the problem lies in the grammar, despite its peculiarities and exceptions, a feature shared with English. It lies in the challenging pronunciation of French, the language's frequent nasal and rounded vowels.  
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 09:24
^^ Yeah I forgot to mention that although I think English is far more practical, French is more poetic and expressive imo.

^ That's possible but it's hard for me to judge. Still I'd think that Hebrew, Arabic, Slavic and Scandinavian languages are more challenging in pronunciation. Of course it all depends on one's native language.


Edited by Larkstongue41 - December 05 2017 at 09:28
"Larks' tongues. Wrens' livers. Chaffinch brains. Jaguars' earlobes. Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely. Dromedary pretzels, only half a denar."
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 09:40
I think of the languages spoken by millions of native speakers those reputed to have the hardest pronunciation are in alphabetical order Danish, French and Vietnamese. (not that English isn't high up there… how many foreigners can speak in the difficult US accent?) 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 05 2017 at 10:10
Originally posted by bertolino bertolino wrote:


This is a fine statement about the contemporary issues , concerning the feminisation of terms in our mother tongue, this being said by a former quebecois to another one. As long as you consider that the initial question on this post had that issue in sight! I can't miss your opening statement  refering to religious wars of days long gone  as this is almost turning to modern schism. 

As ever , right on the spot Mr Chantraine, from a silent follower, for years on Prog Archives, and hopefully as long in the future.
This is almost embarrassing .... Confused
Some could think it's me creating a double membership, just to laud myself as a the world saviour.Clown
 
Brace yourself young man. LOL
 
BTW, I was more of an "on-était-rien" Ontarian than one from La Belle ProvinceEmbarrassedTongue
 
Originally posted by Blaqua Blaqua wrote:

" As a native francophone speaker, I can't stress enough how big of a pain French grammar is." 
I don't think the problem lies in the grammar, despite its peculiarities and exceptions, a feature shared with English. It lies in the challenging pronunciation of French, the language's frequent nasal and rounded vowels.  
 
I fond both North American English & French much more nasal than their European versions.


Edited by Sean Trane - December 05 2017 at 10:12
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