Talk:French language/Archive 2

Accents section
There are two separate sections on the accent system: one following the pronunciation section, the other in the orthography. One of them is redundant but I'm not sure where to put it because both categories work. Just a heads-up.

Official in Louisiana
French is coofficial in the US state of Louisiana. The article has it listed as national but unofficial. kwami 12:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Canada
Can we see figures for Canada split into Quebec / other provinces / total"? FT2 01:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


 * 90% of Francophones live in Quebec. There is a table by province in Language in Canada.


 * The best source I know to see the geographical dispersion of Francophones in the Canadian federation is this one:


 * http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/peopleandsociety/lang/languages2001/mt


 * You'll have to click the radio button on the right side which is labeled "Mother Tongue by Census Division (French)" -- Mathieugp 05:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

problems with map
Hi,

Some problems with the map.

The Virgin Islands aren't officially French speaking, though Martinique & Guadeloupe are. And don't forget St Pierre, which has been left off the map.

New Caledonia is only 1/4 native French speaking, so coloring it dark blue is misleading. Similarly for northern Quebec, French Guiana, and Corsica. (Quebec should be dark blue in the south & medium blue in the north. The others should be medium blue with green squares.)

Europa and Clipperton are uninhabited, so saying that French is the language of administration there is misleading.

There are also areas of open ocean that are circled. The one at the far left is probably supposed to be Wallis & Futuna, but that's directly west of French Polynesia. The large one in the Indian Ocean might be supposed to be Kerguelen, but that's further south and in any case is uninhabited -- unless the sea turtles there speak French?

The Solomon Islands are not French speaking.

French is co-official (though dominant) in Cameroon. Perhaps that country should be hatch-marked, at least in the west? (Cameroonian language identity is a somewhat touchy subject, and Anglophones constantly complain about Francophone language imperialism, so it isn't a good idea to shade in the entire country with solid blue.)

kwami 02:51, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Why is Ontario colored in dark blue when the province is 95 % Anglophone ? Given that, in absolute numbers, there is a sizeable Francophone minority in Ontario (between 300,000 and 500,000), I would be willing to accept a light blue color, but dark blue is totally unwarranted. 161.24.19.82 11:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Table excesses
Ok, the tables have sooo gotten out of hand. It's taking up over 20 kb of the article and the detail of it all is absurd. I've moved them here and I would like to see it either severely summarized or moved to a separate article.

Peter Isotalo 16:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

French is an official language in the following countries or parts thereof:

Since all the information is, to my knowledge, acurate and thereby useful, I vote to move it to another page. I feel it is better to do this than to take out valuable information out of our beloved encyclopedia. -- Mathieugp 16:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, but please cut down on the geographic trivia. Only the total number of native speakers is really relevant to the subject. People can click some links if they're eager to find out the other figures.
 * Peter Isotalo 11:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. Only rhe names of the relevant countries are required.  In fact, this does not require a table at all, just a list of names separated by commas.  JackofOz 01:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that some columns are pretty useless, however some others are missing. It would be nice to have a table with at least native speakers and home language in both absolute numbers and as a percentage. I don't think we have this data for all countries though. -- Mathieugp 02:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * French is the most common home language only in France and in Saint Pierre and Miquelon. But there are several million elsewhere who make up substantial minorities, often with language-related needs/preferences generously catered for. The tiny French-speaking minorities with no language rights or recognition probably don't really need such elaborate ranking and listing. //Big Adamsky 02:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Logically, French is more often spoken as a home language than as a native language because of the assimilation power of this language. In Quebec where I live, we are talking about some 5.7 million native French-speakers but 6.6 million Quebecers speaking primarily French at home. These numbers are important if we want to know who actually speaks French right now as opposed to who was born speaking it. These are the figures I was referring to. -- Mathieugp 20:24, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Though a lot of Mauritians speak French it is NOT an official language in Mauritius. RajivShah 11:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

How can you say that there are so few French speakers in Renuion, Guadeloupe, Matinique, etc... ? RajivShah 11:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

French French
I couldn't find the name of the dialect of French spoken in France in the article (it's not in the list of dialects). Is it called "standard French"? ntennis 01:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Several dialects are spoken, most of which diverge quite a bit from standard "media French". I guess you could call all the forms of French associated with Franch "French French" or "French of France", but only if it is very necesseray to distinguish these forms from other forms of French not usually associated with France. :] //Big Adamsky 01:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. On the list of dialects of English page, British English, American English, Australian English, etc, are given equal weight. The lack of "French French" on list of dialects of French on this page kind of implies that the French spoken in France is a "language" while the French spoken in Canada is a "dialect". I've gone with "standard French" on the page where I needed to refer to it (Manually Coded Language); I haven't added it to the list on this page. ntennis 04:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Now added to the list on this page and the list of dialects of the French language. ntennis 05:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


 * What about Metropolitan French? Aaker 10:17, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Number of Speakers
Is it possible that the French wikipedias here always vastly exaggerate the number of speakers, both first and - to even greater extent - number of second speakers? While in the English Wikipedia the numbers are 87 million native and 190 million total, respectively. While the first one is only slightly exaggerated, I find the second number of 110 million exaggerated by a factor of about 1.5. Even more funny is the figure in the french wikipedia of 285 million total, a somewhat grossly exaggerated figure in my opinion ;-). Well if someone who can say bonjour constitutes a french speaker that might be correct, but isn't really a scientific approach. There must be some verifiable sources around. Granted, the number of second language speakers can never be precise. But a reasonable figure thats is somewhat backed up by reliable sources should be possible. --Lucius1976 19:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The figure of 285 million is a 2000 estimate based on the stats by the Francophonie which counted native French speakers, people who are not native French speakers but use it as their primary language today and even people who have learned French in school around the world. I don't think that number should be used in the template. To my knowledge, the other language templates in the French Wikipedia count first language speakers. For example, it gives 450 million for English (2000). I presume this figure is the 380 million native English speakers + speakers who have pretty much abandonned their native language through assimilation. The corresponding figure for French would be some 112 million (1998) (See Distribution_des_francophones_dans_le_monde). -- Mathieugp 20:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, then it seems it is a somewhat different way of counting. As far as I know, those who learn a language in school are only partially counted in other languages, because not all of them are really able to speak it fluently. For instance, English is learned by almost every school student in the EU for quite some time now (believe about 2 decades), but still not all of them really count as speakers of it. If that would be the case the figures of speakers of English in the EU alone must be at least 250 million, but thats not really the case, is it? For the sake of consistency the number of second-speaker should be counted in the same way. It depends more on how long someone learned a language in school until on is counted as second language speaker of this language.


 * Counting people who have learned English and can speak it is stated under "Second language: 150–1,000 million" in the language template for English in en.wikipedia.org. It is indeed difficult to put a number on this since there is no obvious way to get stats on "who, among second language speakers, can be considered to have an acceptable command of the language". Second language stats are however very useful in order to evaluate the power of languages themselves. I'd really like to get the global picture on this one day. -- Mathieugp 22:24, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * To determine the number of french speakers in the world you have several options: single mother language (about 100 million); single and second mother language (150-200 million) and last everyone using french daily (250 million). But the best way to number french speaking people is surely the second way. Now if you want to know how many people can speak french fluently, it brings the number to 400 million.(Sources: Database of La Francophonie, ONU(UN), INSEE, others)


 * Care to provide the sources for your assertions? -- Mathieugp 16:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

International use
Several international organizations, like the United Nations, use French as an official language. Do those organizations specifically use the language as defined by the Académie française, or do they use some other "international" version? I'm contrasting here the UN's use of International English, based on the Oxford English Dictionary's usage and with slight variations from both American English and Commonwealth English.

Any idea? --ESP 18:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Cela
 cela in modern French (usually translated as "there you are" in English)

Is this really the best translation for "cela"? Ckamaeleon 01:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * You probably meant to say that voilà means "there you are". Literally, voilà is a contraction of voi and là ("see" and "there"). Voi is a conjugated form of the verb voir which means "to see".
 * Cela is pretty much the same as ça. Think of the English "this" and "that" and you'll be pretty close. Here are a few examples:


 * Cela est à moi. This is mine.
 * Ça c'est à moi! That's mine!


 * Que penses-tu de cela? What do you think of this?
 * Que penses-tu de ça? What d'you think of that?


 * -- Mathieugp 03:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposed move
It has been proposed that Languages of Oïl be renamed and moved to Langues d'Oïl. Comments and votes on Talk:Languages of Oïl, please, if you're interested. Man vyi 09:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

RE: French-French, French from France...
Geographically speaking, the logical term in French for the "standard" French originating from the Paris metropolitain area is "francilien", which in English is "from Île-de-France" or "from the region around and including Paris". The only thing that doesn't seem stilted or utterly foreign (for those unfamiliar with France's geography) would be "(from) Greater Paris". This construction makes me think of "Greater London", "Greater New York", "Greater Moscow", "Greater L.A." and so on. I think the "Greater" part makes sense, so I suggest "French from Greater Paris".

Clearly, there are the Greater Paris realities of verlan, other constructed languages, plus interlanguages, not to mention slang. They could and should be mentioned so as to show sociolect and interlanguage phenomena. À vous de jouer! CJ Withers 19:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that would be Much, Much Greater Paris.

Bathroom = Salle de bains?
I was always told that the phrase 'salle de bain' referred to a bathroom that contained either a shower, or a bathtub. If one were to ask 'Where is the bathroom?' in a public setting it is far more likely that they are actually looking for a toilet, or possibly a sink. In this case I always thought the word 'toilettes' should be used. That is at least how it is done in Quebec, or more specifically Montreal. I'm going to edit the article accordingly but if someone does not agree, please post a message and we can discuss this further. Great Green Arkelseizure 22:56, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * See Talk:List_of_common_phrases_in_various_languages for analogous discussion. Man vyi 08:19, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that the common understatement for "toilets", in French, would be "I am going to wash my hands". Rama 15:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not that familiar with Quebec French, but it was my understanding that "salle de bains" (or "salle de bain") can be used as a euphemism for toilet, just as "bathroom" in American English. For example, in the song "les maudits français" by Lynda Lemay, she says that the French:
 * ...nous prennent pour un martien
 * Quand on commande un verre de lait
 * Ou quand on demande : La salle de bain
 * Est à quelle place, S.V.P ?
 * Maybe this isn't that common, though. In France, of course, the toilet is almost always separate from the room with a bath or shower, which is why it is both unidiomatic and illogical to use "salle de bains" to mean "toilettes" in France. Lesgles 05:28, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As a native Quebec French speaker, I can confirm that salle the bains is often used, however I would not be able to tell you if it is used more often or less often than the other very common les toilettes and les bécosses. -- Mathieugp 14:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I haven't heard les bécosses to refer to normal public toilets in a long, long, long time, though. (explaining for non-quebecers here. Not meant for you, matthieu.) That usually imply something very low-grade, like chem toilets. Circeus 14:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * "Hé hé hé", I'm here to say you that we have got three main expressions in France :
 * - salle de bain is the place where there is at least a bath,
 * - salle d'eau is the place where there is at least a shower,
 * - and toilettes means there are WC but not necessarly washbasin.
 * In salle d'eau and salle de bain we can find (most frequently) a washbasin, and (not or) a WC about for 50% of our places. If it's a modern house, built knowing what we need to put, WCs aren't in the salle d'eau nor in the salle de bain. So, just a detail : salle d'eau is to the bath what salle de bain is to the shower. Let's knowledge ! --myahoo 22:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Some POV
Hello. About this contrib. I notice probably a user is passionated about French language. Nice. But it shouldn't forgotten that neutral point of view is seeked after. In my opinion it is required to phrase things in a non over-enthouisastic manner, also very importantly, big statements (like french language is seeked after by many intellectuals on the planet) needs big verifiability. Otherewise, anyone can make any random statements. Gtabary 18:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Did someextra removal of POV. Circeus 18:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Sound system
Under gemination, should "spelling" be replaced with "pronounced"? Or I am confused? --Deville (Talk) 12:52, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. I trust you, because I am not native english speaker. Bratta75 09:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction on Franco-Provençal?
Contrary to what this article says, Franco-Provençal is NOT a "transitional" dialectal group 'between' Langue d'oc and Langue d'oil. The article on FRANCO-PROVENÇAL correctly makes this point quite clear, indicating the errors of that old-fashioned view; FP, therefore, is a dialectal group in its own right, just as much as, say, Reto-Romanic is. So, one article is contradicting the other, while only one (and not THIS one) is scientifically correct. We have to find some other way to phrase the description of Franco-Provençal in the French Language article or else replace it. Stephanos1ko 18:45, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Depends what one understands by transitional... for example, Slovene displays transitional features between South and West Slavonic, and nothing wrong with that. Still, no harm is done by clarifying the wording to explain the situation (and so I've had a stab at it). Man vyi 20:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well. The answer will be somewhat long. Please be patient.The problem I had with it is that 'transitional' in the sense of dual sharing of late-developed features (as, for instance, Catalan is said to be transitional between Langue d'oc and Castillian) would imply that Franco-Provencal evolved largely under influence of waves of linguistic change which would be shared with both Occitan and Langue d'oil, while that is only partly true (have a look at the FP page). FP is in fact a conservative group of neo-latin languages retaining features that were lost in part either in Langue d'oc or langue d'oil, as Slovene is a conservative language sharing some features with South Slavonic while retaining other features of Proto-Slavic shared with other slavic languages. The tricky part of considering Franco-Provençal 'transitional' or even having 'features in common with both' is that the very independent history of FP, as well as the fact that such common features are in fact archaic retentions of Proto-Galo-Romançe, is overlooked. So, unlike Slovene (and here, therefore, the comparison doesn't work) FP IS admittedly an independent branching of Romançe. That must be emphasized, lest readers unfamiliar with Romançe linguistics might take it for a mixture of Langue d'Oc and Langue d'oïl, an 'intermediary' language with dubious phylogenetic association or some other absurdities. Even if Franco-Provençal is not the main subject of the article, this article itself is certainly more often read than the specialized FP article, and therefore we must be as scientifically clear as possible in order not to convey ambiguous or distorted information into inadvertent minds.It isn't perfect yet, but we'll get there soon. ;) Stephanos1ko 21:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

History of the French language
I copied & pasted the History section of this article in a new History of the French language article. Now that we have a full article, I think we can shorten the History section a bit and concentrate on improving the accuracy, quality and depth of this new article.

At the moment, judging by its contents, the article would be better named "History of the languages that are or were once spoken on the present territory of France". There remains a lot of work to do to improve it and make it worthy of its own name. :-) -- Mathieugp 17:19, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Small error?
In the section discussing grammatical/pronunciation rules it states that "This gives for example the same pronunciation for "l'homme qu'il a vu" ("the man whom he saw") and "l'homme qui l'a vu" ("the man who saw him")." Not to be nitpicky, but I believe the pronunciation of these two phrases, if done correctly, would be slightly different. The difference probably wouldn't be easily noticed by a person who wasn't used to hearing the language, but there still would be a difference.

Why do you think it should ? And by the way who are you ? I am French, and I affirm that even in careful and slow speech, you cannot hear any slight difference. If you want to remove the ambiguity, you must use periphrases like "l'homme que lui il a vu", "l'homme qui a vu X". Bratta75 16:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

As a native french speaker I confirm that you cannot make any difference by ear.

I disagree with the two previous comments. In the first sentence ("l'homme qu'il a vu"), a careful speaker would put the stress on the word "il" whereas in the second ("l'homme qui l'a vu"), the stress would be put on the "l'a". But I acknowledge that it would be a very slight difference that only some people would be able to notice.

Qui es-tu, IP 70.83.44.76, qui a écrit ça ? Veux-tu nous apprendre à prononcer notre langue maternelle comme la tienne ? L'accent sur ces deux phrases est forcément sur "vu". Bratta75 08:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, since the French accent is on the last syllable in a group of words, which is both on "vu". 24.203.155.119 05:01, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

"help me"
On the translation table - it states that help me is aidez-moi - however a better example is surely au secours! which is a cry for help. I dont know how to alter this so others will have to help me! ha ha ha Benjaminstewart05 16:45, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * If you know how to edit the talk page, surely you also know how to edit the main article? Maybe the table was confusing you. Anyway, it's changed. Lesgles ( talk ) 18:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

No. "Help me" is rather "aidez moi" than "au secours" which would be the translation of "help !".
 * Indeed, and I took out the "me" too. But I think "help!"/"au secours" is more pertinent in a list of the most useful expressions. Lesgles ( talk ) 16:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Aosta Valley
"It is also an official language, along with Italian, in Val d'Aoste, Italy." It isn't correct: the Aosta Valley's charter says that the official languages are Italian and Franco-provençal. As you can see in this last article, this dialect and/or language is recognized as official in Valley Aosta. There are other regions in Italy with similar status like South Tyrol. Here the people speaks a german dialect knows as Bavarian, but the official language is German language. If Aosta Valley has taken another decision we should respect this decision. --Ilario 15:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It could be that I'm having a mistake. I've written to URP of Aosta Valley. I know that the french is spoken only by the 2% of population fr:Vallée_d'Aoste_:_La_francophonie vs the franco-provençal spoken by the 20% --Ilario 16:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Numerals
Web searches show up neuvante as a dialectal alternative for 90, and I'm almost certain I've heard it used (albeit as an oddity pointed out by a tutor in a classroom conversation a decade and a half ago). Any chance someone could verify whether neuvante is actually used and add it to the article? (Possibly of linguistic interest is the f / v mutation which is also found in English: half / halves etc.) Cyrek 07:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Map needs correction
Belgium is mostly a Dutch speaking country, so the designation colour should change from dark (French speaking) to blue (official language). (In Belgium French is an official minority language - about 40% of population speaks French, while about 60% speaks Dutch) Sijo Ripa 15:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

No, in Belgium is an official language, not an official minority language. (There is a big difference between those two terms.) French is the first official language in Wallonia, an co-official with Dutch in Bruxelles, where its spoken by 80% as a mother tongue. Aaker 10:14, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

New sound files
I've recorded and uploaded a sound file for each of the Examples of French. I couldn't find an appropriate icon for them so right now it looks kind of ugly. I'll see if I can remember to clean that up tomorrow. Azio 07:43, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It's been taken care of. :) "Pardon" needs an IPA transcription, though. --Kjoonlee 14:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * IPA has been added, thanks to someone at the reference desk, and thanks to my dictionary. --Kjoonlee 07:50, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

french international language
here's material to build a paragraph about french being the international language from XVII century up to 1914-1918. unfortunately i don't have time to work on this by now, but i think it could be useful to mention french was the international language after latin and before english. tomorrow trade language will surely be chinese, today there are more than 1,300,000,000 spokers and foreign businessmen have to speak in chinese with local executives (not english).

"Une langue internationale Pendant ce temps-là, en 1714, lors du traité de Rastadt, le français «officiel» fut employé pour la première fois dans la rédaction d'un document juridique international, et il demeurera la langue diplomatique jusqu'à la guerre de 1914-1918. C'est cette langue aristocratique qui était parlée dans presque toutes les chancelleries de l'Europe et employée comme langue des tractations diplomatiques; elle avait détrôné le latin, même si celui-ci demeurait encore d'usage courant. L'extension de la langue «françoise» (prononcer [franswèse]) était alors considérable, en raison des conquêtes royales et de l'exode des protestants (huguenots) hors de France.

Cette langue est particulièrement diffusée en Angleterre et aux Pays-Bas, mais aussi en Allemagne, en Suisse, en Italie, dans les pays scandinaves (Danemark et Norvège), en Hongrie, en Pologne, en Russie tsariste et jusque dans les Amériques. En fait, il n'était pas une cour allemande ou italienne, où l'on ne trouvait pas des Français ministres, ingénieurs, fonctionnaires, chambellans, maîtres de ballet, académiciens, peintres ou architectes. Frédéric II (Prusse), le prince de Ligne (Autriche), Giovanni Giacomo Casanova (Italie), Jacob Grimm (Allemagne), l'abbé Ferdinando Galiani (Italie), Robert Walpole (Grande-Bretagne), Catherine II de Russie, Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche), Joseph II (Autriche) écrivaient un français excellent. Paris était alors la «capitale universelle». Des historiens racontent même que des écrivains allemands s'indignaient que certains de leurs compatriotes réservaient le français pour la «conversation» et ne parlaient l'allemand «qu'à leurs chevaux».

Souvenons-nous de ces propos de l’empereur Charles Quint (1500-1556) qui disait: «Je parle anglais aux commerçants, italien aux femmes, français aux hommes, espagnol à Dieu et allemand à mon cheval.» C’est peut-être une blague, mais elle en dit long... sur l'idéologie de l'époque.

Et puis encore cette phrase de l’écrivain espagnol José Cadalso (1741-1782) dans Lettres marocaines : «Les Espagnols écrivent la moitié de ce qu'ils imaginent; les Français plus qu'ils ne pensent à cause de la qualité de leur style; les Allemands disent tout, mais de telle façon que la moitié des gens ne les comprennent pas; les Anglais écrivent pour eux seuls.» L’auteur ne parle malheureusement pas des Italiens, des Portugais, des Danois, etc.

Enfin, citons cette déclaration contemporaine d'un recteur de l'Université européenne de Minsk (en Biélorussie) qui, lors d'un entretien en 1995, présentait ainsi la situation des langues et notamment du biélorusse: «L'anglais est la langue du commerce, l'allemand la langue de la philosophie, le français la langue du droit, le russe la langue de la littérature ou des sciences. Le biélorusse? Il est peut-être irremplaçable pour décrire l'âme des paysans biélorusses» (cité par Jeantheau, 2001). Vraiment, dans le domaine des idées, l'humanité progresse parfois à petits pas! Que dira-t-on dans un siècle de l'anglais, de l'espagnol, de l'arabe, du chinois ou de l'hindi? On aura sans doute droit à d'autres préjugés typiques de cette époque-là!"'''

SOURCE: source

Glottalization (or not) of voiceless stops?
The article says that voiceless stops are never glottalized. I wonder if this is really accurate. I'm sure I've heard many French speakers routinely glottalize their voiceless stops. Any comments? Richwales 05:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Number of second language speakers?
What is the number of second language speakers of French in the world? I want to exclude people for whom french is their first language.--Sonjaaa 05:09, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * About 51 million according to Ethnologue. --  the     GREAT     Gavini   16:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)