Talk:French language

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Archive of previous discussions

Contents 1 Canadian French sound examples (OGG) 2 Phonetics Corrections: ɔ or o 3 nasal trema 4 What do WE sound like to the French?. 4.1 Canadian French speakers 5 (no title) 6 Œnologie 7 Africa 8 German French 9 Needs much more overview, fewer obscure detail in this main article 10 Sound samples: IPA 11 difference with French article 12 Wikiversity 13 Decision time 14 History of French in Spanish in WikiArticle 15 Samples IPA 16 Categories 17 Archiving 18 French-speaking countries 19 former colonies 20 Eurocentric 21 Quebec English 22 Chiac 23 Number of speakers conflict of sources 24 Africa 25 Punctuation 26 Protection

[edit] Canadian French sound examples (OGG)

This article is not correct! The guy who did the OGG voices for the french canadian accent was not correct, most of the OGG should be redone. It sounds really bad, sometimes he simply forgot a syllab!! Horrible! Example: He says BON JOURNEE instead of BONNE JOURNEE. Horrible! It has to be rebuild but I don't know how. I'm sure this guy is not a native french canadian, to me his voice sounds like a guy from asia or an arabian country. I'm sorry to say that but how could he make the samples correctly with the right accent if he's not born here.. If he was a good immitator I wouldn't complain, but he's not. I don't have a mic at home right now. I'm a native french canadian from Québec. 207.253.111.161 03:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)Fred

To me the current Canadian French samples sound like a Canadian French second language speaker. Fred: Could you provide samples? --moyogo 09:17, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes I could, now I found my old mic and I think I'll do that.. I only need to understand how to make an ogg.. To me the samples are not just bad, they are worse than if they were replaced by the ones in French from France, because the guy miss some syllabs and cut some words. Also to me he sounds closer to the standard french. I can't believe it, he just not spelled the words completely, just cutting them in half.

We should probably ask the author what his accent is ;-). It doesn't sound like standard french to me, definitely Canadian French but not the standard Quebec variant, at least not to my ears. --moyogo 09:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it says Canadian accent, so it is not wrong. It doesn't say it's Quebec accent. --moyogo 09:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Phonetics Corrections: ɔ or o

In the Samples section, there is a sample for "Au revoir" where "Au" is transcribed "ɔ". I think this should be transcribed "o" as in the "Au secours" sample.

I believe the "ɔ" is correctly used in the "Bonne journee" and "Bonne nuit" samples.

Also I noticed that "comment" is transcribed [kɔmɑ̃] but the way I pronounce it sounds like [kɑ̃mɑ̃]. But even though I'm a native french speaker, I would not bet that it is the proper pronunciation, and actually think some people would pronounce as [komɑ̃].

I also noticed that all the words thats starts as /kɔmɑ̃/ (Commande, commencer, commentaire...), I pronounce then as /kɑ̃mɑ̃- (like if the second ɑ̃ leaks to the first sound) but for words starting as /kɔme/ (comedie, commemorer) or /kɔmɛ/ (commettre, commerce) I would probably not understand the word if /ɑ̃/ was substitued to /ɔ/

Hmm... I suppose it's a bit difficult to give one pronunciation in French, with all the accents we have. I pronunce "Au revoir" with a "o", unless I say it fast, like "Au r'voir", then it's a "ɔ". I say "ɔ" for "bonne" too, but all the "com-" words here I pronunce "kom" (maybe slightly "ɔ" sometimes... but never ever "ɑ̃"). Just out of curiosity, where are you from ? I'm from Vendée/Brittany. → SeeSchloß 10:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The notation given is phonological, /oʁvwaːʁ/, it should be with /o/. Now if you want the phonetic notation, then it depends on the utterance recorded [oʁvwaːʁ], [ɔʁvwaːʁ], or whatever is pronounced. --moyogo 09:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] nasal trema

A question of pronunciation I've never been able to find the answer to: How do you pronounce nasalized vowels with diaresis? E.g., Citroën. Saint-Saëns, of course, does not contain a diphthong Saëns has a simple vowel, but which pronunciation would we expect from the spelling if we didn't know that? kwami 21:44, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I would not be able to tell you using the phonetic alphabet, but to make it simple, Citroën is pronounced the way the fictional word citro-ène would. -- Mathieugp

Like citoyenne? That would be [si.tro.εn], or maybe [si.trɔ.εn].

I see now that it's an alteration of a Dutch family name. Do you know if there are any general pronunciation rules for nasal vowels with diaresis in French? Maybe something we could add to the article?

Thanks! kwami 01:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no rule about the pronunciation of nasal vowels with diaresis, you have to know the pronunciation of each word wich contains it [anon]

Hi Kwami. One example of a word that has a dieresis over a nasalized vowel is coïncidence. The dieresis serves here to distinuish the pronunciation [kɔɛ̃] from the pronunciation [kwɛ̃] that you would use in a word like coincer. Another word is païen (pagan), which is pronounced [pajɛ̃]. I can't think of any special rule for nasal vowels with diereses, other than the fact that you pronounce the vowels separately (except in some proper names like Saint-Saëns and Madame de Staël). Lesgles 20:26, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Lesgles. (I just noticed your comment.) Coïncidence, of course, is not a single root, so we might expect it to be pronounced as co plus incidence. It does not parallel Citroën, which is pronounced citro-enne, not citro-en. That's what confused me. It seems that nasal vowels with trema (within roots) are not part of modern French orthography. The ë in Citroën is not actually nasal; the ë in Saint-Saëns is silent. (In païen of course we could argue that only the en is a nasal vowel; the ï acts like a consonant /j/.) Would you happen to know if Saint-Saëns is an old French name, or originally foreign like Citroën and de Staël? It's so odd that aë would be used for /a/. Thanks again, kwami 19:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi. According to this web site (http://www.maurice-abravanel.com/saint_saens.html), it appears that his name came from the town of St-Saëns in Normandy, which in turn comes from the name of the 7th century Saint Sidonius. I still don't know why this means that the s would be kept. It's possible that long ago, the a and the e were pronounced separately, and that the spelling hasn't caught up. Of course, proper names can be weird. For example, why is there a dieresis in the Paris metro station "Montparnasse-Bienvenüe"? I certainly don't know. Lesgles 00:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

The explanation I found is that in the 17th century, /oe/ could be spelled 'eu' or 'ue', so the tréma is there to let you know to pronounce it bienvenu and not bienveneu. -Adjusting 19:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Just thought of another example: Caïn, as in Cain and Abel. Here it is part of the root, if you're willing to accept proper names. Lesgles (talk) 05:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What do WE sound like to the French?.

I've often wondered what we foreigners sound like to native French-speakers, and how they can tell 'who' is mangling their language :-). I once got a French friend to speak French to me in a 'joke' English accent, and it came out as a dull, lazy flat monotone with no modulation, as though it was being read from a page. He then repeated the exercise in a joke German accent, which was loud, commanding, rude and funny once the sound of caterpillar tracks had subsided and I had wiped all the spit off myself.

Perhaps a native French speaker could entertain us with how a few other nationalities destroy French?.160.84.253.241 09:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

To me (I am French man), French as it's spoken with an English or an American accent sounds melodic and cute. Conversely, when an American girl speaks her tongue, it sounds twangy, too high-pitched, and quickly irritating to me. Bratta75 09:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

To Bratta75. Thanks for that. I am English, and when a Frenchman speaks English it sounds very pleasant, poetic and 'smooth' (especially to women). Conversely, when an American girl speaks her tongue, it sounds twangy, too high-pitched, and quickly irritating to me :-)160.84.253.241

To Bratta75. I'm a french canadian (quebec) and I know French people from france think the same about us.. we also have a bit too much high pitched voice sometimes, like americans. So it could be an European vision of america. Fred.

I'm terribly sorry that you feel that way. Perhaps you have heard what we call the "valley girl" voice. That is when there is an infliction in the voice at the end of every statement or word as if asking a question. Please note that not all Americans speak that way.

We were only joking. If Europeans like you, they tell jokes about you and expect a good withering volley of 'stick' by return. If we don't like you we just ignore you. We know that The Gerry Springer Show is a freak show to you as well as us.160.84.253.241 07:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

To my humble French ears, I think French with an English accent is spoken as if the speaker had a hot potato in the mouth. Maybe that's because they swallowed too many vowels... French with a German accent has the funny mess of voicing of EVERY consonants, like in "Qu'est-ce que fous foulez?" or "Fous troufez ça gorrect, fous?" "Abzolument BAS!" (yes, both are lines from Astérix comics : )) French with a Polish/Russian accent is slow, glidey and vowels are all messed up, and do keep in mind none of these nationalties apply the correct French stress pattern (much like we French never apply the correct stress pattern while speaking another language :D). African French is spoken with r-vocalisation, and with much of the vowels kept open. And, ah well, a last one : French with a Spanish accent speak the "j" as a palatal glide and all the "e"s and "o"s are pronounced closed :D 24.203.155.119 05:09, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

What exactly does this have to do with anything?CharlesMartel 01:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)CharlesMartel

Ummm, it's fun and interesting. Isn't that a good enough reason? KiwiBiggles 23:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Canadian French speakers

How do native speakers of French from Canada sound to native speakers of French from France? I've heard that French-Canadians speaking French in France may be corrected by native French speakers there. (In other words, how do French speakers think Céline Dion sounds?)4.243.206.29 22:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

To answer your question:

1. celine dion does not use his "strong" accent when performing on scene. She just speak a rather standard french (the words are spelled correctly) with a really small french canadian sounding.. And when singing a French song she soften his voice because French from europe cannot support a high pitched voice. French canadians can, but sometimes they can find that irritating too.. but less than europeans. Oh yeah, this is the main reason why she does not make bilangual CDs.

2. the first thing french people need to do when listening to us for the first time is taking a coffee. They need to concentrate because we speak a bit faster than them, or we just miss some few words here and there because the french language use sometimes too much words like "le, la, les" (articles) between verbs or nouns and we simply cut them or shrink them like : sur la becomes "suaa" and sur le becomes "sul". Also we have our own vocabulary, a lot of local words and good old french words that the french themselves do not use today!! 207.253.111.161 03:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC) Fred

[edit] (no title)

The French are always exaggerating the number of speakers of their language. Looked at the government homepages of Laos, Vietnam, and Mauritius, listed as being francophone. Nothing in French. I live in Brussels and work for the EU where French is rapidly losing ground, to English of course. I would treat every claim about the French language with a large pinch of salt. Louisiana French speaking? Yeah right. Why not colour Paris imperial red as the number of anglophones there is statistically quite high. Dream on, froggies!

Laos and Vietnam were french 50-years ago, ever heard about history books? your english speaking friends here in the US have forbidden the use of French native language to the Louisiana population did you knew that? ever heard about the Great Upheaval ethnic cleansing? aren't your friends cool? Belgium will never be divided as want francophobe nationalists like you, so keep dreaming on, french fries! Shame On You 15:25, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I would add to the main page: the number of institutions where French is formally an official language is largely thanks to the obstinate lobbying efforts of the French, and in no way indicates that it is common use by non natives within those bodies. The translation and interpretation costs to these organisations so that the French can indulge in their nationalistic vanity is considerable. In reality, on a daily basis, French is spoken much less in these institutions than it seems on paper. The number of countries where French is officially spoken - according to a highly biased source, La Francophonie - might seem impressive, but bear in mind that these countries either are in Africa or have small populations; either way, with the exception of France, Quebec and Belgium they are all economically and culturally utterly insignificant. One guide to France's importance would be to look at books and scientific papers written in French, and citations to French science papers. The number is low. A ambitious martian wishing to embark on any career who came to planet Earth would be ill-advised to learn French, since he would cut himself off from the dialogue of the elite in business, science and the arts conducted between Asia, Europe and North America, and most of Africa and the Middle East. A better second language - after English of course - would be Spanish or Chinese, all of which have a far greater number of native speakers and are growing in importance. French on the other hand, is unquestionably in decline: in its last international bastion, the EU, it has long been supplanted by English. It is a very nice-sounding language of course, and givces insight to a closed culture that doesn't engage with and is therefore igno=red by the rest of the world - that of France. But its usefulness is strictly tertiary and is therefore best learnt at leisure. cheers PM (unsigned comment by 86.142.177.211 (talk) on August 12, 2006)

One guide to France's importance would be to look at books and scientific papers written in French, and citations to French science papers. The number is low. You are confusing French science and the French language; French scientists nowadays tend to write their scientific papers in English nowadays. Do you mean French science papers, or science papers written in French? In the latter case, indeed, current international science is in English (not in Spanish or Chinese either, I'm afraid). As for French science papers, I'm just hearing Wendelin Werner got the Fields medal...

Apart from that, a lot of ranting. By your own standards, most countries in the world are irrelevant anyway! David.Monniaux 18:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you need to use such abrasive language to prove a point I fail to see? 24.203.155.119 04:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

The French are always exaggerating the number of speakers of their language. They are not alone with that, just look at Chinese, Russian, German, Vietnamese or whatever. Almost everyone wants to make their language look bigger than it really is. French is an important language in Africa though. Aaker 13:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Œnologie

Please, take a look on those texts:

According to this article:

The ligature œ is a mandatory contraction of oe in certain words (sœur "sister" /sœʁ/, œuvre "work [of art]" /œvʁ/, cœur "heart" /kœʁ/, cœlacanthe "coelacanth" /selakɑ̃t/), sometimes in words of Greek origin, spelled with an οι /oj/ diphthong which became oe in Latin, pronounced /ø/ (formerly /e/) in French (and other Romance languages): œsophage /øzɔfaʒ/, œnologie /ønɔlɔʒi/. It may also appear in œu digraph (or œ alone in œil "eye"), in words that were once written with eu digraph (which could be read /y/ or /œ/, depending on the word): bœuf "ox" /bœf/, bœufs "oxen" /bø/ (Old French buef or beuf), mœurs /mœʁ/ "custom", œil "eye" /œj/, etc. In these cases, the Latin etymon must be spelled with an o where the French word has œu: bovem > bœuf, mores > mœurs, oculum > œil.

Acording to fr:Œnologie

L’œnologie (à prononcer [enɔlɔʒi] et non [ənɔlɔʒi]) est l'art du vin, de la culture à la consommation en passant par la récolte, la vinification, l'élevage, la conservation et la dégustation.

• Usien6 01:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks like you could fix that. ---moyogo 15:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm goingto fix it... – Usien6 20:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like we need to fix the French wikipedia too, because although [enɔlɔʒi] is indeed the correct pronunciation, [ønɔlɔʒi] is the common pronunciation ([ənɔlɔʒi] is non-existent).

[edit] Africa

I really think we should add more information about the French language in Africa, since most French- speakers live there. I think we should add information about; African-French dialect with phonology, grammer etc. the legal status of French and it's development, and also something about African-French native speakers. Aaker 21:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German French

I removed "German French" because there was no indication of what that is supposed to be and because that does not exist according to other reference works i have. --Espoo 20:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needs much more overview, fewer obscure detail in this main article

The article presently jumps into obscure facts about the legal status of French, before describing what French is as a language that developed from Latin, started out as the local language of Ile de France, spread to become the standard language of the whole of France, went through several historical periods, has this and that magnificent literary eras, was expanded around the world by colonialism, has these general linguistic characteristics and today has these specific legal statuses in various places.

Each in a readable one- or two-paragraph section, with links to more detailed articles.

Pretend a Martian is reading this. He's looked at a map and seen "France" -- tell him about the language spoken there.

[edit] Sound samples: IPA

The IPA transcriptions for the Canadian French samples are incorrect, in fact, they are currently the same as the France French ones! The Canadian French IPA transcriptions should be removed until they are properly modified to reflect one of the accents in francophone Canada.

[edit] difference with French article

the French article states there are 51 languages not 30, that makes the language upranks to 8 (instead of 9). the European Union is listed there as official language a basic info which is not featured here and is pretty suspicous to me isn't it? (i've red somewhere OTAN docs are published in both English and French, can someone confirm this?). why don't you use the French language article data? Shame On You 15:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiversity

Hey all you native French speakers, French teachers, et al. The v:French Department at Wikiversity could use a hand! Come on over.--Elatanatari 22:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Decision time

It's fair to say that there are many sources on how many people speak French fluently around the world. We need to decide on which one we're going to use, or whether we're going to use several to give a range instead of one hardcore number. Right now there's a discrepancy between the lead (175 million) and the infobox (128 million). The lead figure comes from the Francophonie and the infobox one comes from Ethnologue, which makes me think the latter is more reliable. But anyway.....ideas? Opinions? We need decide something here and stick with it because these numbers in this article change very frequently...and they shouldn't.UberCryxic 16:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

My suggestion is that we make table like the one in the article about the Russian language, there we use all sources. Aaker 22:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History of French in Spanish in WikiArticle

I don't think anyone noticed that the part of the French article is in Spanish. This should be translated into English and it would be nice if someone has a reason for this. Is this vandalism? Bardock the Mexican

[edit] Samples IPA

The placement of the IPA renderings between slashes indicates that they are phonemic rather than phonetic. If they are phonemic, I question the appearance of the colon in several of them to represent a long vowel. Vowel length isn't phonemic in French, so the colon is extraneous and should be omitted. If, on the other hand, these are intended to be phonetic renderings, then they should be between square brackets, not slashes, per standard linguistic conventions. —Largo Plazo 15:14, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Hi all. There are way too many (I believe) categories for this article - I tried to reduce them in what I thought was a fair way but was reverted, so I'll bring it here for discussion.

The main reason for this glut of categories is the "Languages of XXX"-type categories, of which French language is in 40! (largely due to every country from List of countries where French is an official language getting their own category). My suggestion for changing it is reducing these to solely:

• Languages of Africa (as languages of Algeria, Congo, Mali, Benin, Morocco, Djibouti, Tunisia, Gabon, etcetera are all subsets of this category)
• Languages of Europe (as languages of Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco, etcetera are subsets of this category)
• Languages of France (as French is, well, from France)
• Languages of Canada (as there's no Category:Languages of North America)
• ? Languages of Comoros (may not strictly count as Africa, going by Comoros, may be same issue with Madagascar, I am not an expert on their status)
• Languages of French Guiana (not in Europe, Africa or N America)
• Languages of French Polynesia (not in Europe, Africa or N America)
• Languages of Wallis and Futuna (not in Europe, Africa or N America I think)
• ? Languages of The Seychells - as with Comoros, does it count as Africa or not?

Please let me know if this would be ok and would be 'balanced' (as the user who reverted accused me of failing to be). If you don't agree, or have any suggestions, please also respond. If you think the idea is terrible, please try to suggest alternative plans for reducing the article's 50 or so categories to something more manageable. Proto::► 15:59, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that this removes French from each country's language category. For example Category:Languages of Luxembourg would be left containing German and Luxembourgish (but not French); Category:Languages of Senegal would be left with many languages, but not the official language (which is French); and so on. And I can't see that there's any encyclopaedic case for making Category:Languages of France an exception. Of course, if a way could be found to rationalise the category listing while retaining the category contents, that would be fine by me. Man vyi 16:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

My main issue with the trim of categories is that it was done in an unfair manner. This article should either be in a categories about continents or in categories about countries. If we group French speaking African with all the other African countries (including non French speaking ones) then why not do so with European, North American, Oceanian, South American and Asian ones? It is unfair to group African countries in a bunch and not do so with others. Man vyi has a good point too.

My impression is there is a bias towards Africa being a single entity, which it is not. --moyogo 16:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

French could be mentioned in the text section of the category, without making it part of the category and thus showing up here. For example, something like "These are languages of XXX besides the official language, French." That way, somebody perusing the category would see that it is also a language spoken there, but without making a really long list of categories on this article. Rigadoun (talk) 19:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

fr:Français has over 30 cat:s, so the problem is not unique. Looking at what we've got, it seems to me that some current cat:s might be pruned or rationalised. Romance languages can go as we already have Oïl languages and most romance languages aren't cat:ed at the highest level. Languages of Africa - need this stay if we keep the individual countries (otherwise we'd need other continent cat:s as well)? Languages of France could stay but include as sub-cat:s Languages of French Guiana, Languages of French Polynesia, Languages of New Caledonia, and Languages of Wallis and Futuna. Comments? Man vyi 19:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

How has the problem been solves at the article about the English language?Aaker 18:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving

This talk page needs archiving. S.D. ¿п? § 01:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. I moved all sections without contributions after August 2006 to /Archive 1 and /Archive 2. —Largo Plazo 18:15, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] French-speaking countries

In the list of French-speaking countries, "Central Africa" goes to a page about Central Africa, but it seems like it should be renamed and relinked to "Central African Republic"—do you agree?

Yes, I changed it a few days ago. —Largo Plazo 17:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] former colonies

countries like lebanon and romania have a fair amount of francophone spokers too, why aren't they mentionned here? Louis R14 16:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Lebanon is mentioned. Romania wasn't a French colony, and Romanians don't communicate with each other in French or use it for official purposes. —Largo Plazo 17:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eurocentric

The present article seems very Eurocentric to me especially since most French-speakers live in Africa. Aaker 21:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

No, they don't.CharlesMartel 17:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)CharlesMartel

Actually, they do. But if you're just counting native speakers, you are probsbly right. Aaker 17:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quebec English

I'm a native speaker of Quebec English, and I think that the influence of French on the way native speakers of English speak their language isn't strong enough to warrant the inclusion of Quebec English on this list a list of dialects of English influenced by French. Inclusion on this list is likely to make people think the influence is much stronger than it is. I think for every 10 French borrowings Anglos use, Britons and Americans probably use 9 . The handful of extra ones like dépanneur just stand out more because they're unknown to outsiders. The fact that there are people in Quebec who speak English as a second language in a way that's heavily influenced by French is beside the point. Belgian English might as well be included on the list. I think Quebec English should definitely be removed from the list. Joeldl 18:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chiac

In my opinion, the characterization of Chiac as a language derived from French rather than a dialect of French is way off.

Do you have a better way of cattagorizing it or a reason for this opinion? If not, your faceless opinion doesn't matter.CharlesMartel 17:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)CharlesMartel

I would categorize it as a subdialect of Acadian French. Looking at the examples on the page Chiac, which were most likely specifically selected to illustrate differences between Standard French and Chiac, it appears to be French. I'm against its inclusion unless an academic source can be found referring to it as a language derived from French. Ethnologue doesn't list it as a language for example. Joeldl 18:02, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Number of speakers conflict of sources

One source, the one currently used in this article, seems to strongly contradict the numbers found in this source, although the age of the data is about the same. Could anyone reconcile these differences in number of speaker figures? Thanks. Deco 00:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Which numbers on that page are you referring to? Joeldl 00:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, that there are 265 million native or secondary speakers of French (rather than 175 million). Deco 00:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you follow the link from the reference at the bottom of the article, they give three numbers: 113 M who speak it natively or fluently, 61 M "whose use or mastery of French is limited by circumstances or opportunities for use", 100 to 110 M more "who studied French for several years and have retained variable ability, or who use it for their work". Sounds pretty vague if you asked me. Somebody made the decision on Nov. 17 to stop counting the third group, but it doesn't look like there was any discussion. My opinion is that all the language pages should just use native speaker figures, because otherwise every language page will have its own criteria for a cutoff in terms of ability.. The "1 billion" figure on the English page is ludicrous unless you count anybody who can count to ten. Joeldl 01:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Africa

I don't think "African French" and "Maghreb French" qualify as dialects, especially since there are so few native speakers. Are the native speakers known to speak in a markedly different way than European Francophones? Also, just because Africa has the most Francophones doesn't mean it's the continent where the language is most widely used. You can be capable of speaking French, but still use other languages most of the time. Joeldl 21:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

There are native speakers of both Maghreb- and especially African French which makes it correct to call them dialects. How many they are is not important for the definiton. And French is in deed widely used, especially in urban areas. There are even some of them here on wikipedia, for example; user:moyogo, user:Themalau. I asked Themalau about it and i got this answer;

• "Non ce n'est pas frequent en Afrique. D'ailleurs j'ai moi meme un accent Congolais en Francais. Mais j'ai appris le Francais avant mes langues Congolaises (Lingala, Kikongo, etc), et je n'ai jamais reellement appris a ecrire dans ces langues jusqu'il y a de cela3 ou 4 ans seulement. Ainsi, le Francais est ma langue maternelle... par defaut. C'est la langue que je parle, et probablement ecris le mieux (quoique le fait de vivre aux USA me force a ecrire le plus souvent en anglais, donc les fautes de grammaire apparaissent maintenant dans les 2 langues :)). Mais pour la grande majorite des fricains, la langue dans laquelle ils sont le plus confortable, est une langue Africaine. Merci de la visite!Themalau 11:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)"

Aaker 17:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The reference given by the article that says that French spoken in the Central African Republic can be difficult to understand for francophones from other countries also says this in the preceding paragraph: Le français est la langue officielle de la République. Il n'est la langue maternelle qu'un d'un tout petit groupe d'Européens dont le nombre n'atteint pas les 10 000. The statement about "une autre variété de français" refers specifically to French spoken as a second language by "les classes non instruites". The fact that such people might speak French in a way that is difficult to understand for others is hardly noteworthy in my opinion, and in any case the current wording of the section on Africa needs to be changed to make this clear. Also, there is still no academic source for the existence of dialects called "African French" and "Maghreb French". The Ethnologue website does not list any, for example. If the above reference is to be believed, there is no such thing in the Central African Republic, at least as a mother tongue. And for the small number of Africans who speak French as a mother tongue, why would one expect Senegalese French to be any closer to Congolese French than to Algerian French? 15:54, 9 March 2007 Joeldl

Well, my original source about the dialects is actually my French-language professor. But according to the websites I've read there is no such a thing as an African French dialect, so maybe we should mention numerous African dialects instead. Read for example:

"Sociolinguistique bioécologique du français

La langue française a été introduite en Afrique par le fait colonial. Ce qui caractérise ce français d’Afrique, c’est sa diversité, sa continuité, son constant changement, sa capacité à phagocyter les autres langues au point de provoquer leur extinction, sa conservation ou son habileté à se renouveler, à s’enrichir au contact des autres forces linguistiques.

En effet, la variabilité caractérise le français d’Afrique : il y a autant de langues françaises en Afrique que de milieu socioculturel où elle est employée. C’est ainsi qu’on parlera plutôt des français d’Afrique : français d’Afrique de l’Ouest, français d’Afrique centrale, français d’Afrique du Nord. Et même à l’intérieure de ces grandes divisions, on parle des français nationaux : français de Côte-d’Ivoire, du Cameroun, d’Algérie, etc" Source

The term African-French is however used often. Since I don't have my professors source available, I have to continue to search for other sources. Aaker 19:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem referring to "regional varieties" of French in Africa. "French in Africa" seems better than "African French". I think that most references you find to French in Africa in academic contexts will be about French as it is primarily spoken by Africans – a second language. I, too, have heard that there are a small number of native speakers (particularly in Gabon, I think), but lumping these people together with some who barely speak the language should be avoided, so careful distinctions will need to be drawn. The reference I mentioned on the CAR distinguishes "le français officiel" and "le français local", and undoubtedly there is a continuum between these two extremes. I think that analyzing the actual linguistic characteristics of Algerian French (heavily influenced by Algerian Arabic), Senegalese French (Wolof), CAR French (Sango), etc. will be a difficult task. In my opinion, the most important facts about French in Africa pertain to the circumstances in which it is used – courts, trade, etc. Here some generalizations can be made, but there are likely to be big differences between countries where there is no majority language (e.g. Benin), and those like the CAR, where everybody speaks Sango. Joeldl 05:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Punctuation

Some other language pages have a section on punctuation and capitalization rules. See Romanian language for example. How about one here? There are a few things in French that are quite different from English in this regard:

- French quotation marks, and the use of dashes for written dialogues

- the use of non-breaking spaces before question marks, exclamation points, colons and semi-colons

- different usage of commas (actually, I'll have to look up the rule on this one)

- use of colons where English might use a dash (Il existe trois types de bla : le premier, le deuxième et le troisième.)

I'm sure there are some more. While I work on a draft for the section, any additions to this list are welcome.

Daniel 203.97.173.115 23:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, at least the dash-use would have to have a citation though, I think.--DorisH 12:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Easy. The académie française site is bound to be a good source. Daniel 203.97.173.115 04:33, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protection

Isn't it time to protect this article? Just take a look at its history, the page is vandalised and reverted many times per day. Aaker 22:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)