Purest French?

A waitress in Paris told us the purest French was spoken in the Loire. She was from the Loire so was probably a bit prejudiced. However, I’ve read that a couple of places.

The French take their language very seriously. There is currently a government movement to see that tv sitcoms from other countries have their titles translated into "proper" French instead of using their native titles. Their is actually a government office that oversees the use of the language in the country.

As for the worst French, it is probably in one or more of the French colonies (or former French colonies). Many colonies developed their own versions of French that are commonly called a patois, such as creole. Many of these have developed to such an extent that they are now recognized by many liguists as entirely separate languages. For instance Haitian Creole (as opposed to other creoles) is taught as a foreign language at Indiana University in Bloomington where there is a resident expert who has written a Haitian Creole grammar. Most patois do not have a written grammar and many are only spoken languages, not written at all. These, however, would hardly qualify as French per se.

You have chosen an interesting subject. French cooking would probably be an easier subject though.

SalB : a patois is not a version of French, it is rather an intermediary language between latin and French. Creole was made from French, it is just a deformation of the language, therefore it cannot be seen as a patois per se. Creole language is just a really bad and eased-up French made up by the african slaves. When Haïti got its independance, it tried to make creole a real, official language. Personally I think it’s ridiculous, but if it’s suit them, then why not. The most ridiculous in it is that they try to build up a written creole. Have you ever read official haitian documents written in haitian creole ? It’s just funny to be taken seriously. Ask an haitian for his passport for instance. Or should I say, passpo.

CRC

crc, You may check with Professor Valdman at Indiana University. He heads the Haitian Creole department. The official documents in Haiti are written in French, not Creole. Most officials and teachers won’t even admit they know Creole (they do).

You can argue with the American Heritage Dictionary about their definition of patois. It’s below.

pat·ois (p²t?wäz?, p²-twä?). 1. A regional dialect, especially one without a literary tradition. 2.a. A creole.

Lauren, I just want to tell you that there is a mistake foreigners often do. The Loire départment (N°42) is near Lyon but this is not the region where the French langage is told to be the purest. In fact, you should find it in the Loire Valley area, near Tours in the Indre-et-Loire département (N°37) where I was born. So if you should go there, just be sure not to go in the wrong area.

I think it’s a good idea to write an essay about French culture (or other ones) as it’s a better way of understanding eachother.

As far as I know, I could say that if the purest French is spoken in the Loire Valley, there’s a lot of accents in France, in Europe and in the world.

French is spoken in France (in metropole and in overseas départements) but also in Belgium and Switzerland (besides other official langages), in Quebec, and mosty importantly in Western africa. West Africa has been a french colony until the 60s and French has stayed official langage in most of the countries. There, it’s quite difficult for a Frenchman to undestand what they say as there accent is strong and the words they use are surprising (I talk about my self experience).

I hope your work on French culture will be succesfull and please give us news about it !

Do people have certain prejudices against a certain dialect? Like if a someone from Quebec (Quebecois… am I right?) were to arrive in Tours, what would be someone’s reaction to his accent? I have heard that the French prefer to muddle through english with an american than listen to his horrible accent spoken through french. Why?

I also remember my French History teacher discuss Francois 1st making Languedoc the official language and languedoiel not the correct french. I vaguely remember this discussion. She also discussed l’Academie Francaise made by Richleiu or something… I don’t really know much about any of this, does anyone know?

Oh yeah I forgot to mention this. I live in Florida, so I’ve been running into alot of Haitian people lately because they were having all those problems and people were immigrating over here and such. Anywho, I am not fluent or anything but I can have a good conversation and almost all the Haitians I have spoken with do know enough French for me to converse with him, but I could tell it wasn’t exactly perfect French.

SalB: I read Haitians official documents everyday at work. Birth certificates are in French, but passports are in French and haitian creole. They do that because they want to make a point. I think it’s rather recent, they wouldn’t do that a few years back. They want to boast the independance and uniqueness of their culture, blah blah blah.

About patois : I didn’t know it was an english word, too. The english definition wouldn’t be accurate with the french one, though.

CRC

I have to write this entire essay in French. It’s supposed to be between 3000 and 4000 words! Does anyone think they’d be able to help correct my writing if I post bits up here.

And CRC how would you use patios in a french sentence? just so I know for my paper

Lauren

crc, That’s interesting. It all used to be in French. I haven’t been to Haiti since 1995 so it’s been a while. I do remember that parents who came in to school didn’t always speak French. The teachers did and were very proud of the fact so they refused to speak Creole to the parents, even though they knew darn well that the parents didn’t understand their French. To speak French was to be well educated and some could be rather snobby about it.

I was teaching at a summer camp so didn’t run into that. We had so many musicians from all over the world that everyone spoke anything they thought the listener could understand . . . often involving several languages in one conversation. It was pretty funny sometimes.

BTW, what exactly is the French definition of patois?

crc, Patois is a word we’ve "borrowed" from the French. There are a lot of them. We’re more happy to borrow words from foreign languages than the French are to borrow from us. We have no language police.

According to Professor Valdman, Haitian Creole is made up of five different languages, French, English, Spanish and I don’t know what the other two are. He has published a grammar and dictionary. I have a friend who is a linguist and worked on it when she was in grad school many many years ago. Valdman tried to get Haiti to agree on a standard spelling of Creole (Kreol) and only partly succeeded. When you buy Haitian books, some are his spelling and others are a previous fairly standard spelling and others are mind numbing. You actually have to read them out loud to understand what they are saying. I learned the old spelling first so never got used to Valdman’s spelling. It still looks very odd to me. Most Haitians still use their own older spelling, but at Indiana University they use Valdman’s.

Lauren, I’ve found a website dealing with the history of french language :

http://www.alsintl.com/languages/french1.htm

It’s quite short but it may answer to some of your questions.

Concerning the dialects, I think France is like every other modern country : we don’t care how people may speak. France is now so visited that it’s no more surprising hearing someone speaking with another accent. It’s sometime funny to hear some foreigner idiomatics, but that’s all. For instance, I’ve once spoken with a Belgian. At the end of our conversation, he told me "bonjour" (good afternoon) instead of "au revoir" (good bye). I was quite surprised, though I didn’t show it, but after a few moments, I understood that he meant "bonne journée" (have a good day).

Some other typical belgian words are known, like "septante" instead of "soixante-dix" (seventy) and "nonante" instead of "quatre-vingt-dix" (ninety). In fact they are right and their way of speaking is more logical than ours.

If you have other questions, please don’t hesitate to share them.

Hi;

I’m looking for information on pure French waiters. I’m writing a book on waiting tables. It’s geared to the American reality of college students/writers/actors/English teachers waiting tables while they "wait" for a "real job" to come along. But I want to include a chapter on European waiting traditions.

I’d like to know:
– are schools for waiters?
– what’s an average salary or hourly wage?
– do waiters receive benefits like health insurance or paid vacations?
– what are some of the hallmarks of European dining service?

Michael Ashcraft

I’m not French, I’m an American. I love France,let me get that much clear from the beginning. France has a ministry of language, at least it did the the last time I heard. Everyone in the world is coming to America, tis was even written on that wonderful gift of the statue of Lady Liberty. Few Americans seems to know that Lady Liberty is a French symbol not American. There is no national race or nationality in America. This is not so. Having a great amount of French blood and a French name that no one seems to pronounce properly, I have a great love of my French heritage. I’m not happy about Iraq myself,but I won’t slam My own country in another country’s forum. France does have a distinct culture. People who wish to live in France should adapt. If they can’t learn the language, and can’t adjust to the culture should move elsewhere.

i love the french language, because it is a logical language in many ways and is capable of so much expression. i really don’t have an answer to this question, but i just wanted to say that french varies greatly from continent to continent ( in my opinion) be the lilt of west indian french (martinique, french guyana, guadeloupeetc.) or the marked accent of many west africans, the one i find the most interesting is the quebecois accent, what a difference! what would constitute any of those things being worse than the other, as long as the grammar and pronunciation are respected

as a person from the french caribbean, i would like to add to something , creole languages are not french, and they don’t have the same rules as french, so they won’t qualify as bad french at all. Creole is near and dear to everyone’s heart who has it as a mother tongue, we recognize that it is not french and we have often hid and ran from creole like it was somethning to be ashamed of, because it is taught to speak French and not creole which is seen as “parler a le petit negre” . Now that is reallly changing, people are seeing hte value of creole and how it was allowed such expression and cultural contributions .Creole is an independent language with grammatical origins in west africa, the vocabulary is heavily french, but the two languages are not interchangeable.

i hear these days many french people could care less about the francophonie, which itself was created by west african politicians who saw the importance of this language, do the french care about the francophonie, or the purity of their language, are slang dialects like Verlan contributing the the detriment of french? i saw a special about how many many french students could not even properly write in french. the same thing happens in any language that is constantly evolving and where there is a heavy youth culture, i don’t think french is in any dire straits, but of course people have to make an effort to learn the language well.