Talk:French language/Archive 1

message: In Louisiana, there are french speaking people, but for the most part, they speak a dialect (Cajun French). Louisana is also not a country, and there are few non-imagrant native speakers, and there are few native immagrants.
Davidmr 23:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Louisiana

message: This article made reference to register in French, when in fact there are no clearly defined registers for French; I've removed it because I couldn't find any other references to registers existing in French and there were no references or citations in the section.
Talking about register in an article on French gives the false impression that there are distinct written and spoken forms for the language, and that simply is not the case.  French makes no greater use of register than English, and what this section of the article called register is actually simply style: spoken French (like the spoken form of just about any language) tends to be less formal and rigorous than written French, but there is no actual change of register.  Dedicating paragraphs to a non-existent question of register in French seriously misleads readers of the article.
Agateller 22:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure that what you are saying is correct. Reading the article on registers in linguistics in Wikipedia (here) I am pretty certain this exists in French, my native language and probably in quantity of other languages for that matter. The paragraph wasn't really useful in that what it was describing was very general and applicable to other languages, however it was dealing with something that actually exists unlike what you are saying. -- Mathieugp 03:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd say this is true. Written French imposes not only a very rigid (and complicated) grammar, it also imposes a much regulated form. Of course, the same is true for most other languages I know of, but in Francophone culture, the codification of the usage of the language is close to being insane. I am saying this as native French speaker and as a person who really loves the language. There is no going back once you have a respectable commande of the language for it is very rewarding to be able to easily communicate with great clarity, but boy is it a pain to go through the learning process. English speakers will be corrected on their English grammar mistakes for many years in school, but at some point in your early adulthood, it kinda stops. You can even write "kinda" if you want to because it is accepted, except maybe in Academic papers and other "serious" literature. However in French, you are pretty much commiting a sin if you write informal talk outside your private e-mail. :-) -- Mathieugp 03:38, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Register

message: Why is french referred to as "la langue française" but not "le français"? After all, "la langue française" literally means "the french language" and "le français" means "(the) french". (I don't know that much about french, just wanted to ask.)
--Cylauj 17:43, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It could be "le français". That is how they have it on the French side of the wiki. -- Mathieugp 17:54, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: It's indeed either le français (i.e. "French") or la langue française ("the French language"). The second would perhaps be used in contexts where ambiguity is undesirable (because le français can mean "some general person of French citizenship"), or where some added pomp is desired (such as the names of official commissions). David.Monniaux 16:11, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  La langue française 

message: Question: There was a reform of the written standard in the mid 90's which now begins to be adopted (modification of the byzantine rules for composite names, of those for the circumflex and the umlaut, borrowed words to follow french grammatical rules, and a hundred or so anomalies (ph'es not from hellenic words and a few peculiarities of writing like imbécile with imbécillité). As it is only recently beginning to see adoption (very few publications, still a lot of opposition by people who feel a passionate love of the spelling nenuphar (which was missed when words like sopha or phantasme were modified to use an f instead), or for various reasons), it is used according to the will of the writer; should it be mentionned somewhere in the article under the writing system heading? David
: There is an article entitled Spelling reform which deals with spelling reforms for various languages, including English, French, Russian etc. -- Mathieugp 18:03, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Spelling reform

message: Some linguists estimate that 10% of the French today understand a local dialect (although they may not speak it).
I removed it, since the claim sounds quite far-fetched to me and no reference was given – it could just be a statistic made on the spot. David.Monniaux 16:40, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Impact of regional languages

message: How about Sounds of French and/or Orthography of French articles? These would probably be quite appropriate. Spanish and Portuguese havce "sounds of" article. These could be used to point out allophonic variation (such as the various admissible rs) and recent sound disappearances.--Circeus 17:35, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: All done! I've moved the phonology section to a new article. I've made a lots of notes on allophones and phonemes. A good review from European speakers would be appreciated.--Circeus 19:05, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthography/sounds 

message: We'd like to add the correct pronunciation of the name of composer Pierre Boulez in IPA to the article about him, but we're having some diffculty deciding whether the final consonant is a Voiceless alveolar fricative or a Voiced alveolar fricative... I hope that perhaps one of the people who keep an eye on the French language page can help us out. (See Talk:Pierre Boulez; thanks!) David Sneek 12:48, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help! 

message: Can somebody clean up/check to improve the top section? It's awful in design and way too busy as is. --Circeus 16:23, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleaning? 

message: I've started a page on The verb "to be" in Indo-European languages, which is intended to place the irregular paradigms in a historical context. Left to my own devices I will no doubt eventually get round to filling in the info on French, Spanish and Italian, but it would be better if one of you who is at home in the Romance field could go over there, check everything, complete the second table and make any necessary comments underneath it.  And then, if and when you are happy that it is useful to you, link it from the various romance language sites.  (My own area of competence, and the necessesity for starting the page in the first place, lie on the Germanic side!)  --Doric Loon 21:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the more specific article Romance copula is where the detailed info on Frog belongs.  — Chameleon 19:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Romance expert's input required

message: I do not understand where the number of 9,662,100 for native French speakers in Canada come from. Here are the numbers available from the Website of Statistics Canada:
Using the latest available census data (year 2001) for language by mother tongue, including single and multiple responses, we get 6,864,615. Population by mother tongue, by provinces and territories (2001 Census) 
Using the latest available census data (year 2001) for knowledge of official language, including single and multiple responses, we get 9,178,100. Population by knowledge of official language, by provinces and territories (2001 Census)
If my numbers are correct there are 6,864,615 native French speakers in Canada.
Can someone confirm? If we all get this number, it should be inserted in the right place in the table. -- Mathieugp 22:20, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: French in Canada

message: Bonjour mes amis wikipediennes! As you can see, my French skills are regrettably under par, and so I come here for help. I have an article, SYR1: Anagrama with some French text (song titles) in it for which I would like a translation. I don't know if putting the request here is the proper thing to do, but it seems logical to me. Anyway, I would be grateful if a French speaker could translate these titles for me and post them to my talk page. Merci! --Netvor | T | C 16:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, that was fast. Many thanks to User:Jules.lt for the help. --Netvor | T | C 18:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation request