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New course: Le québécois en 10 leçons | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 73 of 167 26 October 2012 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure what to make of this idea that "student's duty to learn it on their own by using it. Plain old observation and trial and error." I think the teacher's role is to guide the student through the maze, among other things, of linguistic etiquette. I don't see what is impossible to teach systematically. It's actually quite simple. Certain forms are very negatively marked, others are less, most are neutral and some are very formal or ritualistic. This is where materials like the book in question come in handy. Here is something that I can show to my students and say, "Certain things here have a negative connotation. Be careful." I really don't suggest that they go around using these forms in order to learn them. Edited by s_allard on 26 October 2012 at 2:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 74 of 167 26 October 2012 at 2:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I meant that the students' use of the language shouldn't and can't be limited to what
you've been able to cover with them. You explain whatever you come across in class, but that is only a subset of the things they will come across and will need to use, so they have no choice but to just give it a try and learn from their mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 75 of 167 26 October 2012 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Starting early November, the book will be available in Montréal, at Librairie Michel
Fortin, 3714 St-Denis. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5473 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 76 of 167 26 October 2012 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
You guessed it, I do not talk like that. I am actually very slow to adopt such language except when with my main language partner from Longueuil. Then I try things out knowing that if I say something totally silly I can always make fun of his English in return. I am even hesitant to make use of forms like "C'est-tu possible que... ?" One reason I hesitate is to avoid receiving a virtually torrent of high speed québécois in response. It is totally pointless to talk like that at language meetups as it seems most attendees are scared to even drop a 'ne'. At the end of these meetups I often do use a colloquial pronunciation of "Il faut que j'y aille" and am usually met with blank stares and once someone thought it was Japanese. I have been tempted t make an edited video extracting all the times people say this in TV shows I watch just to prove to these people that it really is French. One other time I use such language is with a good friend of mine, un Français who is a professor of French at Alliance Française de Toronto but sadly knows nothing about Québec French. I like to encourage him to learn a bit since he is paid to help people become bilingual here in Canada after all. Besides he has classrooms full of students obsessed with France, I don't want to be one more. I am hopping that Arekkusu's book will allow me to incorporate a few more things, au fur et à mesure. No rush. Edited by microsnout on 26 October 2012 at 4:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 77 of 167 26 October 2012 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
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To follow up on @microsnout's comment, I think there is a real need for a thorough guide to spoken Québécois in all its registers, ranging from slang to formal. It might be too much to ask for in one book.
I don't want to rehash the debate about the title, but I want to point out that many websites and publications equate "québécois" with the most vernacular version of the language. Everything else is French and not Québécois. Actually, I should take that back because a lot of the teaching material coming out of the Québec Ministère de l'immigration is very Québécois in terms of linguistic forms but without the most vulgar or obsolete material. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 78 of 167 26 October 2012 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
The power of dialogues is that they depict a context in which the words can be used and this gives the student a fairly good impression of the register. As a student, do I want a book that constistently pinpoints the exact register of every word? No -- I want a general guide, and I'll figure out the details on my own. That's perfectly fine with me as a student, and I tend to be on the side of the pickier students. For the pronunciation section of my book, I was consulting one reference book in particular that sometimes presented a series of 4 or 5 possible pronunciations on a continuum from formal to informal, the intermediate stages being somewhat arbitrarily tagged as belonging to a specific type of register. I certainly had no intention of splitting hairs like this -- a language course is supposed to remain accessible and guide the student in the right direction. I wasn't writing a reference manual, after all. Another thing to consider is that as a native speaker, I have some instinct about the register of Québécois words, but asking other native speakers is really hard because people are notoriously bad at analyzing the way they speak themselves, particularly with Québécois when you start asking about spoken language people never write. I stopped counting how many times I asked about a given form that most people immediately rejected as something they'd never say, and then I'd start paying attention and start hearning it frequently. So, are you going to run double blind test studies to write a language course? No -- you use your knowledge, your instincts, and you guide the students in the right direction. One example I remember is that I was trying to pinpoint the size of what the Québécois would call "sachet". In Europe, sachet is used for grocery store plastic bags, but not in Québec, so I mentioned it in the course, but then when is a sachet too big to be a sachet? These kinds of problems occur all the time -- you provide a general guideline, and you move on. So I generally agree that registers are important, but as a course writer, I consider that my duty is to offer a general guideline that is clear, accessible and accurate to steer students in the right direction, but it will never be a perfect, complete and exhaustive representation of the language -- a language course and a reference manual are two different things. Edited by Arekkusu on 26 October 2012 at 4:51pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 79 of 167 26 October 2012 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even though I'm not very interested in Québécois, I couldn't resist the temptation of ordering the book.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 80 of 167 26 October 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
:) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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