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New course: Le québécois en 10 leçons | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 121 of 167 02 November 2012 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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On a side note, I came to think of this thread:
How to type French on an English keyboard 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 122 of 167 03 November 2012 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well I've never been asked that before but I can safely say that I will never be doing either. I would however lean more towards the biker gang - now where did I put that leather jacket...
My favourite show is the current series Toute la vérité which features all levels of speech from the lawyers and judges down to the criminals and street thugs. The courtroom speech is especially clear and understandable and then the same characters speak very informally when socializing after work. There is unfortunately no sub-titles. For a series with complete and accurate québécois sub-titles, there is all four seasons of C.A. Conseil d'Administration on DVD. There is essentially no formal level speech in this series on a level with the courtroom speech in the above series. Edited by microsnout on 06 November 2012 at 7:00am 6 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 123 of 167 05 November 2012 at 3:43am | IP Logged | |||||
I've never really been able to understand how people calculate percentages of understanding, i.e. how does one arrive at 90% or 40%. But the important thing here is that it would seem that university students from Trois-Rivières are harder to understand than university students from Montreal (in addition to being harder to understand than the television series Buffy contre les vampires). Insofar as the comparisons with the television series goes, this difference (however measured) is not really surprising because, just as in English, the dialogues dubbed into French (from France or Quebec) are totally scripted and spoken by professional artists. This kind of language is always easier to understand than raw unscripted language in a natural setting. It's pretty much the same contrast one sees in news broadcasts between the manicured language of the news reader and the raw language of ordinary people interviewed. But the other interesting question is the differences in intelligibility between university students in Trois-Rivières and Montréal. To be more specific, we would take a sample of students from l'Université de Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) and a sample from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)? First of all, the distance between the two cities is 74 miles or 119.07 kilometres or about 1.5 hours driving. It's not much. And Trois-Rivières is not a remote isolated town. It sits right on the highway to Quebec City and is a major regional agglomeration. People travel frequently between Montreal and Trois-Rivières. But more importantly, let's look at a bit of the sociological profile of the students from Trois-Rivières. Like their Montreal counterparts, these students of 2012 come primarily from middle-class backgrounds. Their parents are relatively well educated, especially when compared to their grand-parents. The students grew up not only with massive exposure to television but also to the Internet. They all have mobile phones and computers; many have tablet computers and smartphones. Many have traveled in Canada and some have been to overseas. And among the students you will find a significant number of foreign students from France, Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. Obviously, these students are not uneducated, working-class or unskilled speakers. Quite the contrary, there have been to exposed to lots of formal French, and, it should be pointed out, quite a large percentage of the teaching staff of the university is of foreign origin. What you see as a results of all this is the homogenization of the speech of all university students in Quebec. Yes, there will be small differences of regional vocabulary but in terms of phonology and grammar there is trend towards linguistic standardisation and uniformity as one goes up the social ladder. The main drivers of this phenomenon are schooling, the mass media and population movement. When speaking very informally, there may be more of a regional accent, but as university students speaking in a academic setting, they all tend to sound alike. This reminds me of something I saw on television some years ago. An fishing boat accident had happened in the Magdalen Islands (Iles de la Madeleine), very far from Montreal. A older fisherman from a local port was interviewed, and he had a very strong regional accent. Standing next to him was the young mayor of the port. When he spoke, the difference in accent was very striking. This mayor sounded like any 30 year-old mayor in Quebec. The fisherman and the mayor were both from the same area but a whole generation plus years of formal education and (in the case of the mayor) a stay in another city for his studies all contributed to a change in accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 124 of 167 06 November 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, the install went flawlessly, but the results were not at all as you describe. On my keyboard (standard HP desktop), the key above the Tab key is lowercase ` and uppercase ~. After the install and a reboot, it continued to behave the same way. So I just got `a`e`i`o`u. None of the combinations you show produced anything. The only combination that produced anything useful was holding down CNTL + button over the Tab. That produces àèìòù in Microsoft Word 2007. But it produces nothing in this HTLAL editor. Computer is HP AMD64 with Win7, with US keyboard set. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 125 of 167 06 November 2012 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
tommus, a simpler solution is to switch your windows US keyboard to "US International" keyboard layout. It's what I use. It's simple. There's nothing to download. It takes little time to get used to it- voilà!
French about.com keyboard link Edited by iguanamon on 06 November 2012 at 12:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 126 of 167 06 November 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tommus, are you sure that you selected to be typing in this new keyboard layout? Or made
it your default? Otherwise Windows will continue to make you type in your previous layout. 1 person has 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 127 of 167 10 November 2012 at 6:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Without wanting to re-ignite a noxious debate about language norms, I couldn't help noticing this interview on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio program C'est la vie (a program in English about francophone culture) of the singer Emilie-Claire Barlow. Interestingly, Ms Barlow is not from Quebec and does not come from a French-speaking home but she sells mores CDs in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada. Here is the CBC site The date of the interview is November 2, 2012.
While she has done some songs in French before, she has just released an album entirely in French. Her diction when singing in French is excellent. Although we don't hear her speaking much French in the interview I think we can surmise that her accent is very good. She seems to be self-taught. I can't comment on her grammar or vocabulary. I suspect that singing extensively in French is conducive to developing a good accent. The reason this interview caught my eye is that it illustrated so well the importance of choosing the appropriate language variety in the target language. For the audience that she is catering to in Quebec today, the kind of socially neutral or higher end form of Québécois is the most recommendable 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 128 of 167 10 November 2012 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This guy, Bernard Adamus
La question à 100 piasses is also becoming quite popular, getting rave reviews everywhere. He won le Festival de Petite Vallée in 2009 and just released his second full album. He uses the opposite range of language, presumably to reach a different demographics. He is from Montréal, although originally born in Poland. Edited by Arekkusu on 13 November 2012 at 3:21pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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