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French Nonfiction? (eg sans passé simple) | ||
Tags: Non-fiction | French | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4394 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 1 of 6 10 September 2013 at 2:10am | IP Logged |
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Let me first state this: I'm trying to avoid the passé simple. My motivating reason for doing so is because my
motivating reasons for reading are to (a) improve my spoken abilities (by reading the text aloud and internalizing grammar that I can use when speaking), (b) improve my listening abilities (by listening to audio versions when available), (c) start the habit of thinking in French, and (d) improve my vocabulary. I believe the passé simple would interfere in these goals (not prevent necessarily, but render less efficient). With that out of the way.. :) I have a twofold question. I've read on another forum that nonfiction is often written without the passé simple. Is this true? And if so, would anyone have suggestions of favourite nonfiction works? I particularly enjoy politics, economics (Though I'm not an economist, so I can't imagine I'd fair well reading a technical textbook like work), religion, science/technology, and history! Thank you for any information you have and suggestions you can give! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 2 of 6 16 September 2013 at 5:42pm | IP Logged |
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I see no one else has replied to you, so let me make a couple of suggestions. Yes, you are right that nonfiction will mostly not use the passé simple, although you may come across it occasionally.
From your list of interests I can certainly recommend three books by Amin Maalouf, one of my favourite French authors: Les Croisades vues par les Arabes Les identités meurtrières Le Dérèglement du monde I've also read a couple of books by the writer/philosopher Frédéric Lenoir that were quite good. As you mention religion, I can recommend his latest book "Petit traité d'histoire des réligions". However, I would suggest you check out the book section in "Amazon.fr" to see which non-fiction books are currently selling well in France, maybe you can get some inspiration there. Edited by Ogrim on 16 September 2013 at 6:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4394 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 3 of 6 16 September 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for your suggestions, Ogrim! There appears some really interesting books among those two authors that
I will definitely try reading. Le dérèglement du monde particularly caught my eye! Edited by jhaberstro on 17 September 2013 at 2:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4472 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 4 of 6 17 September 2013 at 2:02am | IP Logged |
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A very well known non-fiction collection in French is the collection "Que sais-je ?" of the edition PUF (Presses universitaires de France). "Que sais-je ?" are short books (128 p. each) written by experts in a particular field and aimed at making science and knowledge (in the largest possible acceptation of the terms) accessible to every one. The collection comprises thousands of books on a very large range of subjects. I have no doubts that you will find many books on politics, economics, religion, science/technology, and history and the fact that you are not an economist should not be an issue since this series is aimed at the general public and requires no previous knowledge or skill. You can find a list of their titles here : http://www.puf.com/Liste/Les_%22Que_sais-je%3F%22_par_titres
I am not sure they would fit your other goals though. Obviously, regular people in the street do not talk like that. Maybe fiction with a lot of dialogues, plays, interviews, TV scripts, forums... would be better considering your objectives. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 6 17 September 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
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The notion "non fiction" covers several topics. If you read historical accounts you will often find the same amount of passé simple's as in narrative fiction, whereas articles about natural sciences are less occupied with sequences of events in the past, which is the main area for the passé simple. Even if they describe past events (archaeology, paleontology) it will often be as a background or general description of the situation in a certain period. So to avoid the passé simple you should focus on the natural sciences OR decriptions of current affairs OR general theories as for instance in economics or mathematics.
But passé simple is not the only marker of the special kind of French which is written, and you may find that there are other factors in for instance sentence constructions and vocabulary that stand out even in the kind of articles I mentioned above. And avoid French philosophy if you don't want to deal with complicated language. I wonder why you are so scared of the passé simple. You can choose not to write novels in French and then this form can remain a purely passive form for you which you only have to be able to recognize. Which of course is easier than actually using it yourself. Edited by Iversen on 17 September 2013 at 9:42am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4825 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 6 20 October 2013 at 5:11am | IP Logged |
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I'm thinking reading plays could be a good idea.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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