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French diglossia- thoughts for discussion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4704 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 17 of 38 02 April 2015 at 11:27am | IP Logged | |||||
It was interesting (although I was aware in general of the things you wrote about). I heard in a medieval history class that the magician's phrase "hocus pocus" comes from priests who couldn't really speak Latin mangling "hoc est mea corpus", "this is my body". Since the phrase was spoken at the moment the elements were transformed into the body and blood of Christ, it was taken up to be used at any magical transformation. It makes sense, but I'd like to know at what point it actually entered the world of magical spells. But as you say.... this is quite a tangent! Back to my original post, whether we think it counts as diglossia or not, I'd like to see some experienced people posting about other differences between spoken and written French. Okay, many of us have argued that it's no worse than most other languages, but still, it's something which surprises new learners when they speak with a French person for the first time, or when they start watching/listening to French. One of the big pronunciation features I have noticed is they way people say "je". The J sounds like an English "sh", so that "je suis" sounds something like "shoe-ee" (English pronunciation). This will be one of the examples that will make a beginner think they are hearing a different language, because they won't understand it as "je suis". I learnt it thanks to subtitled TV shows. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4434 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 18 of 38 02 April 2015 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, "je suis" is often pronounced as a monosyllabic "shuis". (Sorry about the lack of phonetic symbols, but my current PC doesn't allow me to use them.) The same goes for "tu es", which I often hear as "t'es". You will find the same when the order is inverted, e.g. "Que sais-je" pronounced as "que saish" and "Es-tu sûr?" as "Et sûr?"
Another typical feature of spoken French, especially amongst younger people, but not only, is to reduce polysyllabic words to monosyllabic or bisyllabic words. Some examples: La faculté . la fac Le bacaleaureat - le bac le professeur - le prof le restaurant - le resto la publicité - la pub Comme d'habitude - comme d'hab D'accord - d'acc la sécurité sociale - la sécu McDonald - "macdo" This tendency is widespread. For "Ne t'inquiète pas" you often just hear "t'inquiète", "ta gueule" instead of "ferme ta gueule" etc. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4704 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 19 of 38 02 April 2015 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for those features, Ogrim. It's interesting that I've come across most of them in my studies. La fac, le prof and le resto all come up in French in Action, along with la bibli. I've seen "d'acc" in Le Petit Nicolas as well as in the Lego City game; in both cases someone was being incredibly lazy when they said "d'acc". I've heard "t'inquiète", "ta gueule" on TV shows. Ironically, I don't think I've come across the full version, "ferme ta gueule", so I never knew that "ta gueule" was short for it. I just knew that "ta guele" means "shut up". So a multi-track, media heavy approach definitely helps get a handle on these things.
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| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4134 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 20 of 38 02 April 2015 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Something in my mind doesn't want to consider abbreviations of words as a form of
diglossia. In my mind, diglossia is something more extreme, like how in Japanese, complete phrases can be replaced with words based on Chinese roots in writing. (For example, 来日する (rainichi suru) replacing 日本に来る (nihon ni kuru) in the case of "coming to Japan") For me, the only thing that comes close to this in French, and it surprises me that it hasn't been mentioned yet, is the use of the simple past and the past forms of the subjunctive in some forms of written French. With the exception of a few expressions ("ce fut un plaisir", or "encore eût-il fallu que je le susse", for example), these forms are never used in speech. The opposite argument could be made that these forms are being disregarded in favour of their speech equivalents by younger generations, so it's become more of a generational difference than anything else. Edited by Sizen on 02 April 2015 at 11:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4684 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 21 of 38 02 April 2015 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
It took me awhile to find it, but it was from his chapter titled "Dialects - Two Tongues in One Mouth." Hopefully I can find a transcript; the chapter description reads: Diglossia is the sociological division of labor in many societies between two languages, with a "high" one used in formal contexts and a "low" one used in casual ones - as in High German and Swiss German in Switzerland. He didn't focus on French per se, he just referred to it in some of his anecdotes. I did find some works on-line by Benjamin Massot (L'hypothèse d'une diglossie en France) and Paul Rowlett (Syntactic Variation in French: Diglossia and Language Change), but I have no idea if these guys are respected in the field or considered fringe. Massot's introduction, though, uses a lot of the same terminology the McWhorter uses: On a depuis longtemps fait le constat de nombreuses variantes grammaticales en français (la négation avec et sans "ne", SV(O) vs. la dislocation à gauche, etc.), les unes étant valorisées et les autres stigmatisées. Dans ce travail, on défend l'idée que l'on a affaire à une situation de diglossie. Cela suppose que les locuteurs intériorisent deux grammaires : l'une, le "français démotique", est acquise "sur les genoux de la mère" et l'autre, le "français classique tardif", est acquise à l'école et à travers les institutions qui exigent son emploi. On place cette problématique dans un cadre qui requiert l'étude des productions spontanées, l'abandon de l'opposition oral-écrit et de son caractère explicatif, et une transcription phonologique des données. À travers l'étude du nombre, de la négation, et des alternatives à SV(O), on montre l'intérêt descriptif et typologique de décrire deux grammaires. Chaque grammaire ainsi décrite est plus consistante. Enfin, une étude de corpus observe un locuteur diglosse, qui n'active bien qu'une grammaire à la fois : il mélange par exemple la dislocation à gauche avec la négation sans "ne", mais jamais avec la négation avec "ne" Short English summary: he argues that the low version (le français démotique) has a consistent grammar that is distinct from the high version (le français classique tardif), and that this creates a 'situation of diglossia.' Edited by kanewai on 02 April 2015 at 10:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4463 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 22 of 38 02 April 2015 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think French is diglossic (it's less diglossic than Czech, Finnish, Brazilian Portuguese, Belgian Dutch or Swiss German), but it may become in a couple of years, due to extreme purism.
English would be diglossic too, if people were forced to write like this: 1. Whom did you meet? 2. It is I. 3. Better than she. etc. English belongs to languages which like to modernize their grammar every 10 or so years, if you want to use WHOM you can, but you can write a perfecty formal letter or an essay without these ''dated'' forms. In formal written French (and German) you are compelled to use forms which are no longer used in speech, this is the first phase of diglossia-in-the-making. Croatian, just like English and Rioplatense Spanish is very modern(ized), the written tongue is to be close to the way educated people speak home, dated verbal forms, when used, are used ironically or for a humorous effect. I never learned Croatian grammar at school, and our teachers never corrected our way of using contemporary Croatian in writing. I don't even know how to conjugate verbs in all tenses (since in spoken and written Croatian only PREZENT, PERFEKT and FUTUR are used, and all other tenses are arcaic-sounding...unlike in French, German, Italian etc. if a tense is not used in speech, its usage is not neutral, but marked, and that's why goes out of written use soon as well, otherwise, there would be a gap between a spoken and a written language, a first step to diglossia, which is also called ''shyzoglossia'' divided language, or language schizophrenia. In non-diglossic languages (like English, Croatian, Rioplatense Spanish) people never say: ''Our language is so complicated''; ''I speak my language all wrong'', and there are no ''Speak better'' courses for native speakers of the language. In Brazil, Czech Republic and Indonesia many people think they speak their language wrong, and there are language courses for ''improving one's speech'' (language course for native learners, which is ridiculous). Some languages to compare: a) diglossic> Swiss German, Finnish, Estonian, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Belgian Dutch b) might become diglossic in the future> French c) non-diglossic, accepting language change and incorporating spoken usage soon into the formal written style> English, European Portuguese, Croatian, Macedonian, Slovak, Rioplatense Spanish Some languages started as non-diglossic (like Indonesian) but thanks to linguistic and social influences (Javanese in the case of Indonesian) have become pretty diglossic. Great examples of ''abandoned'' diglossia> 1. Bengali (from 1940ies) educated colloquial usage became the new written standard 2. Telugu (from 1970ies) educated colloquial usage became the new written standard 3. Greek (from 1970ies) 4. Argentine Spanish (from 1950ies) 5. Japanese (from 1900) A key to resolvubg diglossia is bring the spoken (''basilect'') and the written language (''acrolect'') closer, make the intermediate register (''mesolect'') the new standard. When it is impossible to use the same structure in the writing and in the speech, there is a potential for a diglossic conflict, as in Brazilian Portuguese: ''They found him'' Acharam ele. (L) Acharam-no. / Eles o acharam (H) ''Get him!'' Peguem ele! (L) Peguem-no! (H) in these examples there is no ''compromise'' available that would be used both in natural speech and in writing Portuguese is the most hated subject in Brazilian schools, and why is that? It's because students are required to write in a way no 21th century Brazilian speaks, the H norm is modeled on 19th century European Portuguese grammar (albeit with Brazilianized spelling and vocabulary). Edited by Medulin on 03 April 2015 at 12:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5627 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 23 of 38 03 April 2015 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Really? What grammatical modernisations appeared in the last update? I must have missed it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4463 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 24 of 38 03 April 2015 at 12:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Going-to-future is being increasingly used instead of will-future (in cases where both are possible/interchangeable). http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/verb-phrase/book /tagliamonte.pdf 1 person has voted this message useful |
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