Le Grr, etc.

[rebness]

Disclaimer: This rant does not apply to anyone on my Friends list.

I was reading through a Francophone community today, whereby someone decided it would be a really good idea to write in a mix of French and English. I don’t mean a French introduction, English body of text… I mean something akin to this:

Bonjour, hello… It’s very bonne to meet you all ici. I have been de amoureux avec Paris and France for a tres longue time.

I believe it was at this point that I snapped my pencil in half, to the alarm of my colleagues. I am just so sick of this. It’s infecting LJ like some plague of stupidity.

LOOK. Stop messing up your writing in order to try and look good. We can all use the fecking (grammatically incorrect) Babelfish, you know!

Simple English Lesson

English follows the rule, in general, of Subject-Verb-Object

Subject: I
Verb: Hate
Object: You

French, however, follows a different grammatical pattern:

Subect: Je
Object: Te
Verb: Deteste

(I would have used “Je t’aime” as an example, but the dropped e would have been a pain.)

Therefore, when reading either language, the brain must adapt to the grammatical structure of said language, the nuances of English or the je ne sais quoi of French. Do these writers know how disconcerting it is for the brain to have to keep snapping back and forth into the different grammatical styles every second word?

If you write “I love te” or some such rubbish, I’m afraid you need slapping with a trout. Honestly! If you can't speak French, you can't speak French. Dropping in random French words (nearly always with the wrong modifier) Is. Just. Tiresome.

And revolution-quoting people! Viva is Spanish. Vive is French. Never say Viva la revolution for French, because I’ll spork you good.

Now, I’m not going to be a hypocrite here. When RPing or sometimes when writing a fic, I’ll drop in some French rather than write the whole thing in that language, if only because whilst I’m a pathetic show-off, I’m not so wanky that I expect every reader to be able to speak it. However, I will always do my utmost to make sure it’s an entire sentence in French. A vraiment here, a cherie there, doesn’t hurt anyone. Refer to a woman as “mon” or a man as “ma” and Houston Orleans, we have a problem.

Just…please. If you’re going to use French, learn the entire sentence. It really won’t hurt. There are many good reference books out there. Hell, use a Lonely Planet phrase book if you have to. You may fool some of the people into thinking OMG WTF u sp33k French!!!1! but the rest of us? We’ll be laughing at you. Or snapping our pencils in incandescent rage. Whichever.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Oh God, yeah. Feel my pain. This is why I could never read anime fandoms in English even if I wanted to. All fics are peppered with bad fangirl Japanese. Oh, it's so bad and nearly always nonsensical. I want to tell people to just stop! Please, never use Japanese in fic again! *weeps*

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear God. It must be doubly worse for Japanese. >_<

I don't speak a word of Japanese, but when you're reading an anime fic and someone shouts out something like "Kawaaiii-sama banzai!!!" I just want to get out my spork.

[diana-molloy.livejournal.com]

I have a habit of doing this with Portuguesse. But as you don't speak that (do you?) no pencil snapping pour vous *smirk*. Actually I've done it with French too only because I write as if I am speaking to you and when I am speaking to you I will switch back and forth between languages all the time usually only keeping the grammatical correctness of the main language I happen to be speaking.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

But you speak Portuguese fluently, don't you? That's all right. My brother and I will sometimes switch from English to French or Spanish in conversation, but only to keep up our language and also because it's useful if you're talking about someone or something privately. >:)

However, if you spoke only a smattering of the language or none at all, and were just using to try and look cool... then we break out the pencil-snapping. ;)

[tipgardner.livejournal.com]

Here via...I think mirabellwr's LJ. This is exactly what I was going to post. I often find that when I'm speaking with Germans, French, Italians and/or Spaniards, that we switch back and forth, more or less randomly. For business speech, of course, many technical terms only exist in one language or another, but for casual speech, often one person only knows English and their own tongue or that sort of thing and it does lead to rather patchwork conversations.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

I love switching back and forth between languages with fluent people-- you get a real buzz out of it, and also it's a massive help in learning another language if, say, I was to converse with a German or even a Greek. As a learning tool, I think it's fine.

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

LOL. This sort of thing reminds me of when I was in Trier, Germany, and the hotel got TV from nearby Luxemborg. Talk about a screwed up language! Caleb and I were there arguing, me saying it sounded German, him saying French. And then we learned... it's both!

[rebness.livejournal.com]

That's quite interesting. When we went to Alsace last week, it was a very strange mix of French/German dialect (given that the two languages are like chalk and cheese.)

Half the place-names were in German, though French is the official language. A newspaper I bought there had some articles in German, as well as offering three German channels and one in "Alsacien."

The French spoken there had a more... concrete sound to it than the lighter Parisian accent. It was really interesting.

You should definitely consider going to Alsace next time you're in Germany. There's a super-fast SNCF train that takes you from Freiburg to Alsace in under half an hour, and the eclectic mix of Latin/Germanic language and culture makes it one of the most intriguing places I've ever been.

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

I regularly go to Cologne, which is right next to France basically. We actually planned to go to Alsace a couple of years ago during a trip but cancelled it because we liked Germany too much to leave even for a few days.

Luxembourgese is literally a mix of French and German. Apparently the "rule" is that when you're speaking, you choose one language for verbs and the other for nouns or something. It's not exactly random, but it's really weird, that's for sure! Even the newscasters do it, not just the people they interviewed on the news. I assume all the Luxies can speak German and French separately though.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Dear lord... I'd be so lost in Luxembourg! LMAO!

I definitely plan to explore the French/German border lands and towns more closely now. Luxembourg may very well be next. ;)

I loved the Alsatian dialect -- thankfully, they kept to French for me, but they had that clear and strong Germanic sound to their accent. Lovely.

How did you find the TV reports? Were you able to follow what was being said even through the lapses into French? Am wondering how I would fare with the German.

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

Actually it was funny. I couldn't understand the news b/c of the French and Caleb couldn't understand it because of the German. It was like just as you'd here a few words and start to piece together the meaning, some word you wouldn't know would appear and throw you off long enough you'd miss the rest of the sentence. I suppose if you knew both German and French well it would be OK.

[silverthoughts.livejournal.com]

Why do they do that? I'm ... speechless.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Because they think they're elite, or something. Or they're insane. I'll take either, because I can't imagine anyone with half a brain cell imagining it to be a good idea.

[verastar99.livejournal.com]

so do you disapprove of pidgins?

[rebness.livejournal.com]

>:p

Not at all. That can be considered dialect, and I'm all for that. However, when you have a native English speaker simply using language in that way to pretend they speak French or Spanish or whatever when they know barely more than a few words or are blatantly using babelfish to look smart?

You bet I have a problem. :p

[mothergoddamn.livejournal.com]

Je nais pas comphrendre, je suis anglais.


*runs*

[rebness.livejournal.com]

God, you should have heard my German. It was terrible! No wonder they all looked at me like I'd been possessed every time I opened my mouth.

Could possibly have also had something to do with the fact that I frothing at the mouth.

[mothergoddamn.livejournal.com]

German is SO easy.


Ja?
Vat?


There. Sorted.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

LMAO!

Super fantastische!

[mothergoddamn.livejournal.com]

Vat?






Oh ja, ja.

[avariecaita.livejournal.com]

JE T'ADORE!! (AKA: Shut the door ;p)

[rebness.livejournal.com]

In French class, we used to have a poster of that. A woman says "je t'adore" and the guy is all, "shut it yourself!"

Well, I thought it was funny. ;)

Et je t'aime. >:)

[saffronlie.livejournal.com]

Oh, Becky, you're so very trés.

:::resists urge to correct the gender of Kelly's adjective.::: (that sounds kind of dirty)

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Muhahahahahaa.

[mothergoddamn.livejournal.com]

Grrr!