Re: Let's talk about langages (Advice/Help)

From: Neeraj Mathur (neeraj.mathur_at_chch.ox.ac.uk)
Date: 08/19/04 

Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:57:56 +0100

Hi,

Thanks for your comments - my replies are interspersed.

"devil" <devil@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.08.19.14.54.20.779347@attglobal.net...
> First, on history. I don't think it's really a situation whereby French
> "has diverged." More like, it was born like that.

Why would you say that, exactly?

Perhaps an example of what I meant would help. In the 12th century, spoken
French had a difference between the 2 sg. 'chantes' and the 3 pl.
'chantent'. This difference was present in the written French of the time.
Since then, however, the written form has continued exactly - we still write
'tu chantes' and 'ils chantent' - but the spoken language has diverged from
this, and only one form is used, [sat] (with a nasalised vowel - sorry, I'm
not an IPA pro yet - have I written that wrong?).

In any case, what is important is that there is a distinction in written
French which is not present in spoken French. This makes it difficult for
learners - those who learn spoken French first (Francophone children,
students in immersion classes, etc.) will have difficulty (minute, yes, but
present) learning the written forms, while those who learn both together
(older students learning French as a second language) will have to deal with
the fact that the grammars of the written and spoken languages are
different. These difficulties are not experienced by students of, say,
Spanish.

> As to comparing spelling and grammar difficulty in French and in English,
> again the comparison is by no means as straightforward as you make it
> sound. True that French is more structured, that it's much more
> rule-based, and that it has more redundancies governed by rules. OTOH,
> it's almost always much more predictable than English. In English, you
> may not have rules, but you end up having to learn the usage in effect on
> a case-by-case manner. A point that native speakers may have a hard time
> noticing, BTW, because they will typically have learned the cases before
> reaching an age where you become conscious and aware of your own learning
> process.

I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about here - would you
mind rephrasing that for me, with an example, so that I can follow you
better?

> The point you make about past tenses is very relative. This may be
> happening, but not necessarily across the board, and you will meet people
> who will claim what you see as a done deal as being just plain wrong.

Let me elaborate on my point a bit. In Italian, there is a contrast between
'feci' and 'ho fatto'. In Spanish, there is a contrast between 'hice' and
'he hecho'. In English, there is a contrast between 'I did' and 'I have
done'.

In the written French of Voltaire, there is an exactly corresponding
difference between 'je fis' and 'j'ai fait'. My understanding is that this
contrast, at that time, was present in the spoken language as well.

In modern days, however, I have never heard a Francophone use 'je fis' in
his normal speech. I have instead always heard 'j'ai fait'. This is used,
not only in situations where Voltaire uses it, but also in situations where
the older language produces 'je fis'. This is my experience; if this is
because of my limited exposure to Francophones, j'invite vous tous qui
habitez dans des pays Francophones de m'y corriger.

Now, we come to the written language. How often do writers today make that
distinction? Once again, I invite those with more experience to correct me,
but I believe that the distinction is much more common in written French
than in spoken. Regardless, for those who wish to read French literature
(whether native speakers or not) it is important to learn both the
morphology of the 'fis'-type forms, and the semantics involved, so that they
can properly understand those texts that do use it. At the same time, they
must realise that the grammar of the spoken language is different. In other
words, they must learn different grammars for the written and spoken
language - a difficulty not experienced with Italian or Spanish, say, where
the grammars of the written and spoken languages are different.

Now when you say that it is not a 'done deal', do you mean that both past
tenses are still in use in modern spoken French?

> Coming back to grammar and structure, in English you still have some
> remnants of declinations, absent from modern French but still very much
> there in German and in Russian. In Portuguese and possibly in Spanish,
> you have future tenses for subjunctives, absent from French. Languages
> such as German and Dutch have complex rules for sentence construction and
> order of word, with French being much more flexible; some of these are
> probably still there in English?

I do not want to suggest that certain types of language are inherently
harder than others - for instance, that analytical languages which rely
heavily on word order are easier than inflected languages with several
morpho-semantic categories. All I want to argue is that it is difficult for
people to learn a language where the spoken and written forms of the
language differ, and that the greater the difference, the greater the
difficulty.

For instance, take Welsh. The accepted 'literary' Welsh is very different
from the spoken varieties of it - thus the literary form of 'I am not
singing' is 'Nid wyf fy ddim yn canu', while the (Northern) spoken form is
'dwy ddim yn canu'. This creates a difficulty for the learner. The present
method of circumventing this difficulty is to teach the spoken language
first, and write it using an informal transcription system that reflects the
spoken language very closely; at a later time (if ever) the grammar of the
written language is learnt. If an attempt was made to teach the formal
written language and the spoken language together, the difficulty would be
very great. In French, as the divergence of the spoken and written is less,
both are taught together; the difficulty is less than it would be for Welsh.
In Spanish, the divergence between spoken and written is very low indeed,
and this source of difficulty is correspondingly miniscule.

> > Being schooled in Canada, I noticed that people of Francophone
> > backgrounds (or who had had French Immersion primary schooling) did not
> > seem to be particularly advantaged with regards to written French in
> > French classes; their advantages were solely oral. I take this as proof
> > of the distance between the written and spoken forms of the language.
>
> You should not. You would see a similar situation with any language.
> Definitely, for instance with Chinese languages. But likely across the
> board.

Well, let's test it. Is there anybody here with experience with Spanish or
Italian Immersion, and who can comment on the abilities of such students
with regards to the written language?

Neeraj Mathur

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