Re: [RANT] French translation for debconf templates stucked at 90% : analysis
Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:
> I don't know wheter French people are being anti-non-French, but also in
> Germany they are for sure famous for being anti-non-French. They have
> (or had?) a law that requires radio stations to play a certain amount of
> french songs, they have an academie francaise that guards the cleanness
> of the language, and they invent french terms much more often than we
> germans do. The examples that surprise Germans most are probably the
> inverted abbreviations (OTAN, SIDA etc.) which we just take as they are
> (NATO and AIDS), although the "correct" german abbreviations would be
> NAVO and EIDS. That's probably not unique to french, but it's the french
> who are famous for this. Germans, on the other hand, like to use english
> terms, it's simply cool - so cool that the even use "english" terms that
> do not exist in english, namely "handy" for a cellular phone.
What you said about Germans indeed applies to Swiss german-speakers
:) (I noticed your location in you signature), which ones also use the
funny expression "handy".
That said, there is also a trend in France to use English terms. If
there are laws forcing advertisement to include a translation of
non-french words, if there is a quota of french songs played on the
radio, it's not just for fun.
> The francophone canadians, OTOH, don't have any rumor associated, "we"
> simply don't know about them.
The french spoken by non-French people always make laughing French
people. In fact, their french is usually nearer to the old french than
the one spoken in France (for instance, nonante, septante is the
previous form of quatre-vingt-dix, soixante-dix...). People from
Quebec even mix old French with English (for instance, a song is
called a "toune", coming from tune obviously). But I have to admit
that I find some expressions used by people from Quebec or
Switzerland truly funny.
For instance, around Geneva, they have a weird name for what we call
"rond point" in France.
Well, I forgot the English name of it; you find a "rond
point" when two roads are crossing and look like :
|
---O---
|
instead of
|
---+---
|
People in Switzerland call that "rondelle". Consider how "rondelle" is
used in French (mostly food or sexual connotation) it is a bit
surprising at first.
But even in France, some words are specific to an area. For
instance, while where I live we call plastic bags "sachet", in the
south-west, they talk about "poche". I was a bit annoyed to recognize
that, according to several dictionnaries, it makes more sense to use
the word "poche" than "sachet". By the way, my grand-mother, that
lives at 200 km from where I live, name plastic bags "cornet".
Hum, I lost track of the original discussion, sorry =)
--
Mathieu Roy
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