Ceci n'est pas une endive - Tag - français

How Speaking Too Many Languages Is Limiting

notafish — Sun, 05 May 2013 09:08:00 +0200

I know, by saying this - that speaking too many languages is limiting- I probably go against years and hours and sweat tears of very dubious as well as very serious research that say the contrary. As a matter of fact, if you go about googling the advantages of speaking many languages, the number of results is around 123 million results (yes, millions). So who the heck do I think I am to say the contrary?

Well, here goes. I've always liked writing. I've written as long as I can remember, which probably dates back to my absolutely quiet and boring adolescence. We're talking a few decades here. However, ever since I've moved to Germany, I've stopped writing. Not completely, I will take the occasional napkin or more fashionable Facebook status to spit out a few well thought-out words that are spinning round in my mind. But on average, I have not written in the past eight years nearly a quarter as much as I have in the 20 odd years before that. Why? Not sure. But today I came to the realisation that this whole "I speak so many languages it's so cool" thing might be the core of the problem.

My thing about writing is that I usually write for someone. Not always someone in particular, but as I jot words down on a piece of paper, a name will pop out, and then maybe another, people past or present, who I'm thinking might find my words funny, moving, stupid or great, whatever. These people usually never get to read those words, but they are still the targets of my words. The problem starts when these people don't speak the language I'm writing in. Mind you, I write in English or French most of the time, and German comes a far third, so it's not that many languages. But still. That's three languages, and not all of my friends or acquaintances, or people I want to talk to actually speak all of those three languages. Some might speak one, others two, a few do speak the three, some even speak only very little of those to start with (that would be some of my Italian and Spanish speaking friends). So of course every time I write, I feel limited in who I can talk to.

Take this blog. Lately I've written in German, because it makes sense to write about Germany in German, and because frankly, it's often easier than to have to translate what I'm living on a day to day basis. But it's frustrating. Because as much as Germans might be interested in what I have to say about them, I'm also quite sure that my French speaking friends are interested in what I have to say about Germany. And I've caught myself numerous times citing my blogposts to someone as an example of what I think/do/feel and realizing that the blogpost i'm talking about is written in a language they do not speak.

Truth is, I am one person. No matter what language I speak. So if you know me in one language, you know me, and not just some part of me. And while I find that speaking three languages somewhat correctly and understanding two more quite well has sharpened my thinking process (the more languages you speak, the more accurate words you find to say exactly what you want to say), it also has limited my will and freedom of expression. I want to say things, but I'd like to say them in all the languages I speak AT ONCE. Not have to translate, but just write things as they come and they'd be automagically translated (and make sense, as opposed to simple machine translation) in all the languages I'd like to see them translated to. Unfortunately, we're not there yet, so I'm frustrated and I don't write.

But I have made a decision. I don't care any more. I am just going to write. If it's in a language you understand, good for you. If it's not, I am sorry, you'll either have to pass, or use bad machine translation. I need to write more, it's all cluttered in my many language head these days, I need to sort things out and writing is my way out.

Why the Accent Is so Important

notafish — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:14:00 +0200

Où la pub p)our une application iPhone sur le site spotify fait du multitâche une histoire un peu sale, faute d'accent.

You may know, or may not know, that we just had a son. He's now almost 7 weeks old and we took him to Wikimania in Poland. For that purpose, we had a passport made. You may remember, or may not remember, that passport making in the family is quite an adventure.

Well, our son got his double hyphen alright, but they forgot his accent. Well, they forgot mine, really, since the accent is on my name. Not a tragedy, especially since the German passport has the last name written in capital letters, so people tend to forget accents on those anyway (not the WIkipedians, I know). Still, I would have liked him to have an accent, but we needed to go to Poland, so I decided to keep the passport like this.

But sometimes, forgetting the accent can lead to interesting interpretations. Proof, the banner on the spotify website, for an iPhone app. The banner reads "Multitache sur votre iPhone". It should read "Multitâche sur votre iPhone" (see the little accent circonflexe - hat- on the a?). The difference is huge. As it is, it advocates stains on yuor iPhone. Well, maybe that's the intended meaning, but I don't think so.

Multitache=multistain (tache= a stain, a dirty spot)
Multitâche=multitask (tâche= a task)

Moral of the story, if you don't want to end up dirty, you might want to pay attention to the accent.

Faute de grammaire, on mange de la dessert

notafish — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:55:00 +0200

It is probably a marketing trick to be using French sounding names in countries where French is not spoken. Especially for food. The "Cuisine flair, I suppose". But what really really bothers me, is when marketing does not check its grammar and ends up using the wrong gender for a word, or making a pathetic spelling and grammar mistake. Two examples in Germany, where the gender of "dessert" has been changed, or where a mousse-like dessert is called Crème Composé when it should be Crème ComposéE.

J'ai toujours eu l'impression, à tort ou à raison, que le français jouissait d'une place particulière en Allemagne. Pas seulement en Allemagne d'ailleurs, un peu partout dans le monde. Du coup, il est utilisé dans un peu tous les domaines. Et plus particulièrement dans celui de la cuisine et de la nourriture. J'imagine que la cuisine française donne une image plutôt positive d'elle même et que donc par extension, utiliser le français quand on parle de nourriture permet de donner une image positive d'un produit.

Depuis quelques mois, la télévision allemande fait de la pub pour un dessert, dont le nom est "La Dessert". Et je dois avouer que cette grossière erreur de grammaire me hérisse le poil. Bien sûr, on peut imaginer que l'erreur n'en est pas une, mais plutôt un néologisme bidon destiné à permettre le dépôt de la marque. Je me dis que si ce "néologisme" avait été pensé par une marque française, je trouverais peut-être cela très spirituel. Mais du fait que ce produit soit exclusivement allemand, je ne peux m'empêcher de penser que les marketeux ont tout simplement mal fait leur boulot et qu'en voulant faire "français", ils ont sorti ce nom de leur chapeau sans penser plus avant.

Voilà pourtant que la semaine dernière, en faisant mes courses, je trouve dans les rayons de mon supermarché un nouveau produit (marque du distributeur, en l'occurrence REWE, le Leclerc du coin, genre) qui me fait à nouveau bondir. La crème composé (sic), si elle est fort bonne, me fait mal à l'oeil et à la grammaire. Il lui manque un "e" salutaire, que ma bonne âme de française qui corrigeait à l'école les dictées de ses copains a du mal à digérer (la crème elle, était bonne). Cela s'écrit "Crème composéE", bande de mauvais !

Je suppose qu'il y a des milliers d'exemples de grammaire hachée et torturée pour les besoins du marketing, mais ceux-là sont dans mon quotidien et ils m'énervent.

Vorauseilender Gehorsam

notafish — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:00 +0200

While reading one of the blogs I follow from afar on the "intercultural" scene, I stumbled upon the concet of "vorauseilender Gehorsam" (obedience before the order), an interesting concept which the commenter on the blog thought could be an explanation for the rise in English words within other languages. The idea being that people obey soe "unknown boss" that expects them to strew their conversations with English words to be fashionable, because it is the thing to do.

Ne crisez pas, ce billet est en français, seul le titre est en allemand. Je me baladais sur l'un des blogs "interculturels" que je lis de temps en temps (je suis une piètre lectrice de blogs, mais c'est une autre histoire) et suis tombée sur ce billet qui fait écho à mes billets précédents sur la difficulté (ou le bonheur) de parler plusieurs langues.

Le phénomène de Vorausleidender Gehorsam (obéissance avant l'ordre), tel qu'expliqué par Matthias sur le billet de Caroline est un concept que je ne connaissais pas et que je trouve particulièrement intéressant. Je ne suis pas certaine qu'il s'applique à l'exemple donné par Caroline, qui me semble plutôt relever du "which language says it best". En l'occurrence, le contexte (conversation avec un américain) appelle le mot le plus proche du sens que l'on veut dire, facilité par le fait que l'on sait que la personne à qui l'on parle comprendra ce mot de toutes façons. Il suffit d'écouter les conversations de personnes à la langue maternelle commune mais vivant dans un pays étranger pour voir se profiler nombre des ces "localisations" sauvages. Combien de fois ai-je parlé du Finanzamt à un français d'Allemagne, parce que le Trésor Public est un concept franco-français...

En revanche, cette idée de "vorauseilender Gehorsam" me paraît intéressante pour expliquer la "montée" des mots anglais dans les autres langues. On peut imaginer que le "chef" désincarné dans le contexte actuel est le phénomène de mode. Il est de bon ton de truffer son vocabulaire de mots anglais, pour montrer qu'on est "in" (à la page !), même si on les utilise parfois à tort et à travers. Les allemands sont très forts pour ça, entre le Handy (cell phone) et le Beamer (projector) qui s'ils ont des consonnances anglophones, ne sont pas de vrais mots de la langue anglaise. Je me suis surprise parlant d'un beamer à des anglophones qui me regardaient dun air étrange. Bref, que ce soit la mode, le net ou tout autre "chef" qui nous pousse à mélanger les langues et les genres, je trouve ce concept développé par Matthias très intéressant.

I Am More French Here Than in France

notafish — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:15:00 +0200

Étonnamment, je me sens plus française à l'étranger que lorsque je suis en France. Un sentiment difficile à décrire, parce qu'il est fait de nombreuses choses quelque peu triviales, autant que de choses fondamentales, mais que je ne sais pas décrypter de façon objective.

While skimming through it again, this note in Nancy Adler's book hit me with a few thoughts. Executives are more national abroad than they would be at home.

I am always wondering what it is to be "French", really. What does it mean? What do people think when they realize that I am French? But most importantly, what does it mean to me to be French? I've asked myself this question many a times, and I have never really come up with a satisfying answer.

The first time I asked myself this question was in the US, when I left home to study for two years in an international environment. I remember extending my hand in the first few days, presenting myself "Hi, I'm Delphine, from France". This "from France" turned out to be the most qualifying thing I could say about myself. Mind you, all of us were doing it, adding our country of origin to our name, but I realized that where the first name really does not tell much about a person, the fact that they're "from a country" tells a lot more.

In that international environment, I started thinking about what it was to be French. And this has followed me through my international perigrinations. I realize that being French is really something I am actually a little proud of, but... only when I am abroad. In the end, one's nationality is somehow defined in a negative way (more in the photography sense of the word), against things that are different from what they are "at home". There is the language, of course, which probably taints my use of other languages (I tend to make never-ending sentences in English and use too many parentheses, a typical French thing), but there is more.

I could say that there is the food, and the wine. It's kind of trivial, I guess, but it's very true. I make a point of cooking "à la française" in my German home, for example. But that really isn't it. There are both so many things that make me feel French, and so little. The whole church saga made me realize how anchored in me the separation between spiritual and administrative was, for example. Or the difficulty I have using "du" (the informal "you' in German), because it exists in French too but social codes are very different about when you can use it in France and Germany.

But these are all things that I hardly think about when I'm in France. Actually, I tend to be rather un-French when in France. On the contrary to many French people, I speak several languages or I defend the US for example.

The thing is, I believe that my being French is made of many many little trivail things, as well as of many fundamental values, thoughts and behaviours. I just don't know how to list them objectively.

One thing is sure, I am more French here in Germany, than I have ever been in France. But please, don't ask me why. Maybe just because I am not German?

Pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères

notafish — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:54:00 +0200

A few months after writing my blog post Why The French Don't Speak Any Other Language, I read Jean-Benoît's Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent. Jean-Benoît Nadeau is French Canadian and lived two years in France to study the French. And he seemed to come to a conclusion similar to mine concerning why the French don't speak any other language, ie. that the mastery of the language is a very important thing for the French and unless they speak a foreign language perfectly, they just won't speak.

Il y a de cela quelques mois, j'ai commis un billet tentant d'expliquer pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères. Ma théorie est que le français est une langue qui supporte difficilement d'être mal parlée, parce qu'elle en devient difficile à comprendre.

Les français ont une réputation qui les précède de gens ne sachant pas parler les langues étrangères et surtout pas l'anglais. Et ce malgré un système scolaire qui met l'accent sur les langues étrangères dès la sixième (que l'on atteint à environ 11-12 ans) et pendant au moins cinq années si l'on passe son bac. Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai lu l'ouvrage de Jean-Benoît Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent, qui relate ses deux années en France. Il y aborde rapidement la question du blinguisme et le fait en ces termes :

J'ai ma petite théorie pour expliquer pourquoi on dit que les Français sont moins bilingues que les autres Européens. D'abord, je crois que c'est faux : je suis même convaincu que les Français ont toujours été aussi bilingues que les autres. Problème : le niveau de bilinguisme d'un peuple ne se mesure pas, objectivement. Toutes les études ne peuvent mesurer que ce que les gens pensent d'eux-mêmes. À la question : "Parlez-vous une autre langue ?" un Français aura tendance à répondre non, sauf s'il la parle bien, tout simplement parce que la maîtrise parfaite de la langue est fondamentale pour lui.^[1]

Je suis évidemment d'accord avec cette analyse. Je pense que les Français ont tout simplement un complexe d'infériorité lorsqu'il s'agit de parler une langue étrangère, notamment parce que dans la société française, la maîtrise de la langue (française) est un signe de distinction sociale et d'éucation. Du coup, le Français parlant mal une langue étrangère (ou pensant qu'il la parle mal), aura tendance à ne pas s'aventurer hors de la langue qu'il maîtrise.

En tant que Française parlant tous les jours une langue étrangère, c'est un état d'esprit que je connais bien. Bien que ma maîtrise de l'allemand soit bonne, elle est loin d'être parfaite et cela donne lieu à de nombreuses frustrations, probablement exacerbées par le fait que je suis française.

Notes

[1] Les Français aussi ont un accent, Jean-Benoît Nadeau, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, p. 243

I don't spreche Deutsch, merci beaucoup

notafish — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:16:00 +0200

Well, actually, I do speak German, but I hate it (If I dared, I'd write the hate bold in font size 40 and with four exclamation marks) when a website speaks to me in German. I mean, my language preferences are clear in Firefox, there's even only French and English so why a website should speak to me in German is beyond me.

Well, I know why. I live in Germany. But as Stephanie Booth explains very well in her "Waiting for the Babel Fish" presentation, which I attended in Reboot a long time ago, there are some things that are very wrong in how the internet brings about multinlingualism.

And that starts (or ends?) with websites speaking to me in German. It is, for example, the case for MySpace.com, which bases the site's interface language on the IP address (ie. the geographical location of the user). But there is nothing worse than to go from a French blog or a French email to a page which speaks German without real reason. Not to mention that having Hano's page all in German when their music is a tribute to the French language is kind of... a heresy.

I can understand, and I can even accept, that ads altogether speak to me in German. Well, it's not like I'm gonna click on them or anything, but basing ads on the IP address is mostly a good call. Mostly, because many of these ads are for online stuff, which I would be much more receptive to in a language I am willing to read at the top of my head. German is too much work.

This said, it is actually quite interesting to note when it bothers me and when it doesn't. I hate it that sites give me a default German interface, but for some of the sites I use, my user preferences are set to give me a German interface (Xing for example). So what I really hate is not so much the German in itself, but the lack of rhyme or reason for a specific linguistic environment. And the rupture which comes with switching from a language I am not in the mood for (read: my brain is not ready for).

For the record, on the contrary to what Stephanie says in her presentation, it seems Google speaks to me in French, with a very nice "Google Suisse" logo, which changes to "Google Switzerland" when I change my browser's preferences. Google's got it right.

Bottom line is, thereis still much work to be done to make sure that the internet really speaks to all.

Choosing a Name: The First Name

notafish — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:54:00 +0200

I never got around to telling the story of our daughter's name. It is, indeed, one heck of a story, which starts even before she was born. You have to remember that she has a German father and a French mother. This led, before her birth, to endless dicussions about what names are suitable in both languages. We had a few criteria we tried to respect when choosing her first name.

The first criterion was pronunciation. We wanted to make sure that the name would not vary to much from one language to the other. This rules out all the names having very specific pronuciations, such as names starting with "J" for example, which the Germans make soft (as in yum) or "H", which the French tend to forget to pronounce altogether (Hans is "Ans" in French, and "Hans" in German).

Pronunciation is one thing, but spelling is another, which is actually related. We couldn't take a name that people couldn't read in one or the other language. This ruled out my favorite "Benoît" (Ben-o-wha in French, Ben-o-it for the Germans) and names with French nasals or specific French spellings (Agnès is read A-ni-es in French, Ag-ness in German, I find on nice, the other one not so).

Another criterion was ambiguity. Some names are very easily recognizable as female or male, others are just extremely ambiguious in one language, when they are not in the other. Again, Delphine is very French, but never leads to confusion about the gender. Arne, on the other end, written or spoken, for people who are neither Swedish, nor Northern Germans, is often mistaken for a woman's name. So we needed a name that would be very clear.

And finally of course, a name we both liked. Which is, as we found out, probably the hardest thing of all. Not som much because we have different tastes, but because cultural differences kick in very fast. The German sounding names I liked were either terrible, out of fashion, too fashionable or plainly unheard of, the French sounding name Arne liked were either terrible, out of fashion, too fashionable or plainly unheard of. Funny to see how much culture the name carries.

Well, we settled for the first name Emma, classic, simple, read and pronounced in most languages in exactly the same manner, hardly ambiguous, and which we both liked. It took us around nine months... And then came the last name. But this will do for another post.

The bilingual challenge

notafish — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:24:00 +0100

I have written about the interesting differences in cultural perception of the same objects, or rather of the same words. I have always been fascinated by the easiness with which I navigate from one language to another, namely French and English. And I am equally fascinated by the difficulty I have to do the same thing with German, which could probably be tagged as my third language.

Here I am for example, sitting in the waiting room of a German doctor, writing in English, while understanding the radio in the background in German, and recalling to write this note the words I have just read in French. I am reading a book about bilingualism "Le défi des enfants bilingues", to try and understand what Tuinkel will have to go through with a French mother and a German father. I am just at the beginning, but there is one image the author recalled which really lit my understanding of what bilingualism could be all about.

The first part of the book tries and defines bilingualism, to come to the conclusion that there are probably as many bilingiulisms as there are bilingual people. In short, it is very difficult to pinpoint when exactly someone can be considered "bilingual". It is also very difficult to actually compare the degrees to which one person masters two languages. Mainly because this measure can only realistically be taken against that of monolingualism, ie. a state where the person who learns a language uses it at every single opportunity; whereas a bilingual person probably makes use of their two languages in different circumstances (at home for one, at school for the other, on holidays for one, at work for the other etc.).

Abdelilah-Bauer recalls an example given by François Grosjean in his book Bilinguisme et biculturalisme, essai de définition. I am paraphrasing:

It would probably never come to the athlete's mind to compare the performances of a hurdles runner to those of a 100m sprinter or those of a high jump athlete. In short, although the hurdles performance actually takes from both sprinter and high jumper, noone would say that a hurdle runner is a bad sprinter, or a bad high jumper. Bilingualism can thus be measured as a different set of skills which, if it fishes in different pools, constitutes a discipline of its own, independant of monolingualism.

I found the image very interesting, because it somehow broke one of the ideas I've always had at the back of my mind, while finding it really weird, ie. that languages coexist as separate pools from which I fish from. In short, thinking that my brain has some kind of switch that goes from one language to the other and that switching on one language, I switch off the other(s). At the same time, the situation I described above and the difficulty I have had to translate the illustration of the hurdle guy definitely proves that all the languages I speak are always there for the taking.

I'll share more of my thoughts about this book which I find extremely interesting as I get along.