Never heard it, maybe it's a Belgian thing. It sounds ridiculous on the face of it I have to say.
French
- Thread starter Serenus
- Start date
I find the French academic circles to be very permeable to anglicismes in France, however...
The anciens élèves are now commonly called alumni (the word is Latin, but the borrow is from English). The grade two years after the licence is a "master" since decades. Even the word order is took from the English syntax: Sorbonne Université, Aix-Marseille Université, Avignon Université, Le Mans Université, Paris Sciences et Lettres, which shows more clearly the English influence than some lexical borrows.
On Paris Sciences et Lettres, it established a special cycle, during one week per year, which is called PSL Week... Why "Week" and not "semaine"? Nobody knows, but it seems to be the idea to use English for the sake of using English. Some French teachers want to teach to French pupils the philosophy of Greek and Latin authors in English, which seems absurd. It could make sense to teach Hobbes in English..., but Lucretius?
Joseph de Maistre used to wrote, in the Nights of Saint-Petersburg that "toute dégradation individuelle ou nationale est sur-le-champ annoncée par une dégradation rigoureusement proportionnelle dans le langage". French academic circles clearly show such path, I fear...
The anciens élèves are now commonly called alumni (the word is Latin, but the borrow is from English). The grade two years after the licence is a "master" since decades. Even the word order is took from the English syntax: Sorbonne Université, Aix-Marseille Université, Avignon Université, Le Mans Université, Paris Sciences et Lettres, which shows more clearly the English influence than some lexical borrows.
On Paris Sciences et Lettres, it established a special cycle, during one week per year, which is called PSL Week... Why "Week" and not "semaine"? Nobody knows, but it seems to be the idea to use English for the sake of using English. Some French teachers want to teach to French pupils the philosophy of Greek and Latin authors in English, which seems absurd. It could make sense to teach Hobbes in English..., but Lucretius?
Joseph de Maistre used to wrote, in the Nights of Saint-Petersburg that "toute dégradation individuelle ou nationale est sur-le-champ annoncée par une dégradation rigoureusement proportionnelle dans le langage". French academic circles clearly show such path, I fear...
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Lol.
At least part of it can be chalked up to a desire to appeal more to foreign students, but it's absurd. If they come here to study, then chances are the French language appeals to them, and they'll probably have to learn it at some point, so I don't see what anyone gains by doing this sort of thing.
Another part of it is the desire to make French students more "exportable", which I guess is more easily justifiable, but I still dislike those practices.
Well, I wouldn't be such an alarmist. In my view the phenomenon is just mildly annoying at times, but I'm not sure it predicts anything worse.
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Guetter is used as slang for regarder here, in addition to its regular meaning. "Hé, guette ça !", an equivalent of "mate ça !"
You might be right about être 'près, but I can't say I understand the semantical evolution. On the other hand, I have a vague impression I came across a similar construction (or at least one that used après) in one of the Caribbean creoles... I'll have to look into it.
Also, avant longtemps seems to be an anglicism.
It would make more sense as a present perfect, to me. I just don't get how the durative aspect can come from après, as it seems like something is missing: "je suis après faire qqch." might convey a sense of "I started doing something", but where do you get the "I'm still doing it" part?
Not sure I've ever heard that.
It might be banlieue slang, but I'm not sure.
We just read about the Affaire du collier of the 1780's and I want to show my (more advanced) students this letter, but I can't make out one of the clauses. It's the phrase
"xxx ce je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait." What's the first word of this clause? Sur?
"xxx ce je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait." What's the first word of this clause? Sur?
Yes it's ''sur ce".
Ah thanks, I just can't make out some of the old style handwriting.
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Sur ce is, here, printed with typographical fonts, not hand wrote.
The font is the French style (as opposed to the Roman, the Gothic, the Italic...), inspired from the French gothic cursive handwriting of the 16th century
The font failed to widespread and stay in use, in part because its design was protected: if I am recalling correctly, Granjon, its designer, had the royal privilege to make them. So the font ended to be known as caractères de civilité, because civility books were among the last to use such font. The font continued to be used after the handwriting changed (as can be see in your lettre d'embastillement, where the actual hand wrote letters are of a different style than the typographically printed letters).
A bit more can be read here about this font:
Civilité - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
And a lot more in Rémi Jimenes's Les Caractères de civilité:
(I did buy this book some years ago, it is interesting).
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I was playing with Suno and decided to submit a French literary text (J.J. Rousseau, les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire) to see what it would do with it, and I really like what it came up with:
Rousseau’s hopelessness, frustration with mankind and constant victimization find their ideal expression in this style, in my opinion.
Pretty impressive indeed! I didn't know Suno.
Is that the original text verbatim, or did Suno modify it in some way?