Talk:French language

Pronouncation

I am not sure if this is a good source, but I speak some French, I have listened to French speakers, and I tend to hear the pronunciation of the language being [lɑ̃ŋ fʁɑ̃sɛ] more times than not, I didn’t remove the other one, but I added this to show to readers pronouncatiion can vary ChauConlangs (talk) 01:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

@ChauConlangs: I am a native French speaker who has nearly always lived in France and I have never heard it. To me it would sound like an obvious grammar mistake. A source is necessary (ideally one which explicitly states that "langue française" is sometimes pronounced [lɑ̃ŋ fʁɑ̃sɛ]; if not that, a recording of that pronounciation would help). GrandEscogriffe (talk) 12:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 June 2024

Under Grammar > Nouns > link to the grammatical genders article.

'For nouns regarding the living, their "grammatical genders" often correspond to that which they refer to.' Rumboehe (talk) 02:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 03:45, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Where's french in France? Possible imperialist biased view in the article

In the section "Geographic distribution" I see no map or text about the geographic distribution of this language in France.

I think this is not appropriate, not only because the lack of important information such as dialects and geographical variations, but also because it's giving indirectly the idea that France is linguistically homogeneous. That's false, and most of its other languages are in vulnerable or endangered status, such as the occitan dialects or Franco-provençal, so this monolingual vision of france can be dangerous for the respect and the health of these other languages.

The article does only show national borders in the maps and focus on them in the text, and that could be appropriate if we were talking about french language diaspora or french language in the world, but this doesn't make sense, because french usage can (and it actually does) vary by region, independently of national borders. It also talks about the prestige of the language in many fields, and its supposed historical influence.

This makes me wonder the possibility that this was written with some imperialist view or bias that seems to prioritize geopolitical and global influence over geographical realism; some kind of an imperialist view. Please, take my observation into account, I could be misunderstanding.Politonno (talk) 03:38, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

"Supposed" historical influence? French has had a huge historical influence, globally second only to English, and not so long ago more influential than English.

Agreed that the distribution in France should be shown. That's an egregious oversight. But it's going to have to be by percentages, as I doubt there are many areas in France where the majority isn't Francophone. Even Basque is only spoken by 10% of ethnic Basques.

And yes, this is a result of imperialism. But that doesn't mean it isn't real. — kwami (talk) 06:16, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, french language has had an impact in the world, mostly thanks to imperialism and political influence, but I think this article centers too much attention in the "prestige" and not the "global presence", because this article is not about history of the french language nor the french diaspora.

The fact that peripheric french languages are most of them minorities (not all of them, breton language is more spoken in its own territory than french), it doesn't mean that french has local varieties. French dialects are centerd in northern France, which is the native region of the language. Most francophone population in the rest of the country comes from families from the north that migtated away between the 18th and 20th centuries. This migrations were heterogeneous, so there's no regional dialects native from those regions.

I don't know if I'm expressing myself correctly. Demographically, there's francophone population in all France, but this information is not descriptive of the language's dialectal diversity and does not give linguistical information; only political and demographical. Culturally, french is not native away from northern france, and that's not shown in this article. That's why I think it could be biased. Politonno (talk) 19:10, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

It's now native in southern France due to language shift, not immigration. Occitan and especially Arpitan are moribund, spoken by probably less than 1% of the population. Is there any language transmission at all any longer? AFAICT, even elderly speakers are natively bilingual in french. — kwami (talk) 00:17, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Native language in southern France includes Occitan, not exclusively French. The fact that some local languages (not all, breton is not endangered everywhere and has a lot of presence in western Brittany) suffer endangered or vulnerable status doesn't mean that the region is exclusively French.

It's been after several processes of language assimilation and substitution that the majority speaks French, but there's no local French dialectal characteristics yet, because the process included relatively recent migration of northern families to the south heterogeneously. I haven't checked local demographics of peripherical languages, but it's still important to point out that those regions are not exclusively francophone, and there's is a possible negative impact in the health of those minority languages in not doing it so.Politonno (talk) 15:42, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. — kwami (talk) 21:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Don't are up

Don't are up 41.138.89.234 (talk) 07:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Number of speakers seems too small

Est. Of 350-380M 46.19.86.113 (talk) 17:51, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Per what source? Joiedevivre123321 (talk) 13:50, 16 December 2024 (UTC)