Do you know the french YT channel called Linguisticae ? Good channel if you like linguistics. And you'll know what I think of the Académie Française, by the way ...
Nobody talks about us better than strangers :D (Gabriel, mais non je crois que c'était une blague sur le niveau moyen déplorable en anglais des Français !)
@@Gabriel-bb8fpa hospital that cares not for charity? I’m learning French and it’s great to learn another idiom like that! I’ll have to keep it in mind for when I find a situation to use it
The Office de la Langue Française, in Québec, is even more extreme than l'Académie Française in preserving the "purity" of the language: with modernity, new words associated with new technologies are making their way into the French language, mostly from English, but have been officially replaced with French sounding equivalents, such as "email" that became "courriel", "web" became "toile", and many others, though in every day life lots of people "still" use the English version. This process always have the blessings of l'Académie Française of course.
Balado et baladodiffusion, deux termes merveilleux. Mais bon en France vous avez un petit monde de journalistes (du type de ceux qui sévissent sur France Inter et France Culture), de militants et d'idéologues universitaires (de bas étage) qui sont vent debout contre la francisation des anglicismes.
Never forget when the OQLF fined an Italian restaurant in Montreal for using one too many “pasta”s, rather than the ‘purer’ French « pâtes », on their menu
@@jandron94 Le travail de l'académie française n'a jamais été d'isoler le français du reste des langage et ajouter des traductions. Son travail est de faire évoluer la langue en s'ouvrant aux autres langages (que ce soit anglais, espagnol, arabe, verlan ou neologisme technologique). C'est d'ailleurs pourquoi certaines langues sont condamnés selon certains linguistes: car elles sont trop imperméables aux autres langage. Au Quebec, certe dans la forme ils essaient de garder un français très pure mais dans le fond ils utilisent un grand nombre de mot anglais dans le parler de tous les jours.
@Dave Duchesne Sometimes we anglicize and you don't, sometimes we don't and you do. In Québec, they write "arrêt" on the stop signs, in France it's just "stop" (un stop), also a few decades ago the Académie Française invented the word "ordinateur" for computer, I'm not sure but I think in Québec people say "un computer" ou "un laptop"? Overall I think the Québecois take the anglicism issue much more seriously than the French since the language is geographically isolated. In the french administration people would write "courriel" but never say it, orally it was "un mail" or "un email" unless in the case of a very legal occasion. On the one hand the Académie is trying to keep alive a long dead literary golden age on the other they simplify the form and include new words from new technologies, other languages and neologisms. They're getting bashed at for both. It's easy for the French to blame the Académie for anglicisms and not the TV/internet commercials which 1 out of 2 headlines are in English. Or the french speaking gamers who speak a peculiar sociolect of gallicized English. Or whoever these people are who don't translate the title of an American movie/series in French because it sounds cooler and therefore sells better.
@@fav8048 We don't use un computer or un laptop. It's ordinateur and laptop is ordinateur portable or only portable. And we use téléphone cellulaire or only cellulaire for cellphone (or téléphone intélligent for smartphone).
As a french born and raised in Alsace (where we speak a dialect) I'm mixed on the academie française. Some rules and words are odd and since I speak a mix of french and german (alsacian dialect) I enjoy that the language is beeing simplified, but men, sometimes it feels like we're also simplifying too much of it
@@lunarmodule6419 Ouah! Je n'ai jamais visité Hawkesbury. Je crois que c'est à la frontière entre Québec et Ontario, une distance de 6 heures de chez moi.
"Louisiana was colonized by French Canadians" -- summarizing history into one sentence will make you make mistaken statements like this. Louisiana was a French colony before the Acadians were expelled from what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. And actually was a Spanish colony when the Acadians went there. Louisiana French is not a monolith, as the Acadian dialect was different from the French spoken by the planter class. And of course since many enslaved peoples and indigenous peoples were forced to adopt French that had effects. Later on many people speaking Haitian Creole came and that had effects on Louisiana Creole. Listen to some Cajun music and zydeco and you'll hear the differences.
Thanks for mentioning this. "French Canadians" did not go to Louisiana; Acadians did. Acadians are the descendants of the 50 French men (and eventually women) that were sent to establish a French presence in what is now Nova Scotia. This was a geographically and genetically isolated colony. When England won control of the area, the Acadians asked not to sign an oath of allegiance to the King; they wanted to live peaceably and independently of both England and France. In response, England deported 11,500 Acadians to different parts of the world. Many of the surviving deportees eventually made their way to Louisiana. This is a painful chapter in Acadian history, and to be misnamed as French Canadians and made to sound like this was a voluntary stroll down south was disappointing.
Yeah, I immediately said, "what?" when I heard that. I think he over-condensed the information to a point where it became wrong. The French colonised Louisiane, and then Acadiens were expelled and moved to Louisiane, hence the influence of Acadiens = Cajuns. He also missed the info that the King of France gave the land to the Vikings, swear their fealty to the French King, and help stop the future Viking invasions and protect the Kingdom from other Viking attacks, and that area then became Normandie.
Louisiana was literally founded by French Canadian, following the exploration of Mississipi by René-Robert Cavelier de la Salle, hundred year before the exodus of the Acadian.
Really nice to hear you talking about French, the language that I love. Although I am from India and I learnt English before French, the latter has her attractiveness that I cannot overlook and charmingly beckons to us to approach her, oggle her beauty and enjoy using her to communicate.
Parlez vous très bien l'anglais!! Ton vocabulaire c'est magnifique, c'est mieux que la majorité d'es américaines pour dire la vérité. Je vois que écriés vous avec l'écrit d'angleterre... n'est pas?
@@juliandeveaux2848 Merci bien de votre compliment ! :), oui, c'est vrai que j'utilise l'orthographe de l'anglais britannique parce que l'Inde faisait partie des colonies d'antan de l'Angleterre, on nous apprend à l'utiliser depuis que nous sommes à l'école. Toutefois, la France avait aussi ses comptoirs ici notamment Pondichéry, Karaikal, Mahé, Yénaon et Chandernagore. Quant à moi, je suis polyglotte, outre ma langue maternelle indienne, je parle 7 langues européennes dont le français, et parmi les autres langues européennes que je parle et que j'apprends, le français tient la première place à mon coeur. Il y a beaucoup de Français qui viennent visiter ces comptoirs-là dont la culture coloniale elle-même est un mélange de la culture indienne et française en même temps, ce qui se voit non seulement au niveau de la cuisine mais aussi de l'architecture des bâtiments, en tout cas, il faut savoir quels quartiers nous devrions visiter, les quartiers modernes n'en ont pas beaucoup. Une belle surprise vous attend au cas où vous n'auriez pas encore visité ces comptoirs français, il existe des rues ayant des noms français, parfois, je me demande si je suis en France en les visitant !. Soyez le bienvenu en Inde !
@@matthewjay660 Oui, vous avez raison, Pondichéry que j'ai mentionné dans mon commentaire précédent est considéré comme un des territoires d'outre-mer de la France mais je ne sais pas si ce soit un territoire d'outre-mer ou une collectivité d'outre-mer de la France, les citoyens de ce territoire-là qui ont le suffrage français en fonction de leur citoyenneté car certains d'entre eux ont tant la citoyenneté française que la citoyenneté indienne, considèrent Pondichéry pour être différent des autres états de l'Inde car il est unique.
Wow, few native english speakers even say "learnt" even though it's correct. I don't say it either so it sounds slightly wrong but I know it's actually correct in the technical aspect of the language. Also, sounds like you are just tryna flex your vocab skills. Stop, no one uses this much fancy words in every day english.
In fact Grenon and Gruesch are not used anymore, but most of the vocabulary about agriculture and countryside lifestile comes from Gaul, like all of our nautical vocabulary comes from Viking
quand on sait qu'il est là pour signifier un "s" tombé "s" que l'on retrouve dans l'adjectif de chacun de ces mots fête / festival, hôpital / hospitalier cette réforme vide de sens fait perdre davantage sa racine au mot au profit de la fainéantise.
OMG ! Here's my last name in your vidéo ! I'm from Quebec so I'm happy to learn about the celtic origin of my name! And no, I'm not a big fan of the academy, we speak almost our own dialect here in Quebec derived from middle french, though our schooling is in international French. Really good video thank you !
Kiwi here who lived in France for a decade or so; familiar with the terms Langue d'oc and Langue d'oil and what they reference but never knew the origin of these terms (along with a thousand other things, just missed the opportunity to ask anyone). Really interesting! How real history and human migration influenced language and culture is pretty much my favourite thing so thanks a million for this tasty morsel. Chouette, merci et Kapai!
Also, the French word I always had the most trouble with wasn't Ecureuil (tricky, but pretty regular vowel sounds). My nemesis was every time I had to call EDF and say goddamn "l'électricité". FML I would get bloody togue-tied every single time! :)
Maybe i can answer your question: langue means language while oc and oil are old french ways to say oui. Oc was spoken in the south while oil was spoken in the northern part around Paris, and eventualy oil became oui and took over the whole country.
En effet, l'accent n'est jamais un inconvénient, il nous laisse simplement entendre la culture d'origine de notre interlocuteur et ajoute même un certain charme. (In effect, the accent is never an inconvenient, it let us hear simply the culture of origin of our interlocutor and even adds a certain charm.)
@@Lahi122 idk I’ve passed the B2 and I’ve also done ALevel French. I’m going next year to uni so hopefully I can continue there and do the C1 (my uni offers additional language courses too)
Great presentation....I am french from Montreal Quebec and my other side of my family are in Normandy France. I can tell you each time I visit them we have our cultural situation.....Very funny
Merci pour cette vidéo, elle est très intéressante et informative. Le français est une langue très unique et extraordinaire, qui n'est pas comme d'autres langues (à mon avis). Il est riche d'historique et a fait une grande influence pour la plupart de langues et cultures modernes du monde. Je l'adore beaucoup. Grâce à lui, je suis devenu obsédé avec des choses françaises. J'habite en Indonésie et j'y suis natif, j'espère qu'un jour, je pourrais visiter la France, le pays de mon rêve. Mais j'aimerais aussi visiter d'autres pays/lieux francophones comme la Belgique, la Suisse, le Québec, et quelques pays Africains francophones.
Les autres régions francophones d'Europe ne sont pas très intéressantes (de Belgique ou Suisse). Si vous venez en Europe, en plus de la France, je vous conseille vivement de visiter l'Italie, surtout. C'est le berceau de la culture occidentale et le pays a une histoire et un patrimoine artistique incomparables. C'est sans doute le plus beau pays du continent aussi et... où on mange le mieux 😉
@@BenoitXVIII Pour moi, La France et l'Italie sont également belles ,, mais honnêtement je m'intéresse plus à la culture française/francophones. Mais, à propos de nourriture, je suis d'accord que les nourritures italiennes ont l'air plus délicieuses.🤤
Great video! Just one minor correction : No other changes were added in 2016, it's just that the French education system decided to apply the changes that were decided in 1990 to the curriculum (of the Northern French-speaking countries, they were the last to do that). I also have to add those changes are optional, and people can continue to write with traditional spelling if they want.
So interesting. My husband had to learn French as the second language in school in Zambia (Southern Africa) and my in-laws lived in Cameroon which is mostly French speaking however it has a small Anglophone region. Sadly they had to move out for now and stay in Malawi as civil war broke out due to language. Anglophones felt mistreated because they were not getting the same education and rights as Francophones so they tried to separate and be their own country (I’m simplifying what is surely more complex but the major issue comes down to language). Hopefully someday soon the war will end and my in laws can move back. They had to abandon everything which was in their home it was all so sudden.
@@Learninglotsoflanguages I don't personally live in Cameroon, but I am related to a tribe that resides in the English speaking region. The children have been unable to go to school for years now. It's rather upsetting for me to hear that, especially since their English learning will be made far more difficult (in my family's tribe, English is typically taught in schools only. They speak their own indigenous language specific to the tribe).
I find it interesting that the very term for "universal language" is "lingua franca". Literally, "French Tongue". On a side note, Olly, how does one get past periods of low enthusiasm? I love speaking more than one tongue, but I don't have the desire for learning at the mo'. Advice anyone? Gran video, señor. Gracias. Takk. Spasiba. Gratsi. Bedankt. Sheh-sheh. Thanks.
Irony at it's best! In regards to motivation, you could always sign up for duo lingo. Then the owl mascot WILL find you and help you get motivated... OR ELSE!
In all seriousness though, i've been lacking motivation lately as well. I mean, it's okay to take a a couple weeks off... it's not like you NEED to do the whole "fluent in 6 months" thing. You can always come back to a language and pick up were you left off
@@Svensk7119 do you use your language for fun at all? I'm not high level in Swedish yet, but I have been reading young adult novels and watching shows in Swedish with Swedish subtitles that I would have otherwise watched in English. I've been sick this week so I slacked off on my studying, but I'm still getting daily exposure. Maybe take a break from working on the language and let some soak in by exposure?
@@sharonoddlyenough Thank you. Not enough, in answer to your question. I can count to ten in six languages, say hello in perhaps more, say thanks and you're welcome in perhaps as many, and say "Sign here, please," in seven (don't ask; long, boring story, if it's even is a story at all) but I haven't unlocked the treasure chest that makes learning joyful, save in Español. I should try absorción again.
Cool video, thanks! Just a few anecdotes concerning local dialects and patois in France. My great greand mother, who was born in the late 1890s, spoke little French as her native language was Gascon and she didn't go much to school. She lived with my grand mother, as people did in the past, and I used to speak some Gascon with them as a kid. They would always speak Gascon when they were between themselves or with neighbours, and switched to French when there were "estrangers" with them. The same happened pretty much all over the bit of countryside in Gascony, where I grew up in the 1980s. At the beginning of WW1, French regiments were created locally, so there were Basque regiments, Breton regiments etc. Some officers had a hard time being understood as many of their men spoke little to no French and only Basque or Breton. There were instances where French soldiers actually fired on their own troops because they thought they had heard German being spoken and communication could be difficult at times because the guys replied in their own patois and not in French when hailed.
A lot of people still use them though lol. I still do on "chaîne" "août" or "château" => the "^" means there used to be one more letter. For Castel or Chastel which is a word from old french ( castel is still used in the english language thanks to the french influence) then the word became Chastel=> Chasteau and then finally simplified into "Château" : the "â" was for the missing "s".
I’m not French but I study historical linguistics. I liked the circumflexes (where they made sense) bc they’re basically fossils into Old French, the history of the language. The accent marks the loss of s that used to be pronounced but not all the time. It’s also used to distinguish homophones e.g. age (beam) vs. âge (age) (not etymological, they should spell it àge or something if they want to distinguish the homophones).
Great video buddy ! Love the way you go from scratch up to today ! L'Académie française is a great institution that allows not only my language being protected from too much modernism, but also thriving as they keep references of what correct AND beautiful French is !
As I have always said, a nationality is not just a question of ethnic origin, but at the time of the progressive Creation of France as an Entity-Nation, there was always a mixture between Celtic (Mainly Gauls, but also Bretons), Latin (Greco-Roman influence) and Germanic (Mainly Franks, but also Burgundians and Visigoths to varying degrees).
The fact is the people of France is still descending from gaulish people. Even their language change, the people still the same. Until last decades i mean. Now it's going to be a multi-ethnical country, for the worst and the best...
Indeed. I am Breton (from Brittany) - I did a check of my DNA: 15% French origin only, the rest (85%) is Irish, Ireland, Wales, England (but no Viking blood ;). Of course I am French too by culture. Ethnicity - specially in Europe, does not have so much sense. We are a bunch of big mixture soup. We are clealry "Europeans". My friends from Normandy may have some Viking Blood. French of N-E probably Belgium/NL and German blood. So at the end we are a lot of our Neighbors too. I am Breton, French and European :)
@@MrEricGuerin 1/Careful with DNA checks on sales. These analysis are based on database and result could highly change between two tests. 2/Never apply our own personnal case for all population. 3/Even if of course there is a common ethnic history between britain/scotlands/wales/britanny, a tremendous amount of french autochtones are descending from people who remained in the same area for centuries, if not millenaries. The tipical distribution start to change with "Exode Rural" (50's - 70's) where people flee rural zones and go search for work in cities. Plus the actual immigration politics who implemented years after years populations from outside of Europe.
3:47 The Gaulish word is just straight up Spanish??? Wow. I also wondered if bruesch at 3:28 could be related to bruja/brujo. But, Wiktionary doesn't have a page for "bruesch" and the page for bruja gives a lot of possible explanations, some of which do include Proto-Celtic and Old Breton.
Very few people will learn a language simply because it sounds nice to them. Greek, Latin, French and English each became Lingua Franca's due to their usefulness to the people of that time. I don't see France or Quebec gaining enough economic or cultural significance in the near future to sway the rest of the world to speak French. The best bet for French to become the next Lingua Franca is if French speaking parts of Africa became the dominant economic or cultural superpower of the world. There's a lot of potential for Africa to grow in the future.
I think all French people would laugh if they said that French could be a world language. it's just the point of view of the author of this video, but in no way French
@@fabs8498 No language will replace English in the near future. That said, I actually think French is higher on the totem pole than Spanish or Mandarin. Africa has the fastest growing economies in the world and they don't speak Spanish or Mandarin. French will gain a lot of significance in the future, but not enough to replace English.
I state this as a French teacher, France should continue to keep doing what she is currently doing. Be the center of art, fashion, fragrances, cuisine, and culture, and attract people to the French language through the very successful use of her puissant SOFT POWER.
Africa will most likely be the most populated continent in 80-100 years and French would, if that happens, overtake English, and Spanish, in terms of numbers of native speakers. (But probably not Mandarin Chinese)
One big difference between the langues d'Oc and langues d'Oïl is that the former was never highly influenced by germanic languages. the same goes with Arpitan, which can sort of be seen as a version of French with little Germanic influence, though obviously it would still be different due to dialectisation and other stuff
Well I don't know about highly, but Oc was most definitely influenced by germanic languages ! Though obviously not as much as Oïl. The Wisigoths settled in southern France and were in power there for a hundred years in the fifth century, and parts of it for two hundred more. Also, after the conquest by the Franks both languages kept interfacing for nearly a millenium and a half (hey there troubadours
@@jg9585 West Northern Italy dialects all derive from langue d’oc. In fact, we cannot understand dialects from the center/southern part of Italy. We need to speak “reporter’s Italian to understand each other. In Catalunya I could understand the locals language too.
@@jg9585 yes, I should have clarified that there was germanic influence, but quite a lot less than in the Oïl languages. The Wisigoths in Occitania as well as the Burgundians in Arpitania quickly adopted the romance dialects of their new regions, and though they did leave lexical influences (still less than in the north), their phonetic influence is negligible. Due to the massacre of regional languages, I wouldn't be surprised if even the tonality of Occitan and Arpitan changes due to the omnipresence of the French language. But yes just as you said haha
@@Veronica_Boer not all, the language of Aosta and a few valleys of Piedmont (such as Val Soana) is Arpitan/Francoprovençal :) Just saying it because as a language activist I'm trying to give it more visibility and recognition haha
Dommage que la vidéo ne soit pas sous-titrée, le peu que j'en ai compris est très intéressant :) Je n'étais même pas au courant des dernières réformes de l'orthographe!
At 4:49, the Frankish word "frank" basically gave the French word "franc" which means the same thing and was also the name of the former French currency.
You're right but in fact the first defenition of "Franks" means "Féroce/Fearless", as France comme frome Rex/Regia Francorum (Roi/ Royaume des Francs) and later with Philippe Auguste Rex/Regia Francia (Roi/Royaume de France)
Has a bilingual person, mainly FRENCH Quebec CANADA, I can read other dialect of Italian Spanish, FRENCH when you understand the sexes and accents , it's a beautiful language,.. nicely done and great story about FRENCH
Wow, i don't watched all the video but i want to congratulate with you, I am not English or American and I speak a Little English, Just the based but your speak way so clear, that i understand a lot ! Saluti dall'Italia
Intéressant, je ne connaissais pas tous ces détails ;-). Beau travail ! Concernant les réformes de l'orthographe, personnellement je n'y suis pas favorable et je ne les applique pas systématiquement bien que je sois enseignant !
L'Espagnol s'écrit comme il se parle et s'entend...Il faut réformer le français de la même façon en éliminant touts les exceptions qui font les difficultés de la langue qui sont un handicap pour sa diffusion et qui vont l'emmener à sa perte parce qu'elle sont incompréhensibles et rebutent ceux qui essaient de l'apprendre. Et pour être honnête, il faut bien reconnaître que peu de français parlent un français correct..
@𝓟𝓵𝓪𝔂𝓱𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓲𝓻𝓮 Aveuglement et langage suicidaire ! Il va falloir revenir à plus de modestie et modérer votre arrogance...Vous parlez d'une époque qui n'existe plus et qui n'est pas la notre.. L'élégance du français ne l’empêchera pas de mourir à cause de ses difficultés d'apprentissage..Et l'anglais a justement dévoré et remplacé la "langue de Molière" justement grâce à ses facilités d'apprentissage. Bref , le français est déjà marginalisé et si vous tenez à le voir disparaître, vous êtes sur la bonne voie ! Et l'espagnol n'est pas " un gloubi-boulga sans orthographe ni accent " !
@𝓟𝓵𝓪𝔂𝓱𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓲𝓻𝓮 Oui, la France n'a rien colonisé, c'est bien connu...Si vous n'avez pas d'arguments, évitez d'être de mauvaise foi..Ainsi vous ne serez pas ridicule !
11:00 I admit, as a french, that we dont really know what reforms are led by l'Académie, nor really respect them... For exemple, we don't care of this rule about ^ accents and still write "août" ([ut]) or "chaîne" ([chen]) as usual.
It’s funny because some French words from Frankish origin found their ways in other Romance languages. For instance, werra, frank, treuwa (Frankish), guerre, affranchir, trêve (French), guerra, franquear, tregua (Spanish) 😀
When is the chinese beginner course coming out? Any updates? I really like the method you present, and I have used it for russian on my own, but I would need help with mandarin.
We have many local expressions in France sometimes without realising that they are indeed local. I remember my cousins from Paris coming to visit in the 90's and asking first if we had the television and even electricity. Then they discover we live about the same way as they do despite being retarded Bretons and suddenly my teacher of a dad enters the room searching for his school bag and asking "est-ce que quelqu'un a vu ma vache?". The expression on my cousins' face was splendid. Of course the expression was a metonimy (if I get it right) coming from school bags being made out of cow hide. And everyone in my place called a school bag a cow with no exception. So anyone there saying "I'm looking for my cow" would actually not be looking for the animal but likely a satchel or a school bag.
So funny how french canadian (goual) is so close to the 16th centery french the accent and all. It's like being in america we keep the old french still more then in Europe. Good video - Merci pour tes recherches c'est très intéressant et personnellement le nouveau français est OK si on l'apprend en premier, mais heureusement on peux facilement comprendre les deux alors moi je vais continuer à utiliser mes accents;) Et c'est les Accadiens de la Nouvelle-Écosse qui ont été déportés par les Anglais en Louisianne ils n'y ont pas été de choix, mais de force.
Nice room in the background, Olly, but why do you take your tables of exemplary words off the screen after a couple seconds only to show more of the static room?
Dunno about that spelling vs pronunciation thing. Compared to English, French is actually pretty straightforward for the most part. You have a couple of basic rules and while some exceptions exist, it is NOTHING compared to the arbitrariness of English pronunciation vs spelling. Knowing the language for 20 years only to find out that a word such as "indict" is pronounced differently from what you'd have guessed? Did happen to me in English, but couldn't possibly happen in French.
Can't agree with this. I'm german and learning french because of my french girlfriend and it feels Like only exceptions. All the time she have to Tell me how it have to be pronounced because it's an exception. Also it's so unintuitiv. I really hate this languag. It Just doesn't make any Sense at all. I hate it. I'm frustrated. HELP!
@@wilhelmaschenberger5556 I think I'm the only one who actually enjoys these "exceptions" 🤣 they add more colors to French. But actually, in most cases, the pronunciation is consistent though.
Great vid!!!! Please make a similar one on the Spanish language. As a quasi-native French speaker, and English speaker and a native Egyptian Arabic speaker, I am noticing extremely interesting things about Spanish and I would love to see your analysis of it.
Funnily enough, a lot of food terms in French come from Alsatian, which took them from Austrian. (E.g.: Quenelle) Might have been a nice little note to mention.
As it should. The new spelling was not well received in Québec. So we still eat "oignons" instead of "ognons" and keep our circumflexe accents. Maybe the Parisians stopped pronouncing them, but they still have some importance to us!
Merci beaucoup! apropos spelling, just a few hour ago I watched a TEDx video titled "la faute de l'orthographe" by Arnaud Hoedt und Jérôme Piron where I learned that not a single member of l'Académie Française is a linguist, and that the reason why the modern French spelling is so complicated is not that it didn't change since the Old French period. Quite the opposite, l'Académie Française MADE SURE that the spelling was more complicated than it was, in some cases adding unnecessary letters and features in order to discriminate. In a dictionary from l'Académie Française back in 1694 it was explicitly written that the spelling would serve to distinguish literate people (gens de lettres) from ignorants and simple women. One of the most interesting example of error in the effort to "relatinize" (and thus complicating) French spelling is adding a G to VINT (20) to make it closer to Latin "viginti", and yet they placed the G in the wrong position. Thus we ended up with "vinGt" instead of "viGnt". And as you mention in your video, "vingt" is particularly often used due to the fact that you have it for numbers from 80 till 99. Thank you once again for the informative video!
La langue anglaise est toute pleine d'incohérences mais là les bobos "progressistes" de France et de Belgique ça les gêne beaucoup moins, ils en raffolent même. C'est fou comment des gamins de 10 ans issus de milieux assez modeste (la France rurale et profonde d'il y a un siècle) s'en tiraient très bien question orthographe et qualité d'écriture alors que l'Académie Française avaient fait tout son possible pour les discriminer… cherchez l'erreur.
English grammarians did the exact same thing as the French with things like the word Dette becoming Debt and Receit becoming Receipt. Putting in those lost Latin consonants that didn't make it through French into English into the spelling.
@@Briselance I didn't say it is easy. hahaha (and if you are francophone then obviously it is not quite easy for you, just as Old Portuguese is not for me as a Brazilian)
Because of the cognates, I found it easier to pick up French. I am from Singapore where we use English as the language of instruction. Apart from the unique French pronunciation, it is relatively easy to read French once one knows the basics. French Latin is incredibly interesting. I had sung Baroque sacred music using French pronunciation. It is quite cool actually. thank you for sharing this!
Merci beaucoup Ollie Richard. I'am very astonish about your culture on french language. It is funny, nowadays instructive with pédagogy.. Bravo. And with an English account that I'have almost understand, usely the English spoken people speak too fast, specially the american people. But you forget the Arabic inluence, like abrict, aubergine and so on. The occitan is a real language spoken from the Atlantic occitan to the Italian border. It's beautiful language of the menestrel. There is also, breton, basque, corsicans, and in the overseas, creole, ameridian in Guyane , mahorai in Mayotte, , Arabic, tamoul, indian, malgache , mandarin,in the reunion, kanak., tahitian in Polynésie. That come of the colony times. But now the politics is more open with all this language. France is less centralist and il's a good things. Merci beaucoup et à bientôt. I hope to this video you about english.
French Canadians didn’t necessarily colonize Louisiana as so much be expelled there by the British. And these French Canadians were Acadians, who are a different Francophone nation with a difficult culture and dialect than the Québecois for those of you who‘ve never heard of the Acadians.
Genuinely just asking - did you mean ‘different’ not difficult, or do you actually find Acadians hard to deal with :) Also my family have a lot of Acadian ancestry so appreciate you mentioning that they were expelled by the British and they didn’t just voluntarily wander down there! 👍🏻 :)
Fun facts: 1.) In "Commentarii de Bello Gallico", Julius Caesar noted that the Gaulish language was similar to Latin and that the Gauls could understand Latin, despite not knowing it, so much so, that he had to write in Greek so that the Gauls wouldn't understand what he wrote . 2.) According to linguistics, the Italic languages (including modern day Romance languages such as French) and the Celitc languages likely derive from a common ancestor, now called Italo-Celtic, forming a branch of the Indo-European languages, which would explain what Caesar stated. This would also mean that modern-day French is still, at least somewhat, related to the Gaulish language and is also possibly one of the reasons the Gauls easily switched to French, since language shifts to related languages are easier than switching to different languages. 3.) The Gaulish language and its dialects likely went extinct as late as the 6th century AD, with attempts by Francian nobility to try and preserve the language, at least in poems, but with little success. 4.) Until the French Revolution, it was common for the French to refer to the average citizen as Gauls and the nobility as Franks. 5.) Latin was mainly adopted by the elites and became the language of prestige, especially when the Franks arrived, so the linguistic shift occurred without a significant genetic shift. 6.) Politicians in France still occasionally refer to the stock French people as Gauls (Gaulois). 7.) The Breton language is a British Celtic language (related to Welsh and Cornish) that migrated to France in the early Middle Ages. According to linguists, the British Celtic languages are closer to Gaulish than Gaelic Celtic languages, meaning that Breton is quite possibly what modern Gaulish could be like, if it didn't go extinct.
@@Mark-ib9if "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" (by Julius Caesar); Book I, Ch. XXV and Book VI, Ch. XIV, provide more context, but the main part would be Book VI, Ch. XLVIII, where Caesar writes the letter in Greek (language and alphabet) to prevent the Gauls from understanding his message to Cicero. The Greek alphabet was widely used, even by the Gauls, but they used it to write Gaulish, not Greek, hence, they would have understood the letters but not the language. Had Caesar left it in Latin, they would be able to mostly understand what he wrote. This is further explain in "Cæsar's Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars: with the Supplementary Books Attributed to Hirtius ... Literally Translated [by W. A. Macdevitt], with Notes, Etc (1851)". To highlight this, I used the word "king" in Latin, reconstructed Gaulish, and Ancient Greek. You can see below that, with an understanding of the alphabet, the Gauls would have been able to decipher Caesar's Latin, but not Greek: Latin = rex (ρεχ) Gaulish (reconstructed) = rix (ριχ) Ancient Greek = basileús (βᾰσῐλεύς )
@@RobinHood-tw4se thats super interesting, I knew about italo-celtic but didnt knew the languages were close enough to be somewhat understood by both. Wonder if the same could be said about the Iberian languages?
@@Vitorruy1 Well, it depends what you mean by Iberian languages. If you mean Aquitanian or Iberian proper, not at all, since they are not Indo-European languages. But for Celtiberian, Gallaecian, and Lusitanian (possibly Celtic), there may have been some understanding since they were all Celtic, since those groups migrated from the Celtic core of ancient Gaul. However, there likely was enough drift and language borrowing for them to not be understandable. But words did overlap, such as "horse" in both "ekuo" (Celtiberian) and "equus" (Latin).
@@Vitorruy1 Well, it depends what you mean by Iberian languages. If you mean Aquitanian or Iberian proper, not at all, since they are not Indo-European languages. But for Celtiberian, Gallaecian, and Lusitanian (possibly Celtic), there may have been some understanding since they were all Celtic, since those groups migrated from the Celtic core of ancient Gaul. However, there likely was enough drift and language borrowing for them to not be understandable. But words did overlap, such as "horse" in both "ekuo" (Celtiberian) and "equus" (Latin).
I've been exploring the link between stories and language in Celtic cultures on my channel, so I particularly enjoyed the early part of this (and the fact that you mentioned Cornish). It is such shame that the Académie Française seems hell-bent on destroying modern Celtic language; brutal past and present; I wonder what Asterix would have to say about that.
Thank you Olly i learn a lot about french. I knew that english was influenced by many other languages. By i didn't how french is the result of many others languages as well.
First question! Is the french uncovered at $300 better than spending $300 on a good italki teacher for about 20 lessons? or signing up for speakly and italki?
(Advice from a French teacher): before making major financial decisions, sample as much as you can for free from a variety of sources. There is no one ideal teaching method; you as an individual need to play a big role in planning your curriculum. $300 or even $1000 spent on a method you don't really like will be wasted. Find the source(s) that you feel you can work with over the long haul -- because it will be a long haul, regardless of language. It is quite feasible to gain proficiency with little or no money spent. It is equally possible to plunk down considerable sums for practically no results. Bonne chance!
I am unsure but there also might be a 30 day return policy for the course and if there is you would be able to try it and return it is you were unsatisfied. Hope this helps.
@@nathanlaoshi8074 Nathan Laoshi If it was around 100-150 I would spend the money. Do you know anyone who have learnt French with just free contents and without living in a french speaking country. Found free language content on open culture under free language lessons that I am going through now
This is my favorite of all your videos. Have you written any of your story books on the subject of European history? I am so much more interested in that than I am in reading about modern life. If you did bite sized snippets (say France from the Gauls to Louis 14. Or Fall of Rome to The Black Plague, that kind of thing.....even small bio's on French inventors or leaders, , I would buy ALL your books!😅 Your story books are great so far, but historical tales would be so fascinating and really hold the interest of history-lovers. ❤
Hearing that France mandated education in French and attempting to eliminate the many other languages of France, is reflected in many other communities, especially indigenous peoples, who were deprived of their languages.
The laws of 1881 were not against the dialects spoken in France. Before them, education was paid and often religious and for boys in priority. Jules Ferry makes education free, compulsory, secular and regardless of gender between 6 and 13 years old. But this only in public schools. Families could continue to send their children to fee-paying religious private schools if they wanted to. Myself, until I was 18, I was in private establishments receiving certain courses from nuns and monks. It is true that French was compulsory but only at school. The children at home could continue to speak the dialect. I still have a few words in my vocabulary that are not academic French. There was no real desire to eradicate dialects but rather to provide equal education for all French people whether they live in Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux or a small provincial village. And we must not forget that these laws have prevented children aged 6 to 13 from being used in the labor market (domestic or factory work). They were therefore progressive laws.
Oui mon grand-mère étais irlandaise. Elle a dit cette les brits battre l'irlandais hors de ses grands-parents. Je lire cette les professeurs de la france battre la langue Breton hors des enfants bretons. Pardon mon français est mauvais.
Interesting but the gaul heritage is very small : 100 200 words most of them related to rural life The germanic influence is really deeper Due to the Franks French is the most germanic latin language
The traces of Gaulish and the old Celtic roots are more prominent in French phonetics than vocabulary. French sounds weird to both Romance and Germanic language speakers, and not in a "it’s the most Germanic sounding Romance language" sort of way. It sounds neither like other Romance languages nor like Germanic ones. There’s something else in the mix and listening to Celtic languages, especially when sung, hints at the echoes of Gaulish pronunciation that remain. Enya singing in Irish can be mistaken for French (if you aren’t focusing on the lyrics) in a way no Spanish, Italian or German singer would. The Latin of Gaul ended up baking in a Celtic phonetic influence just like the English of Ireland has. The Celtic influence is just further back in history.
@@guzy1971 It really sounds like nonsense French doesn’t it? It’s just a similarity in the phonetics. Existing Celtic languages have had two millennia to keep evolving but you can still hear the phonetic impact of Gaulish and the kinship of that old Latin accent to the modern language. It’s something about the flow and their vowels and consonants. A French speaker can’t understand a word but the sounds and rhythm in song are eerily familiar. Singing in Canadian Gaelic (a Scots Gaelic dialect) can be mistaken for singing in Acadian French or an eastern Quebec regional accent too if you aren’t focused on the lyrics. The fact that French Canadian traditional music is basically Celtic (due to a mix of Irish, Scottish and Breton heritage mixed in with the French) adds to the ease of misidentification.
@@paranoidrodent As somebody who is familiar with the living Celtic languages, I don't think they sound very similar at all. Welsh had Latin influence in its past. Some Irish dialects had Norman French influence in the 1300s. French sounds like French and French alone. The sound of modern French is unmistakably Parisian. As for the English of Ireland, among older rural men, especially in areas where the Irish language was still living within living memory, there is more noticeable Celtic influence. However the English of the middle classes nationwide, especially the English of younger women, has only very minor Celtic influence. Language change happens fast, and it changes in the direction of density of people and prestige. In France, the dialects were mostly replaced by Parisian French. In New Zealand, the dialects were replaced by Auckland English. In Ireland, the process of language change in the Irish speaking areas continues towards English and the English dialects are being replaced by middle class Dublin English (with American influence from the media also) As far as I know, while there are a few loanwords, there is no linguistic evidence for any Gaulish phonological substrate in French (unlike for Latin and Frankish which have left traceable influence)
Ahhhh, cette image-la` du "guerrier Gaulois" tu montrais au debut de la video, en vrai c'est hyper superbe lui 😍 je dois avouer, moi j'adore trop 💖💋...!!! Une telle merveilleuse video archi-formide, *Olly* ❤😊
The problem most French have with the French Academy is changing already existing words, losing a bit of the word's history, while refusing to add new ones because they aren't from France. But overall, everyboby ignore them and use the old words as well as the foreign ones. Ça restera toujours un oignon.
I see an inconcistency in the words from Frankish to modern French. Most words shown exist as well in Spanish. Words like Werra-->guerre (in spanish is guerra), fliukka->fleche (spanish flecha), danson->danser (in Spanish danzar) or treuva->treve (spanish tregua) .... This either means that they also have a Visigothic origin and came through it into spanish too from a germanic language (which is the case of War // werra-> guerra) or those are latin borrowings of some sort because the franks did not rule spain.
Italian also has Guerra(war) but they say it like Guera=deathly pale in Spanish. German also has Guerra to , Wehrkra= Military Force. German has Danson too in Tanzen, Germans Tanzen comes from 10th century Swabia and Dancier does not appear in French until the 12th century , so the central Germans were already using this word. Hay un loca teoria que dice que los Swabians que llegaron a invadir Espana y Portugal venieron de los Sorbs, y ellos son con Aleman--Slavicas por saxony y czech republica. Eso es por que Rusia contiene palabras alemanas y romanticas como Bar-Bear- Var . ademas , de lejos Ruso y Portugese-Europeo casi suenan como si tienen el mismo phonetico. Pero no se si viene de influencia grecia. Pero si no hay duda que Alemenia es mas crucial a esta familia de idiomas de lo que pensamos. El Frences pari mi suena como un idioma bien rara de los 3 -italiano, espanol , portugese y hasta Romanio suena mas latin/Romancia que el Frances.
@@erichamilton3373 Nah, English War comes from German Wehr which means defense force like Landwehr< Land Var> and that goes all the way back to Old high German , but even then it could also come from Proto Germanic(sort of contructed) warjaną. As a Multi Lingual, I don't buy this story that French influenced all the langaues, I think French is way too different from the rest to be the common ancestor. Yeah, Enlish was influenced by French for a while but English also has Germanic and Latin influence that predated the French influence before 1066-1500s.
@@chibiromano5631 You're wrong. Unfortunately. Franks/French influenced its neighbours a lot more for a huge sets of reasons, and most people don't realize it since the world is dominated by anglo-saxons since 1815. - conquests from Clovis to Charlemagne PS: the Franks kicked the alemanis out of Francia, they would become known as prussians then germans later on ("allemands" in french). - new latin, replaced it administratively : language of administration, law, rights and trade. - huge wealth (peak in the XIth century) but Francia and Lotharingia has been filthy riched compared to everywhere else. - huge demography (6 million gauls assimilated with 300 000 franks) - Oldest daughter of the Church and first christianized nation in Europe (489-493-498) - First nation-state, with England close second, of Europe. - Language of the Monarchy/Royalty - Language of arts, literature, first proper books were in French and latin. The upperclass used french for literacy and books. - Language of war (especially the vocabulary, even today most military words come from them french language) and diplomacy. The biggest influences the gallo-roman/french languages had were italian, spanish and then later on english in that order but more than 80% of their words come from latin, and some pourcentages from greek.
As a French major I'm pissed about the circonflexe because it indicates the etymology where the letter S was merged onto the vowel in shorthand and then got silenced. It's a really cool piece of history shown on the spelling but ALSO it's helpful for other language speakers because suddenly hôpital becomes hospital, or for an obscure example fenêtre becomes fenestre, which is used in the English term defenestrate, to throw someone out of a window. Most languages don't have a lot of that, English has a good example with knight showing the history of the word being pronounced with a hard k sound and a g sound in the middle. It's only in written English but it's really fascinating to see for me.
Just to remind that Vikings in real was a profession and not people. Viking means somebody who makes a living traveling by sea. It happens that it was very usual in the nordic and Scandinavian lands so many people associate being a viking with the Scandinavians and nordic folk but being a viking it's like being a pirate, it's a way of life, a profession.
In belgium, our pronounciation of french is a lot more pure, it's a lot closer to the well pronounced french of 100-200 years ago. In fact, it's common to say that french don't speak their own language well
@@zeroxcqt2862 No a lot of words are pronounced differently. For example in France they don't pronounce maitre, mettre and mètre differently, we do. We are not purer we just kept the old ways
I'm learning both French and German, and would like your true assessment: Which of the two is easier for the English speaker to learn? Danke and merci!
im french and i speak a bit english and ein bisschen german ,i think it s easier for you learning German because , depiste a lot of ppl are saying English is more germanic language than Romance but i would say as well for an English native speaker there are three languages it would be easier to learn are German ,Dutch and french .It s just my opinion
@@DidierDidier-kc4nm From what I've experienced, I wouldn't disagree with you. French is far easier for me than German, and they say Dutch is even easier for the English tongue. But, no matter how easy or not, French has always been the "go to" language we (at least in America) have gravitated to. It is not only a most beautiful sounding language....we never forget how the French helped us kick the Brits outta the land we stole from the Indians. LOL! In short, there is nothing more beautiful or satisfying than the ability to speak (if only just a little) French. J'adore le francais!!!
YES !!! I just had to do an evil Disney laugh when you asked french people their opinions on the académie. First off, great choice of picture at 10:20, really representative of... well of the bunch of old men it still is to this day, mostly not coming from linguistics backgrounds. This makes for senseless spelling reforms in the name of simplification, without a shred of consideration for what could have made sense on a morphological level. However the outrage you speak of was not so much based on these scientific issues than on ideological resistance. Once again, great choice of example with Eric Ciotti, who is a champion of conservatism in France. So yeah, basically, I believe (stress on believe) most find the académie is a pack of old, upper class, self-important AHs who could do with a bit of mingling or, dare I say it, pure and simple disbanding. Just a tiny other thing on the media resistance to spelling reforms, and in anticipation of any compatriots who might jump at my throat for advocating the sullying of our sacrosanct orthography : old conservative pundits on TV are scandalised at the plummeting mastery of spelling in our children, but they fail to see the correlation with the growing wealth and complexity of other teachings in the last 40 years or so. As a former teacher, I can guarantee that a simpler spelling in french would allow for even more complex lessons in just about every other subject, and that the time and energy we spend today on spelling could be so much more profitable to our children. On that note a great sketch (or conference ? Not certain) by two teachers on the problematic complexity of french spelling : ua-cam.com/video/5YO7Vg1ByA8/v-deo.html I'm quite certain you will just love this Olly. Realizing how terribly long this comment will be, I'll shorten the argument I was thinking of about regional languages in France, which you briefly spoke of. I think it is paramount to stress the magnitude of the cultural calamity that was the ban on everything not french in the public sector, especially in schools. We just destroyed pieces of our history and culture ourselves, and that makes me so angry. It is also a subject close to my heart as my grandfather was beaten in school for speaking Occitan, and I would be a speaker too in another reality. However these languages are still spoken, if marginally : mostly by what remains of older generations, but also by younger people eager to keep this piece of our culture and history alive (roughly 200 000 speakers for Occitan, probably more for Breton, per example). Said my peace, sorry for the long post. And please do keep making these fantastic videos ! From Nîmes with love ^^no, the irony in my city's name is not lost on me
@patrick newton We do have some indeed, though not nearly as media covered as in the Commonwealth I believe, and not in the same form : we have our dear "dictée" for that. Apparently it translates to "dictation", but I don't recall ever encountering it in the educational field, so you tell me.
@patrick newton as a non English speakers I think that immigrants children do better because they have no choice but to be good at it. Plus it's the cultural difference. Not speaking/writing your language "properly" is a sign of being uneducated or being obnoxious and arrogant and disrespectful towards the culture therefore people are used to properly mastering a language or else they'd be called out. idk why there's even a conversation about whether you should be teaching kids to read properly. Of cource you should. These types of useless, even harmful, conversations don't take place in immigrant communities. Many immigrants take pride in language. Idk why op is attacking people who want to "conserve" their language. Being a conservative is not a dirty word lol. It's is only in the west where conserving culture and traditions is considered disgusting and bad lol...
I didn't know that so many words had lost their circumflex accent. Personally, I'm dyslexic and therefore I have a lot of difficulty with french. But without accents, they give me the impression that they are naked. Très bonne vidéo en tout cas. Merci! (PONS is an excellent text translator)
I just wanted to point out that the youngest member of l'Académie Française is 64 years old. Of course, this doesn't help l'Académie to be seen as legitimate by the general population and especially young people. Hey, did you know that there is still debate on whether "Covid" should be feminine or masculine ? Also is your channel getting verified any time soon ?
@@Vitorruy1 Well if you listen to the video, you get how French and English have a lot in common. Then German is declension based like Latin. It's a totally different mindset.
French speaker from Belgium. I think that French should have the same simplification that the Spanish language had in the past. Some people say that French is the language of Molière but French is perhaps more the language of Rousseau, a Swiss, who influenced French culture a lot. And the French he wrote was more phonetic than the French we have today. The French Academy deliberately complicated the language by adding a bizarre Greek spelling to make it a language reserved for the elites. This must change, French along with English and other languages is becoming more and more a globalized language and it is time to make life easier for those who learn it.
Trop difficile maintenant étant donné que la langue soit si répandu au monde, envisager des changements fondamentals serait très compliqué dont aucun gouvernement ne serait prêt à s'en occuper, sans parlant même des coûts qu'ils entraînent
@@AimonsL_oignon Il y a la volonté en Belgique francophone et en Suisse et l'évolution de la langue française s'est toujours faite à la marge du territoire français, notamment en Angleterre où les élites francophones aimaient produire de la poésie et diverses chansons. Mais l'académie française peut être un atout aussi, elle fait du français une langue plutôt centralisée qu'il est plus aisé de changer. Nous avons déjà eu maintes réformes, ce n'est pas une histoire de coûts mais une histoire d'initiatives citoyennes et de volonté politique.
@@carthkaras6449Oui Il y certainement un élément de volonté aussi, mais la manque d'initiative de la part des gouvernements francophones m'indique qu'il y en a peu. Même des endroits comme Québec qui a un dialect assez différent de celui de la France, il a aussi choisi de modeler ses registres soutenus sur le français métropolitain
@@AimonsL_oignon En faites vous savez, il y a clairement une volonté de réforme qui est portée par des politiques en Belgique et en Suisse, par exemple sur l'accord du participe passé. Et les immortels de l'Académie Française sont tous très vieux et vont vite être remplacés par des gens plus jeunes et moins conservateurs. Je me permets une petite remarque sur le québécois. Les québécois aiment à penser qu'ils se distinguent fortement par leurs accents d'un français européen qu'ils imaginent très parisien. Ils n'imaginent pas la variété immense des accents des francophones d'Europe ainsi que des expressions propres aux régions et aux anciennes langues régionales. Le français des québécois est, de base, bien plus standard qu'ils ne l'imaginent et les quelques différences me font doucement rire lorsque j'entend mes grands-parents et parfois mes parents parler.
@@carthkaras6449 "Et les immortels de l'Académie Française sont tous très vieux et vont vite être remplacés par des gens plus jeunes et moins conservateurs." Ah ça c'est de l'optimisme ! Ce serait chouette, sauf que les nouveaux entrants à l'académie sont choisis par les académiciens, il y a donc une vilaine tendance à la reproduction. Ce n'est pas une institution très militante, mais c'est peut-être bien l'institution la plus conservatrice de France, ce qui n'est pas peu dire. Le dernier en date, à moins que j'en ai raté un, c'est Alain Finkielkraut... Si vous ne savez pas qui c'est, une petite recherche risque de doucher votre espoir... Je compatis par avance.
Olly, will you be coming out with more short stories. I have your Beginner/Intermediate and bonus stories in German. Was wondering if there are more coming or if you can recommend anything else to help me improve?! Thanks!
Hi! Great video! I'm French and I can say that the members of "L'Académie Française" like you said aren't really appreciated because they want to modify our patrimony (when there is a "^" circumflex accent, it's because there was a "s" after the vowel in old French: hospital -> hôpital). Moreover, "a" isn't actually pronounced like "â" (respectively in IPA "a" and "ɑ"). I think a language should only be changed by time and the way speakers use it, and not by stupid old schnooks called "language protector academicians" who actually change it all the time. For French learners, I know it's a little complicated, but this can help a lot: English has 80% of its words that come from French or Latin. In modern French, there are many anglicisms: week-end, email, cool, hamburger... Merci !
French is my native tongue, I was raised in French and live in French... yet somehow 3 of 6 words at 3:30 I have never seen or heard in my entire life!!!
Olly, at 1:06 you promise that "later" you will tell why French will replace English as the lingua franca of the world, but that explanation is MISSING from this very video. I remember you did talk about this concept in another video, but not in this one...
Will French become the world's lingua franca (again)?! 👉🏼 ua-cam.com/video/bF-4ZmUdB1E/v-deo.html
Do you know the french YT channel called Linguisticae ? Good channel if you like linguistics. And you'll know what I think of the Académie Française, by the way ...
Surely hope not.
@@gerrybaggins Merci je ne connaissais pas non plus
@@TheIronyste If you are Molière, happy birthday ! ;)
It can be in Western Europe and some areas of Africa. Though I'm more about regional languages personally.
The fact that I'm a french watching a video in english about french language and I'm learning things is great. I've really enjoyed this video.
Same here ^^ I really enjoyed it too!
Le fait et que tu n'es pas français. Si tu l'étais jamais tu aurais pu écrire cela.
@@sandraguerin9874 Bah si ? D'ailleurs m'accuser de ne pas être français sans écrire correctement c'est l'hôpital qui se fout de la charité.
Nobody talks about us better than strangers :D
(Gabriel, mais non je crois que c'était une blague sur le niveau moyen déplorable en anglais des Français !)
@@Gabriel-bb8fpa hospital that cares not for charity? I’m learning French and it’s great to learn another idiom like that! I’ll have to keep it in mind for when I find a situation to use it
The Office de la Langue Française, in Québec, is even more extreme than l'Académie Française in preserving the "purity" of the language: with modernity, new words associated with new technologies are making their way into the French language, mostly from English, but have been officially replaced with French sounding equivalents, such as "email" that became "courriel", "web" became "toile", and many others, though in every day life lots of people "still" use the English version. This process always have the blessings of l'Académie Française of course.
Balado et baladodiffusion, deux termes merveilleux.
Mais bon en France vous avez un petit monde de journalistes (du type de ceux qui sévissent sur France Inter et France Culture), de militants et d'idéologues universitaires (de bas étage) qui sont vent debout contre la francisation des anglicismes.
Never forget when the OQLF fined an Italian restaurant in Montreal for using one too many “pasta”s, rather than the ‘purer’ French « pâtes », on their menu
@@jandron94 Le travail de l'académie française n'a jamais été d'isoler le français du reste des langage et ajouter des traductions. Son travail est de faire évoluer la langue en s'ouvrant aux autres langages (que ce soit anglais, espagnol, arabe, verlan ou neologisme technologique). C'est d'ailleurs pourquoi certaines langues sont condamnés selon certains linguistes: car elles sont trop imperméables aux autres langage.
Au Quebec, certe dans la forme ils essaient de garder un français très pure mais dans le fond ils utilisent un grand nombre de mot anglais dans le parler de tous les jours.
@Dave Duchesne Sometimes we anglicize and you don't, sometimes we don't and you do. In Québec, they write "arrêt" on the stop signs, in France it's just "stop" (un stop), also a few decades ago the Académie Française invented the word "ordinateur" for computer, I'm not sure but I think in Québec people say "un computer" ou "un laptop"? Overall I think the Québecois take the anglicism issue much more seriously than the French since the language is geographically isolated.
In the french administration people would write "courriel" but never say it, orally it was "un mail" or "un email" unless in the case of a very legal occasion. On the one hand the Académie is trying to keep alive a long dead literary golden age on the other they simplify the form and include new words from new technologies, other languages and neologisms. They're getting bashed at for both. It's easy for the French to blame the Académie for anglicisms and not the TV/internet commercials which 1 out of 2 headlines are in English. Or the french speaking gamers who speak a peculiar sociolect of gallicized English. Or whoever these people are who don't translate the title of an American movie/series in French because it sounds cooler and therefore sells better.
@@fav8048 We don't use un computer or un laptop. It's ordinateur and laptop is ordinateur portable or only portable. And we use téléphone cellulaire or only cellulaire for cellphone (or téléphone intélligent for smartphone).
As a french born and raised in Alsace (where we speak a dialect) I'm mixed on the academie française. Some rules and words are odd and since I speak a mix of french and german (alsacian dialect) I enjoy that the language is beeing simplified, but men, sometimes it feels like we're also simplifying too much of it
I love your enthusiasm! I have been teaching French for 30 years. This is so interesting and informative! Merci bien!
Thanks so much Ian!
Vous enseignez où ? :-)
@@lunarmodule6419 Je suis professeur de français immersion à Burlington, Ontario, proche de Toronto.
@@ianstuart1483 Mes grand-parents étaient franco Ontariens de Hawkesbury :-)
@@lunarmodule6419 Ouah! Je n'ai jamais visité Hawkesbury. Je crois que c'est à la frontière entre Québec et Ontario, une distance de 6 heures de chez moi.
"Louisiana was colonized by French Canadians" -- summarizing history into one sentence will make you make mistaken statements like this. Louisiana was a French colony before the Acadians were expelled from what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. And actually was a Spanish colony when the Acadians went there. Louisiana French is not a monolith, as the Acadian dialect was different from the French spoken by the planter class. And of course since many enslaved peoples and indigenous peoples were forced to adopt French that had effects. Later on many people speaking Haitian Creole came and that had effects on Louisiana Creole. Listen to some Cajun music and zydeco and you'll hear the differences.
Thanks for mentioning this. "French Canadians" did not go to Louisiana; Acadians did. Acadians are the descendants of the 50 French men (and eventually women) that were sent to establish a French presence in what is now Nova Scotia. This was a geographically and genetically isolated colony. When England won control of the area, the Acadians asked not to sign an oath of allegiance to the King; they wanted to live peaceably and independently of both England and France. In response, England deported 11,500 Acadians to different parts of the world. Many of the surviving deportees eventually made their way to Louisiana. This is a painful chapter in Acadian history, and to be misnamed as French Canadians and made to sound like this was a voluntary stroll down south was disappointing.
Yeah, I immediately said, "what?" when I heard that. I think he over-condensed the information to a point where it became wrong. The French colonised Louisiane, and then Acadiens were expelled and moved to Louisiane, hence the influence of Acadiens = Cajuns. He also missed the info that the King of France gave the land to the Vikings, swear their fealty to the French King, and help stop the future Viking invasions and protect the Kingdom from other Viking attacks, and that area then became Normandie.
Evangeline spinning in her grave.
Louisiana was literally founded by French Canadian, following the exploration of Mississipi by René-Robert Cavelier de la Salle, hundred year before the exodus of the Acadian.
@@Enzoli12 de la Salle was French, not French Canadian.
Really nice to hear you talking about French, the language that I love. Although I am from India and I learnt English before French, the latter has her attractiveness that I cannot overlook and charmingly beckons to us to approach her, oggle her beauty and enjoy using her to communicate.
Parlez vous très bien l'anglais!! Ton vocabulaire c'est magnifique, c'est mieux que la majorité d'es américaines pour dire la vérité. Je vois que écriés vous avec l'écrit d'angleterre... n'est pas?
@@juliandeveaux2848 Merci bien de votre compliment ! :), oui, c'est vrai que j'utilise l'orthographe de l'anglais britannique parce que l'Inde faisait partie des colonies d'antan de l'Angleterre, on nous apprend à l'utiliser depuis que nous sommes à l'école. Toutefois, la France avait aussi ses comptoirs ici notamment Pondichéry, Karaikal, Mahé, Yénaon et Chandernagore. Quant à moi, je suis polyglotte, outre ma langue maternelle indienne, je parle 7 langues européennes dont le français, et parmi les autres langues européennes que je parle et que j'apprends, le français tient la première place à mon coeur.
Il y a beaucoup de Français qui viennent visiter ces comptoirs-là dont la culture coloniale elle-même est un mélange de la culture indienne et française en même temps, ce qui se voit non seulement au niveau de la cuisine mais aussi de l'architecture des bâtiments, en tout cas, il faut savoir quels quartiers nous devrions visiter, les quartiers modernes n'en ont pas beaucoup. Une belle surprise vous attend au cas où vous n'auriez pas encore visité ces comptoirs français, il existe des rues ayant des noms français, parfois, je me demande si je suis en France en les visitant !. Soyez le bienvenu en Inde !
Tenez, Veritas, vous avez la ville de Pondichéri en Inde.
@@matthewjay660 Oui, vous avez raison, Pondichéry que j'ai mentionné dans mon commentaire précédent est considéré comme un des territoires d'outre-mer de la France mais je ne sais pas si ce soit un territoire d'outre-mer ou une collectivité d'outre-mer de la France, les citoyens de ce territoire-là qui ont le suffrage français en fonction de leur citoyenneté car certains d'entre eux ont tant la citoyenneté française que la citoyenneté indienne, considèrent Pondichéry pour être différent des autres états de l'Inde car il est unique.
Wow, few native english speakers even say "learnt" even though it's correct. I don't say it either so it sounds slightly wrong but I know it's actually correct in the technical aspect of the language. Also, sounds like you are just tryna flex your vocab skills. Stop, no one uses this much fancy words in every day english.
In fact Grenon and Gruesch are not used anymore, but most of the vocabulary about agriculture and countryside lifestile comes from Gaul, like all of our nautical vocabulary comes from Viking
and a witch is actually "une sorciere" not a bruesh
11:00 I'm french and I actually didn't know we removed the accents lol I still use them
I didn't know either. The 1990 reform was never really applied.
@patrick newton yea oignon
@patrick newton Oignon.. how do you want to write this ?
Même mon correcteur auto me met les accents ptdr
quand on sait qu'il est là pour signifier un "s" tombé "s" que l'on retrouve dans l'adjectif de chacun de ces mots fête / festival, hôpital / hospitalier cette réforme vide de sens fait perdre davantage sa racine au mot au profit de la fainéantise.
OMG ! Here's my last name in your vidéo ! I'm from Quebec so I'm happy to learn about the celtic origin of my name! And no, I'm not a big fan of the academy, we speak almost our own dialect here in Quebec derived from middle french, though our schooling is in international French. Really good video thank you !
Kiwi here who lived in France for a decade or so; familiar with the terms Langue d'oc and Langue d'oil and what they reference but never knew the origin of these terms (along with a thousand other things, just missed the opportunity to ask anyone). Really interesting! How real history and human migration influenced language and culture is pretty much my favourite thing so thanks a million for this tasty morsel. Chouette, merci et Kapai!
Also, the French word I always had the most trouble with wasn't Ecureuil (tricky, but pretty regular vowel sounds). My nemesis was every time I had to call EDF and say goddamn "l'électricité". FML I would get bloody togue-tied every single time! :)
Maybe i can answer your question: langue means language while oc and oil are old french ways to say oui.
Oc was spoken in the south while oil was spoken in the northern part around Paris, and eventualy oil became oui and took over the whole country.
I was just starting to learn French, good timing
As someone who’s been learning french for the past 6 years, the accents were never a problem.
En effet, l'accent n'est jamais un inconvénient, il nous laisse simplement entendre la culture d'origine de notre interlocuteur et ajoute même un certain charme.
(In effect, the accent is never an inconvenient, it let us hear simply the culture of origin of our interlocutor and even adds a certain charm.)
@@Lahi122 idk I’ve passed the B2 and I’ve also done ALevel French. I’m going next year to uni so hopefully I can continue there and do the C1 (my uni offers additional language courses too)
the accents make typing on a keyboard more difficult; glad they dropped it.
Great presentation....I am french from Montreal Quebec and my other side of my family are in Normandy France. I can tell you each time I visit them we have our cultural situation.....Very funny
Merci pour cette vidéo, elle est très intéressante et informative.
Le français est une langue très unique et extraordinaire, qui n'est pas comme d'autres langues (à mon avis). Il est riche d'historique et a fait une grande influence pour la plupart de langues et cultures modernes du monde. Je l'adore beaucoup. Grâce à lui, je suis devenu obsédé avec des choses françaises. J'habite en Indonésie et j'y suis natif, j'espère qu'un jour, je pourrais visiter la France, le pays de mon rêve. Mais j'aimerais aussi visiter d'autres pays/lieux francophones comme la Belgique, la Suisse, le Québec, et quelques pays Africains francophones.
En tant que Français magnifiquement reçu en Indonésie : tu es le bienvenu !
Merci à vous d'avoir autant d'affection pour ma culture.
Un français. 😊
Woaw, tu ecrits super bien français! Bravo =)
Les autres régions francophones d'Europe ne sont pas très intéressantes (de Belgique ou Suisse). Si vous venez en Europe, en plus de la France, je vous conseille vivement de visiter l'Italie, surtout. C'est le berceau de la culture occidentale et le pays a une histoire et un patrimoine artistique incomparables. C'est sans doute le plus beau pays du continent aussi et... où on mange le mieux 😉
@@BenoitXVIII Pour moi, La France et l'Italie sont également belles ,, mais honnêtement je m'intéresse plus à la culture française/francophones. Mais, à propos de nourriture, je suis d'accord que les nourritures italiennes ont l'air plus délicieuses.🤤
Great video! Just one minor correction : No other changes were added in 2016, it's just that the French education system decided to apply the changes that were decided in 1990 to the curriculum (of the Northern French-speaking countries, they were the last to do that). I also have to add those changes are optional, and people can continue to write with traditional spelling if they want.
Olly, I LOVE IT how You made another Video about French! Keep making more of them! I would love to hear you Speak French!
Thanks Tomislav!
@@storylearning Olly do you speak French?
So interesting. My husband had to learn French as the second language in school in Zambia (Southern Africa) and my in-laws lived in Cameroon which is mostly French speaking however it has a small Anglophone region. Sadly they had to move out for now and stay in Malawi as civil war broke out due to language. Anglophones felt mistreated because they were not getting the same education and rights as Francophones so they tried to separate and be their own country (I’m simplifying what is surely more complex but the major issue comes down to language). Hopefully someday soon the war will end and my in laws can move back. They had to abandon everything which was in their home it was all so sudden.
That is sad. My condolences.
I rarely see people talk about this issue. So, this comment feels heartfelt to me in ways I've never felt.
@@devinmes1868 I'm glad. Do you live in the area or have family there? It's so devastating what is going on yet so few people are aware of it.
@@Learninglotsoflanguages I don't personally live in Cameroon, but I am related to a tribe that resides in the English speaking region. The children have been unable to go to school for years now. It's rather upsetting for me to hear that, especially since their English learning will be made far more difficult (in my family's tribe, English is typically taught in schools only. They speak their own indigenous language specific to the tribe).
@@Learninglotsoflanguages There are so many opportunities that they will miss because of the situation in Cameroon. Thinking about it makes me upset.
I find it interesting that the very term for "universal language" is "lingua franca". Literally, "French Tongue".
On a side note, Olly, how does one get past periods of low enthusiasm? I love speaking more than one tongue, but I don't have the desire for learning at the mo'. Advice anyone?
Gran video, señor. Gracias. Takk. Spasiba. Gratsi. Bedankt. Sheh-sheh. Thanks.
Irony at it's best! In regards to motivation, you could always sign up for duo lingo. Then the owl mascot WILL find you and help you get motivated... OR ELSE!
In all seriousness though, i've been lacking motivation lately as well. I mean, it's okay to take a a couple weeks off... it's not like you NEED to do the whole "fluent in 6 months" thing. You can always come back to a language and pick up were you left off
@@jordanmcmorris5248 My enthusiasm has been off for months, desafortubadamente.
@@Svensk7119 do you use your language for fun at all? I'm not high level in Swedish yet, but I have been reading young adult novels and watching shows in Swedish with Swedish subtitles that I would have otherwise watched in English. I've been sick this week so I slacked off on my studying, but I'm still getting daily exposure.
Maybe take a break from working on the language and let some soak in by exposure?
@@sharonoddlyenough Thank you. Not enough, in answer to your question. I can count to ten in six languages, say hello in perhaps more, say thanks and you're welcome in perhaps as many, and say "Sign here, please," in seven (don't ask; long, boring story, if it's even is a story at all) but I haven't unlocked the treasure chest that makes learning joyful, save in Español. I should try absorción again.
Cool video, thanks!
Just a few anecdotes concerning local dialects and patois in France.
My great greand mother, who was born in the late 1890s, spoke little French as her native language was Gascon and she didn't go much to school. She lived with my grand mother, as people did in the past, and I used to speak some Gascon with them as a kid. They would always speak Gascon when they were between themselves or with neighbours, and switched to French when there were "estrangers" with them.
The same happened pretty much all over the bit of countryside in Gascony, where I grew up in the 1980s.
At the beginning of WW1, French regiments were created locally, so there were Basque regiments, Breton regiments etc. Some officers had a hard time being understood as many of their men spoke little to no French and only Basque or Breton.
There were instances where French soldiers actually fired on their own troops because they thought they had heard German being spoken and communication could be difficult at times because the guys replied in their own patois and not in French when hailed.
Merci de faire une vidéo sur notre belle langue
ici un fier québécois
As a french, I think removing the use of circumflex accents is a bit sad. It's one of the things that makes the french language kinda pretty i think
A think it was like a scar of the latin. It's not too hard to know where you have to put a circumflex accent if you understand
Je suis d’accord. Je trouve l’orthographe française très belle, surtout à cause des accents. Les accents me manqueraient si l’on s’en débarrasse.
A lot of people still use them though lol.
I still do on "chaîne" "août" or "château" => the "^" means there used to be one more letter.
For Castel or Chastel which is a word from old french ( castel is still used in the english language thanks to the french influence)
then the word became Chastel=> Chasteau and then finally simplified into "Château" : the "â" was for the missing "s".
@@QDWhite Je les utilise toujours.
I’m not French but I study historical linguistics. I liked the circumflexes (where they made sense) bc they’re basically fossils into Old French, the history of the language. The accent marks the loss of s that used to be pronounced but not all the time. It’s also used to distinguish homophones e.g. age (beam) vs. âge (age) (not etymological, they should spell it àge or something if they want to distinguish the homophones).
You’ve really hit your stride with your videos. Good job
Merci!
Great video buddy ! Love the way you go from scratch up to today ! L'Académie française is a great institution that allows not only my language being protected from too much modernism, but also thriving as they keep references of what correct AND beautiful French is !
As I have always said, a nationality is not just a question of ethnic origin, but at the time of the progressive Creation of France as an Entity-Nation, there was always a mixture between Celtic (Mainly Gauls, but also Bretons), Latin (Greco-Roman influence) and Germanic (Mainly Franks, but also Burgundians and Visigoths to varying degrees).
The fact is the people of France is still descending from gaulish people. Even their language change, the people still the same. Until last decades i mean. Now it's going to be a multi-ethnical country, for the worst and the best...
Indeed. I am Breton (from Brittany) - I did a check of my DNA: 15% French origin only, the rest (85%) is Irish, Ireland, Wales, England (but no Viking blood ;). Of course I am French too by culture. Ethnicity - specially in Europe, does not have so much sense. We are a bunch of big mixture soup. We are clealry "Europeans".
My friends from Normandy may have some Viking Blood. French of N-E probably Belgium/NL and German blood.
So at the end we are a lot of our Neighbors too. I am Breton, French and European :)
@@MrEricGuerin 1/Careful with DNA checks on sales. These analysis are based on database and result could highly change between two tests.
2/Never apply our own personnal case for all population.
3/Even if of course there is a common ethnic history between britain/scotlands/wales/britanny, a tremendous amount of french autochtones are descending from people who remained in the same area for centuries, if not millenaries.
The tipical distribution start to change with "Exode Rural" (50's - 70's) where people flee rural zones and go search for work in cities. Plus the actual immigration politics who implemented years after years populations from outside of Europe.
You meant Burgunds not Burgundians !
I’m French and this video actually taught me a lot 🇫🇷 loved it
3:47 The Gaulish word is just straight up Spanish??? Wow.
I also wondered if bruesch at 3:28 could be related to bruja/brujo. But, Wiktionary doesn't have a page for "bruesch" and the page for bruja gives a lot of possible explanations, some of which do include Proto-Celtic and Old Breton.
yeah the Iberian peninsula was originally Celtic too and Castellano has a few leftovers mixed with the Latin and Arabic
I'm a native French speaker and I do not know the word "bruesch". Looks breton to me. In French, the word for witch is "sorcière".
In my Gascon dialect, bruja is «Brusha» (pronounced «bruche» with a French accent), where I live at the moment it’s «Broisha» (pronounced «broushe»).
OK, I must comment again because this is one of the best videos I've seen on YT.
Very few people will learn a language simply because it sounds nice to them. Greek, Latin, French and English each became Lingua Franca's due to their usefulness to the people of that time. I don't see France or Quebec gaining enough economic or cultural significance in the near future to sway the rest of the world to speak French. The best bet for French to become the next Lingua Franca is if French speaking parts of Africa became the dominant economic or cultural superpower of the world. There's a lot of potential for Africa to grow in the future.
Dans ce cas l'avenir est à l'espagnol et le chinois. Ne croyez pas que c est impossible.
I think all French people would laugh if they said that French could be a world language. it's just the point of view of the author of this video, but in no way French
@@fabs8498 No language will replace English in the near future. That said, I actually think French is higher on the totem pole than Spanish or Mandarin. Africa has the fastest growing economies in the world and they don't speak Spanish or Mandarin. French will gain a lot of significance in the future, but not enough to replace English.
I state this as a French teacher, France should continue to keep doing what she is currently doing. Be the center of art, fashion, fragrances, cuisine, and culture, and attract people to the French language through the very successful use of her puissant SOFT POWER.
Africa will most likely be the most populated continent in 80-100 years and French would, if that happens, overtake English, and Spanish, in terms of numbers of native speakers. (But probably not Mandarin Chinese)
Want to congratulate all the pictures you used. Marvellous
One big difference between the langues d'Oc and langues d'Oïl is that the former was never highly influenced by germanic languages. the same goes with Arpitan, which can sort of be seen as a version of French with little Germanic influence, though obviously it would still be different due to dialectisation and other stuff
Well I don't know about highly, but Oc was most definitely influenced by germanic languages ! Though obviously not as much as Oïl. The Wisigoths settled in southern France and were in power there for a hundred years in the fifth century, and parts of it for two hundred more. Also, after the conquest by the Franks both languages kept interfacing for nearly a millenium and a half (hey there troubadours
@@jg9585 West Northern Italy dialects all derive from langue d’oc. In fact, we cannot understand dialects from the center/southern part of Italy. We need to speak “reporter’s Italian to understand each other. In Catalunya I could understand the locals language too.
@@jg9585 yes, I should have clarified that there was germanic influence, but quite a lot less than in the Oïl languages. The Wisigoths in Occitania as well as the Burgundians in Arpitania quickly adopted the romance dialects of their new regions, and though they did leave lexical influences (still less than in the north), their phonetic influence is negligible. Due to the massacre of regional languages, I wouldn't be surprised if even the tonality of Occitan and Arpitan changes due to the omnipresence of the French language. But yes just as you said haha
@@Veronica_Boer not all, the language of Aosta and a few valleys of Piedmont (such as Val Soana) is Arpitan/Francoprovençal :) Just saying it because as a language activist I'm trying to give it more visibility and recognition haha
Nice pfp!
Thank you for this video. I learnt a lot with your video on my language !
Dommage que la vidéo ne soit pas sous-titrée, le peu que j'en ai compris est très intéressant :) Je n'étais même pas au courant des dernières réformes de l'orthographe!
Moi non plus je n'étais pas au courant et je ne compte certainement pas les appliquer
@@bonzaibush4391 Je ne les appliquerai jamais non plus.
Wow great video thanks for that :-). Always happy to get to know more about the history of languages.
At 4:49, the Frankish word "frank" basically gave the French word "franc" which means the same thing and was also the name of the former French currency.
You're right but in fact the first defenition of "Franks" means "Féroce/Fearless", as France comme frome Rex/Regia Francorum (Roi/ Royaume des Francs) and later with Philippe Auguste Rex/Regia Francia (Roi/Royaume de France)
Has a bilingual person, mainly FRENCH Quebec CANADA, I can read other dialect of Italian Spanish, FRENCH when you understand the sexes and accents , it's a beautiful language,.. nicely done and great story about FRENCH
LE Français est une belle langue,.. Bonne journée à tous
I am a polyglot and I purposely avoided French. I am glad my daughter is now fluent in it. She speaks English, Hindi, Icelandic and French fluently.
why tho
Why does she speak Icelandic pe causitaaaaaaa... Porqueeeeeeee
wow, how great.
how did you teach her?
Wow, i don't watched all the video but i want to congratulate with you, I am not English or American and I speak a Little English, Just the based but your speak way so clear, that i understand a lot ! Saluti dall'Italia
Intéressant, je ne connaissais pas tous ces détails ;-). Beau travail ! Concernant les réformes de l'orthographe, personnellement je n'y suis pas favorable et je ne les applique pas systématiquement bien que je sois enseignant !
Cigüe, aigüe, et ambigüe : d'accord.
Deux-mille quatre-vingt-dix-septièmes : bien sûr.
Mais le gout des huitres? Pas casher !
@@pierreabbat6157 pour les nombres je trouve que c'est pas si mal... Mais pour le reste, on perd tellement de sens et d'Histoire...
L'Espagnol s'écrit comme il se parle et s'entend...Il faut réformer le français de la même façon en éliminant touts les exceptions qui font les difficultés de la langue qui sont un handicap pour sa diffusion et qui vont l'emmener à sa perte parce qu'elle sont incompréhensibles et rebutent ceux qui essaient de l'apprendre.
Et pour être honnête, il faut bien reconnaître que peu de français parlent un français correct..
@𝓟𝓵𝓪𝔂𝓱𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓲𝓻𝓮 Aveuglement et langage suicidaire !
Il va falloir revenir à plus de modestie et modérer votre arrogance...Vous parlez d'une époque qui n'existe plus et qui n'est pas la notre.. L'élégance du français ne l’empêchera pas de mourir à cause de ses difficultés d'apprentissage..Et l'anglais a justement dévoré et remplacé la "langue de Molière" justement grâce à ses facilités d'apprentissage. Bref , le français est déjà marginalisé et si vous tenez à le voir disparaître, vous êtes sur la bonne voie !
Et l'espagnol n'est pas " un gloubi-boulga sans orthographe ni accent " !
@𝓟𝓵𝓪𝔂𝓱𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓲𝓻𝓮 Oui, la France n'a rien colonisé, c'est bien connu...Si vous n'avez pas d'arguments, évitez d'être de mauvaise foi..Ainsi vous ne serez pas ridicule !
11:00 I admit, as a french, that we dont really know what reforms are led by l'Académie, nor really respect them... For exemple, we don't care of this rule about ^ accents and still write "août" ([ut]) or "chaîne" ([chen]) as usual.
It’s funny because some French words from Frankish origin found their ways in other Romance languages. For instance, werra, frank, treuwa (Frankish), guerre, affranchir, trêve (French), guerra, franquear, tregua (Spanish) 😀
Thank you! For the past two years, I've been very interested in languages, and your videos are very informative. 👍
thank you , i love this interesting video
When is the chinese beginner course coming out? Any updates?
I really like the method you present, and I have used it for russian on my own, but I would need help with mandarin.
February!
We have many local expressions in France sometimes without realising that they are indeed local. I remember my cousins from Paris coming to visit in the 90's and asking first if we had the television and even electricity. Then they discover we live about the same way as they do despite being retarded Bretons and suddenly my teacher of a dad enters the room searching for his school bag and asking "est-ce que quelqu'un a vu ma vache?". The expression on my cousins' face was splendid. Of course the expression was a metonimy (if I get it right) coming from school bags being made out of cow hide. And everyone in my place called a school bag a cow with no exception. So anyone there saying "I'm looking for my cow" would actually not be looking for the animal but likely a satchel or a school bag.
So funny how french canadian (goual) is so close to the 16th centery french the accent and all. It's like being in america we keep the old french still more then in Europe.
Good video - Merci pour tes recherches c'est très intéressant et personnellement le nouveau français est OK si on l'apprend en premier, mais heureusement on peux facilement comprendre les deux alors moi je vais continuer à utiliser mes accents;) Et c'est les Accadiens de la Nouvelle-Écosse qui ont été déportés par les Anglais en Louisianne ils n'y ont pas été de choix, mais de force.
Nice room in the background, Olly, but why do you take your tables of exemplary words off the screen after a couple seconds only to show more of the static room?
Dunno about that spelling vs pronunciation thing. Compared to English, French is actually pretty straightforward for the most part. You have a couple of basic rules and while some exceptions exist, it is NOTHING compared to the arbitrariness of English pronunciation vs spelling. Knowing the language for 20 years only to find out that a word such as "indict" is pronounced differently from what you'd have guessed? Did happen to me in English, but couldn't possibly happen in French.
Agree, French pronunciation could be really hard for beginners but it's way more consistent than English.
Can't agree with this. I'm german and learning french because of my french girlfriend and it feels Like only exceptions. All the time she have to Tell me how it have to be pronounced because it's an exception. Also it's so unintuitiv. I really hate this languag. It Just doesn't make any Sense at all. I hate it. I'm frustrated. HELP!
@@wilhelmaschenberger5556 I think I'm the only one who actually enjoys these "exceptions" 🤣 they add more colors to French. But actually, in most cases, the pronunciation is consistent though.
Great vid!!!! Please make a similar one on the Spanish language. As a quasi-native French speaker, and English speaker and a native Egyptian Arabic speaker, I am noticing extremely interesting things about Spanish and I would love to see your analysis of it.
Funnily enough, a lot of food terms in French come from Alsatian, which took them from Austrian.
(E.g.: Quenelle)
Might have been a nice little note to mention.
Merci beaucoup pour ce vidéo, c'est bien résumé et c'est très sympathique!
Most French-language product labels in Canada still keep pre-2016 spellings.
As it should. The new spelling was not well received in Québec. So we still eat "oignons" instead of "ognons" and keep our circumflexe accents. Maybe the Parisians stopped pronouncing them, but they still have some importance to us!
So interesting. Thanks :)
Great Olly!
Merci beaucoup!
apropos spelling, just a few hour ago I watched a TEDx video titled "la faute de l'orthographe" by Arnaud Hoedt und Jérôme Piron where I learned that not a single member of l'Académie Française is a linguist, and that the reason why the modern French spelling is so complicated is not that it didn't change since the Old French period. Quite the opposite, l'Académie Française MADE SURE that the spelling was more complicated than it was, in some cases adding unnecessary letters and features in order to discriminate.
In a dictionary from l'Académie Française back in 1694 it was explicitly written that the spelling would serve to distinguish literate people (gens de lettres) from ignorants and simple women.
One of the most interesting example of error in the effort to "relatinize" (and thus complicating) French spelling is adding a G to VINT (20) to make it closer to Latin "viginti", and yet they placed the G in the wrong position. Thus we ended up with "vinGt" instead of "viGnt". And as you mention in your video, "vingt" is particularly often used due to the fact that you have it for numbers from 80 till 99.
Thank you once again for the informative video!
La langue anglaise est toute pleine d'incohérences mais là les bobos "progressistes" de France et de Belgique ça les gêne beaucoup moins, ils en raffolent même.
C'est fou comment des gamins de 10 ans issus de milieux assez modeste (la France rurale et profonde d'il y a un siècle) s'en tiraient très bien question orthographe et qualité d'écriture alors que l'Académie Française avaient fait tout son possible pour les discriminer… cherchez l'erreur.
@@jandron94 Trouvée !
Most are authors. So french is designed by artists.
@@jandron94 English is complicated for the very reason that French is complicated but English never had an Académie.
English grammarians did the exact same thing as the French with things like the word Dette becoming Debt and Receit becoming Receipt. Putting in those lost Latin consonants that didn't make it through French into English into the spelling.
Bro merci beaucoup for the vid I’m tryna learn some Francais now
7:40 Middle French sounds more comprehensible then modern French.
It sounds not quite easy, to me. :-S
@@Briselance I didn't say it is easy. hahaha (and if you are francophone then obviously it is not quite easy for you, just as Old Portuguese is not for me as a Brazilian)
Old french looks like lombard ( serments of strasbourg)
Because of the cognates, I found it easier to pick up French. I am from Singapore where we use English as the language of instruction. Apart from the unique French pronunciation, it is relatively easy to read French once one knows the basics.
French Latin is incredibly interesting. I had sung Baroque sacred music using French pronunciation. It is quite cool actually.
thank you for sharing this!
Merci beaucoup Ollie Richard.
I'am very astonish about your culture on french language. It is funny, nowadays instructive with pédagogy.. Bravo. And with an English account that I'have almost understand, usely the English spoken people speak too fast, specially the american people.
But you forget the Arabic inluence, like abrict, aubergine and so on.
The occitan is a real language spoken from the Atlantic occitan to the Italian border. It's beautiful language of the menestrel.
There is also, breton, basque, corsicans, and in the overseas, creole, ameridian in Guyane , mahorai in Mayotte, , Arabic, tamoul, indian, malgache , mandarin,in the reunion, kanak., tahitian in Polynésie.
That come of the colony times.
But now the politics is more open with all this language. France is less centralist and il's a good things.
Merci beaucoup et à bientôt.
I hope to this video you about english.
Amazing video...!!!
C'avait génial. Merci beaucoup!
*C'était ...
I'm late to the party but it's great to see this beautiful video about my favorite language which I've spent 1000's of hours on.
French Canadians didn’t necessarily colonize Louisiana as so much be expelled there by the British. And these French Canadians were Acadians, who are a different Francophone nation with a difficult culture and dialect than the Québecois for those of you who‘ve never heard of the Acadians.
Genuinely just asking - did you mean ‘different’ not difficult, or do you actually find Acadians hard to deal with :) Also my family have a lot of Acadian ancestry so appreciate you mentioning that they were expelled by the British and they didn’t just voluntarily wander down there! 👍🏻 :)
@@lorie76yt Thanks for pointing that out! I wrote the comment on my mobile and didn't notice the autocorrect error. All good now, I corrected it.
@@algonquin91 Funny because these guys are pretty welcoming and humble.
From the New Brunswick province on the Atlantic side. And they have a flag: the French flag with a 5 points yellow star.
@@lunarmodule6419 what are you talking about, I'm confused....
I'm astonished by the quality of this video ! This dude is a great teacher. He pronounces french with more articulation and class than I do lmaooo
Fun facts: 1.) In "Commentarii de Bello Gallico", Julius Caesar noted that the Gaulish language was similar to Latin and that the Gauls could understand Latin, despite not knowing it, so much so, that he had to write in Greek so that the Gauls wouldn't understand what he wrote . 2.) According to linguistics, the Italic languages (including modern day Romance languages such as French) and the Celitc languages likely derive from a common ancestor, now called Italo-Celtic, forming a branch of the Indo-European languages, which would explain what Caesar stated. This would also mean that modern-day French is still, at least somewhat, related to the Gaulish language and is also possibly one of the reasons the Gauls easily switched to French, since language shifts to related languages are easier than switching to different languages. 3.) The Gaulish language and its dialects likely went extinct as late as the 6th century AD, with attempts by Francian nobility to try and preserve the language, at least in poems, but with little success. 4.) Until the French Revolution, it was common for the French to refer to the average citizen as Gauls and the nobility as Franks. 5.) Latin was mainly adopted by the elites and became the language of prestige, especially when the Franks arrived, so the linguistic shift occurred without a significant genetic shift. 6.) Politicians in France still occasionally refer to the stock French people as Gauls (Gaulois). 7.) The Breton language is a British Celtic language (related to Welsh and Cornish) that migrated to France in the early Middle Ages. According to linguists, the British Celtic languages are closer to Gaulish than Gaelic Celtic languages, meaning that Breton is quite possibly what modern Gaulish could be like, if it didn't go extinct.
Hi,can you tell me in wich part ceasar wrote the first point please?
@@Mark-ib9if "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" (by Julius Caesar); Book I, Ch. XXV and Book VI, Ch. XIV, provide more context, but the main part would be Book VI, Ch. XLVIII, where Caesar writes the letter in Greek (language and alphabet) to prevent the Gauls from understanding his message to Cicero. The Greek alphabet was widely used, even by the Gauls, but they used it to write Gaulish, not Greek, hence, they would have understood the letters but not the language. Had Caesar left it in Latin, they would be able to mostly understand what he wrote. This is further explain in "Cæsar's Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars: with the Supplementary Books Attributed to Hirtius ... Literally Translated [by W. A. Macdevitt], with Notes, Etc (1851)".
To highlight this, I used the word "king" in Latin, reconstructed Gaulish, and Ancient Greek. You can see below that, with an understanding of the alphabet, the Gauls would have been able to decipher Caesar's Latin, but not Greek:
Latin = rex (ρεχ)
Gaulish (reconstructed) = rix (ριχ)
Ancient Greek = basileús (βᾰσῐλεύς )
@@RobinHood-tw4se thats super interesting, I knew about italo-celtic but didnt knew the languages were close enough to be somewhat understood by both. Wonder if the same could be said about the Iberian languages?
@@Vitorruy1 Well, it depends what you mean by Iberian languages. If you mean Aquitanian or Iberian proper, not at all, since they are not Indo-European languages. But for Celtiberian, Gallaecian, and Lusitanian (possibly Celtic), there may have been some understanding since they were all Celtic, since those groups migrated from the Celtic core of ancient Gaul. However, there likely was enough drift and language borrowing for them to not be understandable. But words did overlap, such as "horse" in both "ekuo" (Celtiberian) and "equus" (Latin).
@@Vitorruy1 Well, it depends what you mean by Iberian languages. If you mean Aquitanian or Iberian proper, not at all, since they are not Indo-European languages. But for Celtiberian, Gallaecian, and Lusitanian (possibly Celtic), there may have been some understanding since they were all Celtic, since those groups migrated from the Celtic core of ancient Gaul. However, there likely was enough drift and language borrowing for them to not be understandable. But words did overlap, such as "horse" in both "ekuo" (Celtiberian) and "equus" (Latin).
C'est beaux de voir qu'on parle de sont pays 🙂👌🏽🇨🇵
I've been exploring the link between stories and language in Celtic cultures on my channel, so I particularly enjoyed the early part of this (and the fact that you mentioned Cornish). It is such shame that the Académie Française seems hell-bent on destroying modern Celtic language; brutal past and present; I wonder what Asterix would have to say about that.
Thank you Olly i learn a lot about french. I knew that english was influenced by many other languages. By i didn't how french is the result of many others languages as well.
First question! Is the french uncovered at $300 better than spending $300 on a good italki teacher for about 20 lessons? or signing up for speakly and italki?
(Advice from a French teacher): before making major financial decisions, sample as much as you can for free from a variety of sources. There is no one ideal teaching method; you as an individual need to play a big role in planning your curriculum. $300 or even $1000 spent on a method you don't really like will be wasted. Find the source(s) that you feel you can work with over the long haul -- because it will be a long haul, regardless of language. It is quite feasible to gain proficiency with little or no money spent. It is equally possible to plunk down considerable sums for practically no results. Bonne chance!
I am unsure but there also might be a 30 day return policy for the course and if there is you would be able to try it and return it is you were unsatisfied. Hope this helps.
@@deborahappreciates8 good to know thanks!
@@nathanlaoshi8074 Nathan Laoshi If it was around 100-150 I would spend the money. Do you know anyone who have learnt French with just free contents and without living in a french speaking country. Found free language content on open culture under free language lessons that I am going through now
High quality content!🚀🌖
quite accurate!
This is my favorite of all your videos. Have you written any of your story books on the subject of European history? I am so much more interested in that than I am in reading about modern life. If you did bite sized snippets (say France from the Gauls to Louis 14. Or Fall of Rome to The Black Plague, that kind of thing.....even small bio's on French inventors or leaders, , I would buy ALL your books!😅 Your story books are great so far, but historical tales would be so fascinating and really hold the interest of history-lovers. ❤
Hearing that France mandated education in French and attempting to eliminate the many other languages of France, is reflected in many other communities, especially indigenous peoples, who were deprived of their languages.
The laws of 1881 were not against the dialects spoken in France. Before them, education was paid and often religious and for boys in priority. Jules Ferry makes education free, compulsory, secular and regardless of gender between 6 and 13 years old. But this only in public schools. Families could continue to send their children to fee-paying religious private schools if they wanted to. Myself, until I was 18, I was in private establishments receiving certain courses from nuns and monks. It is true that French was compulsory but only at school. The children at home could continue to speak the dialect. I still have a few words in my vocabulary that are not academic French. There was no real desire to eradicate dialects but rather to provide equal education for all French people whether they live in Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux or a small provincial village. And we must not forget that these laws have prevented children aged 6 to 13 from being used in the labor market (domestic or factory work). They were therefore progressive laws.
Oui mon grand-mère étais irlandaise. Elle a dit cette les brits battre l'irlandais hors de ses grands-parents. Je lire cette les professeurs de la france battre la langue Breton hors des enfants bretons. Pardon mon français est mauvais.
Bonjour awesome vid
Interesting but the gaul heritage is very small : 100 200 words most of them related to rural life
The germanic influence is really deeper
Due to the Franks French is the most germanic latin language
The traces of Gaulish and the old Celtic roots are more prominent in French phonetics than vocabulary. French sounds weird to both Romance and Germanic language speakers, and not in a "it’s the most Germanic sounding Romance language" sort of way. It sounds neither like other Romance languages nor like Germanic ones. There’s something else in the mix and listening to Celtic languages, especially when sung, hints at the echoes of Gaulish pronunciation that remain. Enya singing in Irish can be mistaken for French (if you aren’t focusing on the lyrics) in a way no Spanish, Italian or German singer would. The Latin of Gaul ended up baking in a Celtic phonetic influence just like the English of Ireland has. The Celtic influence is just further back in history.
The grammar is German though not a lot of words
@@paranoidrodent C'est vrai ! I've just listened to Enya singing in Gaelic. I never paid attention to this. Merci
@@guzy1971 It really sounds like nonsense French doesn’t it? It’s just a similarity in the phonetics. Existing Celtic languages have had two millennia to keep evolving but you can still hear the phonetic impact of Gaulish and the kinship of that old Latin accent to the modern language. It’s something about the flow and their vowels and consonants. A French speaker can’t understand a word but the sounds and rhythm in song are eerily familiar.
Singing in Canadian Gaelic (a Scots Gaelic dialect) can be mistaken for singing in Acadian French or an eastern Quebec regional accent too if you aren’t focused on the lyrics. The fact that French Canadian traditional music is basically Celtic (due to a mix of Irish, Scottish and Breton heritage mixed in with the French) adds to the ease of misidentification.
@@paranoidrodent As somebody who is familiar with the living Celtic languages, I don't think they sound very similar at all. Welsh had Latin influence in its past. Some Irish dialects had Norman French influence in the 1300s.
French sounds like French and French alone. The sound of modern French is unmistakably Parisian.
As for the English of Ireland, among older rural men, especially in areas where the Irish language was still living within living memory, there is more noticeable Celtic influence. However the English of the middle classes nationwide, especially the English of younger women, has only very minor Celtic influence.
Language change happens fast, and it changes in the direction of density of people and prestige.
In France, the dialects were mostly replaced by Parisian French. In New Zealand, the dialects were replaced by Auckland English. In Ireland, the process of language change in the Irish speaking areas continues towards English and the English dialects are being replaced by middle class Dublin English (with American influence from the media also)
As far as I know, while there are a few loanwords, there is no linguistic evidence for any Gaulish phonological substrate in French (unlike for Latin and Frankish which have left traceable influence)
Ahhhh, cette image-la` du "guerrier Gaulois" tu montrais au debut de la video, en vrai c'est hyper superbe lui 😍 je dois avouer, moi j'adore trop 💖💋...!!! Une telle merveilleuse video archi-formide, *Olly* ❤😊
Im currently learning Old and Modern French think i should complete the collection and learn Middle French?
The problem most French have with the French Academy is changing already existing words, losing a bit of the word's history, while refusing to add new ones because they aren't from France.
But overall, everyboby ignore them and use the old words as well as the foreign ones.
Ça restera toujours un oignon.
Oignon for ever !
Using oignon is not a mistake though :D
I still write all ^ accents.
Love it. Is that a Brazil jersey in the background?
I see an inconcistency in the words from Frankish to modern French. Most words shown exist as well in Spanish. Words like Werra-->guerre (in spanish is guerra), fliukka->fleche (spanish flecha), danson->danser (in Spanish danzar) or treuva->treve (spanish tregua) .... This either means that they also have a Visigothic origin and came through it into spanish too from a germanic language (which is the case of War // werra-> guerra) or those are latin borrowings of some sort because the franks did not rule spain.
Interestingly even English "war" comes via French not Anglo Saxon.
Italian also has Guerra(war) but they say it like Guera=deathly pale in Spanish. German also has Guerra to , Wehrkra= Military Force. German has Danson too in Tanzen, Germans Tanzen comes from 10th century Swabia and Dancier does not appear in French until the 12th century , so the central Germans were already using this word.
Hay un loca teoria que dice que los Swabians que llegaron a invadir Espana y Portugal venieron de los Sorbs, y ellos son con Aleman--Slavicas por saxony y czech republica. Eso es por que Rusia contiene palabras alemanas y romanticas como Bar-Bear- Var . ademas , de lejos Ruso y Portugese-Europeo casi suenan como si tienen el mismo phonetico. Pero no se si viene de influencia grecia.
Pero si no hay duda que Alemenia es mas crucial a esta familia de idiomas de lo que pensamos.
El Frences pari mi suena como un idioma bien rara de los 3 -italiano, espanol , portugese y hasta Romanio suena mas latin/Romancia que el Frances.
@@erichamilton3373 Nah, English War comes from German Wehr which means defense force like Landwehr< Land Var> and that goes all the way back to Old high German , but even then it could also come from Proto Germanic(sort of contructed) warjaną. As a Multi Lingual, I don't buy this story that French influenced all the langaues, I think French is way too different from the rest to be the common ancestor.
Yeah, Enlish was influenced by French for a while but English also has Germanic and Latin influence that predated the French influence before 1066-1500s.
@@chibiromano5631 You're wrong.
Unfortunately. Franks/French influenced its neighbours a lot more for a huge sets of reasons, and most people don't realize it since the world is dominated by anglo-saxons since 1815.
- conquests from Clovis to Charlemagne PS: the Franks kicked the alemanis out of Francia, they would become known as prussians then germans later on ("allemands" in french).
- new latin, replaced it administratively : language of administration, law, rights and trade.
- huge wealth (peak in the XIth century) but Francia and Lotharingia has been filthy riched compared to everywhere else.
- huge demography (6 million gauls assimilated with 300 000 franks)
- Oldest daughter of the Church and first christianized nation in Europe (489-493-498)
- First nation-state, with England close second, of Europe.
- Language of the Monarchy/Royalty
- Language of arts, literature, first proper books were in French and latin. The upperclass used french for literacy and books.
- Language of war (especially the vocabulary, even today most military words come from them french language) and diplomacy.
The biggest influences the gallo-roman/french languages had were italian, spanish and then later on english in that order
but more than 80% of their words come from latin, and some pourcentages from greek.
As a French major I'm pissed about the circonflexe because it indicates the etymology where the letter S was merged onto the vowel in shorthand and then got silenced. It's a really cool piece of history shown on the spelling but ALSO it's helpful for other language speakers because suddenly hôpital becomes hospital, or for an obscure example fenêtre becomes fenestre, which is used in the English term defenestrate, to throw someone out of a window. Most languages don't have a lot of that, English has a good example with knight showing the history of the word being pronounced with a hard k sound and a g sound in the middle. It's only in written English but it's really fascinating to see for me.
Just to remind that Vikings in real was a profession and not people. Viking means somebody who makes a living traveling by sea. It happens that it was very usual in the nordic and Scandinavian lands so many people associate being a viking with the Scandinavians and nordic folk but being a viking it's like being a pirate, it's a way of life, a profession.
Vous parlez beaucoup trop vite!
N'oubliez pas de visiter le Québec, là où on produit l'énergie la plus propre au monde!
In belgium, our pronounciation of french is a lot more pure, it's a lot closer to the well pronounced french of 100-200 years ago. In fact, it's common to say that french don't speak their own language well
You only say nonante and septante. ..Not that much of changes
@@zeroxcqt2862 No a lot of words are pronounced differently. For example in France they don't pronounce maitre, mettre and mètre differently, we do. We are not purer we just kept the old ways
It's really not lmao.
I'm learning both French and German, and would like your true assessment: Which of the two is easier for the English speaker to learn? Danke and merci!
I think it's still French...
@@lunarmodule6419 I think you're probably right.
@@DiggerWhoops There's a reason I'm say this, it's the horrible "german declensions". Like in Latin. Super super hard.
im french and i speak a bit english and ein bisschen german ,i think it s easier for you learning German because , depiste a lot of ppl are saying English is more germanic language than Romance but i would say as well for an English native speaker there are three languages it would be easier to learn are German ,Dutch and french .It s just my opinion
@@DidierDidier-kc4nm From what I've experienced, I wouldn't disagree with you. French is far easier for me than German, and they say Dutch is even easier for the English tongue. But, no matter how easy or not, French has always been the "go to" language we (at least in America) have gravitated to. It is not only a most beautiful sounding language....we never forget how the French helped us kick the Brits outta the land we stole from the Indians. LOL! In short, there is nothing more beautiful or satisfying than the ability to speak (if only just a little) French. J'adore le francais!!!
YES !!! I just had to do an evil Disney laugh when you asked french people their opinions on the académie. First off, great choice of picture at 10:20, really representative of... well of the bunch of old men it still is to this day, mostly not coming from linguistics backgrounds. This makes for senseless spelling reforms in the name of simplification, without a shred of consideration for what could have made sense on a morphological level. However the outrage you speak of was not so much based on these scientific issues than on ideological resistance. Once again, great choice of example with Eric Ciotti, who is a champion of conservatism in France. So yeah, basically, I believe (stress on believe) most find the académie is a pack of old, upper class, self-important AHs who could do with a bit of mingling or, dare I say it, pure and simple disbanding.
Just a tiny other thing on the media resistance to spelling reforms, and in anticipation of any compatriots who might jump at my throat for advocating the sullying of our sacrosanct orthography : old conservative pundits on TV are scandalised at the plummeting mastery of spelling in our children, but they fail to see the correlation with the growing wealth and complexity of other teachings in the last 40 years or so. As a former teacher, I can guarantee that a simpler spelling in french would allow for even more complex lessons in just about every other subject, and that the time and energy we spend today on spelling could be so much more profitable to our children. On that note a great sketch (or conference ? Not certain) by two teachers on the problematic complexity of french spelling : ua-cam.com/video/5YO7Vg1ByA8/v-deo.html
I'm quite certain you will just love this Olly.
Realizing how terribly long this comment will be, I'll shorten the argument I was thinking of about regional languages in France, which you briefly spoke of. I think it is paramount to stress the magnitude of the cultural calamity that was the ban on everything not french in the public sector, especially in schools. We just destroyed pieces of our history and culture ourselves, and that makes me so angry. It is also a subject close to my heart as my grandfather was beaten in school for speaking Occitan, and I would be a speaker too in another reality. However these languages are still spoken, if marginally : mostly by what remains of older generations, but also by younger people eager to keep this piece of our culture and history alive (roughly 200 000 speakers for Occitan, probably more for Breton, per example).
Said my peace, sorry for the long post. And please do keep making these fantastic videos ! From Nîmes with love
^^no, the irony in my city's name is not lost on me
@patrick newton We do have some indeed, though not nearly as media covered as in the Commonwealth I believe, and not in the same form : we have our dear "dictée" for that. Apparently it translates to "dictation", but I don't recall ever encountering it in the educational field, so you tell me.
@patrick newton as a non English speakers I think that immigrants children do better because they have no choice but to be good at it. Plus it's the cultural difference. Not speaking/writing your language "properly" is a sign of being uneducated or being obnoxious and arrogant and disrespectful towards the culture therefore people are used to properly mastering a language or else they'd be called out. idk why there's even a conversation about whether you should be teaching kids to read properly. Of cource you should. These types of useless, even harmful, conversations don't take place in immigrant communities. Many immigrants take pride in language. Idk why op is attacking people who want to "conserve" their language. Being a conservative is not a dirty word lol. It's is only in the west where conserving culture and traditions is considered disgusting and bad lol...
I didn't know that so many words had lost their circumflex accent. Personally, I'm dyslexic and therefore I have a lot of difficulty with french. But without accents, they give me the impression that they are naked.
Très bonne vidéo en tout cas. Merci!
(PONS is an excellent text translator)
I just wanted to point out that the youngest member of l'Académie Française is 64 years old. Of course, this doesn't help l'Académie to be seen as legitimate by the general population and especially young people.
Hey, did you know that there is still debate on whether "Covid" should be feminine or masculine ?
Also is your channel getting verified any time soon ?
The Académie declared it to be “la Covid-19.” French teacher here, B.A. & M.A. 🇺🇸🤝🇫🇷
@@matthewjay660 Exact "la COVID-19" :-) And I would add: La maudite COVID-19!
@@lunarmodule6419 😂👍🏻😲😷
Thats seems like an completely arbitrary decision either way. What argument do they used to back this up?
@@Vitorruy1 Well if you listen to the video, you get how French and English have a lot in common. Then German is declension based like Latin. It's a totally different mindset.
@ olly richards , you could possibly addition the ancient greek , as a basic for french language too , mon ami olly !!!
French speaker from Belgium. I think that French should have the same simplification that the Spanish language had in the past. Some people say that French is the language of Molière but French is perhaps more the language of Rousseau, a Swiss, who influenced French culture a lot. And the French he wrote was more phonetic than the French we have today. The French Academy deliberately complicated the language by adding a bizarre Greek spelling to make it a language reserved for the elites. This must change, French along with English and other languages is becoming more and more a globalized language and it is time to make life easier for those who learn it.
Trop difficile maintenant étant donné que la langue soit si répandu au monde, envisager des changements fondamentals serait très compliqué dont aucun gouvernement ne serait prêt à s'en occuper, sans parlant même des coûts qu'ils entraînent
@@AimonsL_oignon Il y a la volonté en Belgique francophone et en Suisse et l'évolution de la langue française s'est toujours faite à la marge du territoire français, notamment en Angleterre où les élites francophones aimaient produire de la poésie et diverses chansons. Mais l'académie française peut être un atout aussi, elle fait du français une langue plutôt centralisée qu'il est plus aisé de changer. Nous avons déjà eu maintes réformes, ce n'est pas une histoire de coûts mais une histoire d'initiatives citoyennes et de volonté politique.
@@carthkaras6449Oui Il y certainement un élément de volonté aussi, mais la manque d'initiative de la part des gouvernements francophones m'indique qu'il y en a peu.
Même des endroits comme Québec qui a un dialect assez différent de celui de la France, il a aussi choisi de modeler ses registres soutenus sur le français métropolitain
@@AimonsL_oignon En faites vous savez, il y a clairement une volonté de réforme qui est portée par des politiques en Belgique et en Suisse, par exemple sur l'accord du participe passé. Et les immortels de l'Académie Française sont tous très vieux et vont vite être remplacés par des gens plus jeunes et moins conservateurs.
Je me permets une petite remarque sur le québécois. Les québécois aiment à penser qu'ils se distinguent fortement par leurs accents d'un français européen qu'ils imaginent très parisien. Ils n'imaginent pas la variété immense des accents des francophones d'Europe ainsi que des expressions propres aux régions et aux anciennes langues régionales. Le français des québécois est, de base, bien plus standard qu'ils ne l'imaginent et les quelques différences me font doucement rire lorsque j'entend mes grands-parents et parfois mes parents parler.
@@carthkaras6449 "Et les immortels de l'Académie Française sont tous très vieux et vont vite être remplacés par des gens plus jeunes et moins conservateurs."
Ah ça c'est de l'optimisme ! Ce serait chouette, sauf que les nouveaux entrants à l'académie sont choisis par les académiciens, il y a donc une vilaine tendance à la reproduction. Ce n'est pas une institution très militante, mais c'est peut-être bien l'institution la plus conservatrice de France, ce qui n'est pas peu dire. Le dernier en date, à moins que j'en ai raté un, c'est Alain Finkielkraut... Si vous ne savez pas qui c'est, une petite recherche risque de doucher votre espoir... Je compatis par avance.
Olly, will you be coming out with more short stories. I have your Beginner/Intermediate and bonus stories in German. Was wondering if there are more coming or if you can recommend anything else to help me improve?! Thanks!
Ridiculous to think that African French could replace global English.
Being french, I do have a pretty bad image of the académie française, i wouldn't mind for it to end.
Really good video though !
Hi! Great video! I'm French and I can say that the members of "L'Académie Française" like you said aren't really appreciated because they want to modify our patrimony (when there is a "^" circumflex accent, it's because there was a "s" after the vowel in old French: hospital -> hôpital). Moreover, "a" isn't actually pronounced like "â" (respectively in IPA "a" and "ɑ"). I think a language should only be changed by time and the way speakers use it, and not by stupid old schnooks called "language protector academicians" who actually change it all the time.
For French learners, I know it's a little complicated, but this can help a lot: English has 80% of its words that come from French or Latin. In modern French, there are many anglicisms: week-end, email, cool, hamburger...
Merci !
Leftist mindset comes from ignorance and ignorance is indeed bliss.
3:45
equus and cheval are not cognates.
Cheval comes from Latin caballus which is Celtic in origin but unrelated to equus.
French is NOT the language of love. The language of loves was Provencal, which the French ultimately banned (unsuccessfully).
French is my native tongue, I was raised in French and live in French... yet somehow 3 of 6 words at 3:30 I have never seen or heard in my entire life!!!
Shouldn't your thumbnail question be Fumez-vous Gaulois, Olly?
Hah! :)
It's would be "Gauloises" because cigarette is female in french :-)
The Gaulish word for horse is the Spanish for horse as well: Caballo
Olly, at 1:06 you promise that "later" you will tell why French will replace English as the lingua franca of the world, but that explanation is MISSING from this very video. I remember you did talk about this concept in another video, but not in this one...
Its in his other video.
@@cartoonhanks1708 what is the name of the other vid in question, perhaps I watched it but I forgot.