@Alone-zee Merci. Dis-moi ce que tu penses de Dialang. Personnellement je trouve que c'est très bien pour s'autoévaluer sur l'échelle du CECR (French name of the Common European Framework). Je pense qu'on doit trouver des comparaisons entre le Futsuken et les échelles du CECRL. Je me rappelle avoir lu que le Futsuken était trop grammatical. Peut-être est-ce une question de finalités ? Les motivations des Japonais qui apprennent le français au Japon
ne sont pas celles de ceux qui passent les certifications du DELF et du DALF.
I have a couple similar questions about vocabulary (and sociology) that I've forgotten....
They're both, if I remember right, lists of three words to describe a situation.
First situation: young women, when they settle on a personal fashion, might find their own style voice, or they might slip into a cliche... and I remember one version of this cliche refers to the accessories and goes like this:
Hermes, something, something
I can't remember the other two things. Chanel maybe? Louis Vuitton?
OK here's the other situation. A three term description of ... poverty? or just lower class material style?
something, something, deux chevaux
(obviously the last thing is the car)
I can't tell but these may be very old-fashioned, maybe 1970's phrases. Or maybe they're still au courant.
Well makes me think about a sketch of Bigard (NSFW in full text, just quoting a part here): On était montés fins : jean , baskets , Swatch , Clio : on peut être monté plus fin !
@Laure I don't think I ever heard them in advertisements. I remember people using the 'hermes' one disparagingly (or possibly enviously) of others who could afford it.
But things like that could have been used at some point in advertisements (as a cultural touchpoint)
(Terribly tangential, but the mention of "chevaux" invariably reminds me of a student writing about hair products one lesson and making the classic mistake -- with narration: "Oh, I hope I'm not writing 'horses'!" she said, and sure enough her hand was forming the letters: ...-A-U-X)
@Mitch Probably, I can't find the whole text, but there's two sentences about what is needed to 'date' a 'bourgeoise', the part I quoted above, saying he was on cheap outfits and the counterpart 'Suit, Rolex, BMW' (can't exactly remember the shoes)
@Laure Personally I'm conflicted about that orthography article, which was very interesting. Certainly an old debate but one always worth revisiting
As I learn Spanish I must say that I've appreciated the transparency of its alphabet. I almost never make spelling mistakes because of its incredible consistency. The biggest issue is silent letters (h, I'm looking at you). Otherwise very good. And it still hasn't stopped me from recognizing most of the etymological roots (I'm learning far faster than I would have imagined due to the vast majority of the vocab being guessable from French or Latin). So there certainly is something to the claim
in the article tha tit would improve "our capacity to amplify the diffusion of the language abroad"
Even so, though, I don't know if the benefits are all self-justifying. For one thing, there certainly are some etymological traces that are also comprehension aids. (For example, "Ou bien encore de monsieur dans lequel on et eu renvoient au même son et où le r final ne se prononce pas." — Yes, but how would they prefer it to be spelled? A spelling that reflects pronunciation would very closely resemble "messieurs" with its different meaning, and the possessive pronoun has helped my students)
And despite the note that it's "a few people's decision" how we spell things today, it's not entirely arbitrary even if it isn't transparent. :p Meanwhile, even as we reform the spelling, we have to note that the process has to be repeated every X centuries since the language will continue to phonologically swerve, as all languages do, rendering the newer reform nontransparent after a while. That means potentially severing the connection with past writing every X centuries
As for school performance on spelling being better in Finland than France, that seems kind of tautological. There are more mistakes to make in French, so they'll be made -- but what does that really mean? French and English speakers can still read and write fluently (as @Tensibai was also implying about the law: clearer orthography wouldn't necessarily improve comprehension); they just look like worse readers and writers because we add to their score the arbitrary hoops they didn't jump through.
If fundamentally both parties can express themselves well, what's the issue? (As devil's advocate)
And for a final reservation, concerning expression: "Cette situation oblige à consacrer un temps considérable à l’enseignement de l’orthographe du français, au détriment des autres matières et des autres compétences langagières (savoir structurer un texte, présenter de manière claire et ordonnée une argumentation)."
Well, rhetoric was also once a core academic subject, long ago, and the rules one was expected to adhere to also served to « distingue[r] les gens de lettres d’avec les ignorants », besides the benefit of improving comprehensibility for those who got their heads around the rules. Is it really that different? (Again speaking as devil's advocate.) I think being able to articulate onself has more to do with reading what is well-argued and being taught critical thinking
than any particular systematization of language use, whether at the spelling or at the discursive level.
But I concede my experience teaching is very limited so far!
Chaucer can't be read by the average English speaker now, but Shakespeare (more contemporary to Rabelais anyway) can. But the point that it may be 400-500 years before incomprehensibility sets in is taken
indeed, and avoid faux amis. "whilom" will be understood as "while" instead of "once"
@Laure Interesting to note. My thinking was that replacing arbitrary orthography rules with arbitrary composition rules isn't much of a trade, but when not playing devil's advocate I admit that most composition rules (even the dang "hamburger model" so popular over here) are more useful than spelling to most people
@LukeSawczak I've been retired too long, this hamburger model thing had escaped me. Googled it and reading about it now. Must think if it is called anything in French.
@Feelew or @のｂるしｔｙぱんｋｙ could know if it's called anything in Québec
or if it's just one other trick from the US
because they're so desperate their kids can hardly read & write.
I read it as a stand-in for learning to articulate one's thoughts. One more set of steps to follow to "guarantee" success, complete with a false sense of security...
Not that organization tools aren't helpful. But it seems a lot of my students get extremely precise details on the structure of the compositions to hand in (one paragraph about this, two about this, one about this), and worse, they're graded according to how well they follow those points
-- leading to a very artificial sense of having written something coherent!
It looks similar indeed. (Though how much more theoretically sound the words "dialectique", "analytique", and "thématique" have than "hamburger" ;) )
« choisissez celui qui vous semble le plus « facile » : c’est certainement le sujet que vous avez le plus préparé » Quite different reasoning from what you get here!
A teacher is likely to say "Now, I don't want you all to just choose the easiest one. I want you to learn something you don't already know"
@LukeSawczak but you've been reading advice for exam days (le bac est un examen national, tous les élèves d'une même série ont le même sujet dans toute la France) donc rien à voir avec ce que peux dire un prof pour un simple devoir
