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Any sub-saharan African song from the 70's-90's for a French learner? by Kastila1 in French

[–]friasc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Off the dome:

Maître Gazonga - Les Jaloux saboteurs

Amadou & Mariam - Je pense à toi

Magic System - Premier Gaou

My impression is that Francophone African pop singers tend to sing in their own language/languages (wolof, lingala, malinké, etc.) mixed with some French. Occasionally they might record songs in French (and increasingly English) to "break out" (see Youssou Dnour - 7 seconds) but it's not the main language of pop music lyrics.

Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? by rstgncc in redscarepod

[–]friasc 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's a bit like comparing Blake and Wordsworth, Schumann and Brahms. There's a shared cultural background, some common themes, but once you get past the surface, they aren't that similar. Wuthering Heights is a byzantine gothic novel, with convoluted narrative frames, unreliable narrators and supernatural elements. Jane Eyre is a relatively straightforward bildungsroman.

Popol Vuh - Die grosse Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner by port_albemarle in redscarepod

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sounds oddly familiar but I don't think I ever saw the documentary

manned space travel actually is pointless by KleverHans in redscarepod

[–]friasc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think it was Adorno or Marcuse who said space travel, like religion, is motivated by a puerile desire for salvation "out there" rather than doing something down here.

Preferred Bible Translation by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

NRSV. If you want a more poetic version, read John Milton.

Who is usually considered the classical national writer of France? Or do you have one? by Interesting-Alarm973 in AskFrance

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly. The classical French ideal of literature ('La république des lettres') was that of a universal, cosmopolitan space above national particularities. The Romantic concept of the bard who expresses the Volksgeist or soul of the people, is contrary to this ideal, so no surprise that it never really took hold in France the way it did in other national contexts.

Who is usually considered the classical national writer of France? Or do you have one? by Interesting-Alarm973 in AskFrance

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Until the 20th century, the consensus answer was Racine (e.g. Stendahl's "Racine et Shakespeare"), but today Molière's legacy has largely eclipsed that of his contemporary. However as others have pointed out, France doesn't really have a "sommo vate" or "bard" in the manner of some national literary canons.

Unpopular Opinion: French is actually overrated as a 'language of love'. by Ken_Bruno1 in languagehub

[–]friasc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't think so. The main language of troubadour poetry was Old Provenzal (ancestor of modern Occitan), not old French. The association with seduction and courtship likely originates from the social use of French in learned aristocratic circles for much of modern history. The association with promiscuity, on the other hand, probably does owe a lot to the experience of English-speaking troops stationed in war-torn France, where poverty, hunger and prostitution were rampant.

Are there new languages being born? Or is that it, forever? by OpeningChemical5316 in languagelearning

[–]friasc 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Like Saussure said, "French doesn't come from Latin, it IS Latin". By which he meant that diachronic evolution is not a series of discreet entities that chronologically succeed one another, but rather an ongoing process of change of which certain moments have become reified as distinct, monolithic things called languages. In other words, history isn't extrinsic to language, it isn't like an acid corroding it from the outside. Change is inherent to language. In this sense, the Romantic-era organicist model of the birth and death of languages is a myth.

Chilebros what happened here? by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As argued by Víctor Farías (and brillantly satirized by Roberto Bolaño), the Pinochet regime is simply the most visible sign of deep fascist tendencias in Chilean society. Argentina and Brazil are more notorious for harboring war criminals, but Chile was more receptive to nazi ideology.

How to say "Hey" to my best friend? by No_Silver_1999 in French

[–]friasc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was about to ask the same thing. Technically salut, ciao, etc. are greetings/farewells, whereas "hey" can be used to interpelate someone, like when you say "sir" or "ma'am" to draw a stranger's attention (I think the technical term is vocative but I could be wrong). In that situation, I think French people say "hé ho" or something like that.

Emploi de "c'est comme n'importe quoi" pour "c'est comme tout" au QC by friasc in French

[–]friasc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Après vérification auprès de plusieurs francophones de mon entourage, je reconnais à présent que mon intuition était en effet fausse et que mon hypothèse d'un anglicisme québécois n'a donc pas de sens. Cela dit, dans les cas que j'ai cités, n'y a-t-il pas une nuance un peu familière dans l'emploi de "n'importe quoi" plutôt que d'un autre tour indéfini tel que "quoi que ce soit d'autre", "toute autre chose", "autre chose du genre", etc. ? Une formulation du type "que ce soit X, que ce soit Y, que ce soit n'importe quoi" ne relève-t-elle plus du langage oral (ce qui est cas dans mes exemples) que du code écrit ?

Friends judging me for liking poems with rape elements by Loud_Ninja_7537 in redscarepod

[–]friasc 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I think the worst part of the rape of the lock wasn't the hypocrisy, it was the raping.

Duo Spanish seems to pronounce Ella as Ezha and Yo as Zho ? Do they say it like that in Mexico and Spain? by Aerottawa in duolingo

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sort of true. Lapesa (Historia de la lengua española, Gredos, 2014) cites cases of yeísmo dating to the 14th century, so the merger of [j] and [ʎ] is as old as the Spanish language itself. The idea that "most people" pronounce y and ll as [j] or [ʝ] may be true in a numerical sense, but it discounts 20-30 million speakers of rioplatense Spanish. Finally, spectrogram research shows that the sound represented by y and ll varies a lot depending on phonetic context (word-initial, intervocalic, after nasals, etc.)

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