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I'm french and I agree,the language is bloated and too complicated. English might be difficult for a french native that didnt learn it at young age like me but
by aikah 12y ago
I'm french and I agree,the language is bloated and too complicated.
English might be difficult for a french native that didnt learn it at young age like me but it's much more simple than french.
I wonder though why french is that complicated,in some other countries you have the official language and dialects,but often the core of the official language is tiny,so if one sticks to that core one will write correct sentences.It feels like modern french is the result of trying to shove every french dialects into the core,resulting in the bloat it is today.
Canadian french seems less bloated.They often use old french expressions,which is good because,many expressions in modern french from France just dont make sense,or words have their meaning abused.
And Canadian french seems more able to extend itself from its core,instead of using english words like french from France do.French from France definetly doesnt "scale".
It's just my opinion.
- renox 12y ago> I wonder though why french is that complicated, Mostly simple really: 1) French has a long history so a long time to accumulate warts 2) (nearly) each time, someone tries to remove some of these warts, purists scream loudly. Why politicians listen to purists instead of thinking that reducing French's complexity could help foreign people learning French is the thing I wonder though..
- bane 12y agoWell, having the Académie française doesn't help the language evolve much! Language should change over time, take on loanwords, simplify grammatical structures, etc. When they don't, they tend to get passed by by more dynamic languages. One thing we're definitely learning is that adding lots of loanwords to a language does not mean that the language is becoming the same as the source of the loanwords. It's just becoming a newer version of itself. And eliminating baggage doesn't mean the language is no longer "pure", it's just making room in the language for new ideas.
- jjgreen 12y agoBof, French does change, all of the time, and the Académie française only codifies and regularises these changes 30 years later -- it is irrelevant to the development of the language. What is different is that 'loanwords' are frenchified almost immediately, my favourite example being the regular -er verb 'liker', to like on Facebook, je like, tu likes, il like, nous likons, ...