3 ms·

> some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous there are no such thing as "non-French speaking neighborhoods" in France.

smeyer 12y ago
I'm an American who isn't very knowledgeable about France. Could you expand on this a little bit? There are definitely neighborhoods in the US where even if many people speak English, it's not the dominant language in the neighborhood. For example, places where more signs and labels on shops and such are in some other language than are in English. Are there no similar neighborhoods in France where another language dominates over French?
- nraynaud 12y ago
  the biggest immigrant community in the US is Mexican so they have a common language that is Spanish. In France it's Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, where they all speak good french and a local dialect of arabic (let's say 60% french speaking people in all 3 countries, declining towards the local dialect), so it's easy to get the French as a common idiom. So you have many languages, but it's easier for everybody to use French anyways. On the food packages, the second most common language (often exactly the same size as the french) is ... Dutch ... Ok, we'll have to go north and speak about Belgium. Those packages are sold in all european French speaking countries (Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Belgium, in one day of trucking you can cross the area). Of those countries only Belgium and Switzerland have another language as official language, and only Belgium require to have both of it's national languages on its packaging (another story of bigotry for next time). One exception to the language distribution I talked about might be the Chinese community, being such a populous country, they can be enough immigrants in an area to avoid French altogether, I don't know them very well, they are very concentrated in small areas, and I don't know if they speak both mandarin and cantonese, or if the majority is from only one linguistic area. But I'm pretty sure the kids speak french at school, it's mandatory and in French here.
  - smeyer 12y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. I was thinking of examples in the US with languages other than Spanish, but I wasn't thinking about the substantial populations of francophone immigrants to France.
    - nraynaud 12y ago
      the difference in size of the country might also be a factor: we're just the size of California, there is not enough "space" (a mix of population and area), to create pockets of people dense enough to self-sustain in a different langage, in an immigration community that would not be the most populous one.
      - KMag 12y ago
        It doesn't take as large an area as you'd think. My buddy Dave's father-in-law was born and raised in Southern Manhattan, but speaks only Cantonese and is unable to hold a conversation with Dave (who is from Taiwan, native speaker of Mandarin and English). Dave's father-in-law's English is so poor that he spelled Dave as "Day" on his lai see packet his first Chinese New Year dating his now wife. Luckily, Dave's father-in-law went to Hong Kong to find a wife, who is conversational in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Manhattan's Chinatown is pretty small (the Mandarin-speaking Chinatown out in Queens is much larger), and yet there are people born and raised there who only speak Cantonese.
analyst74 12y ago
What was described to me was certain areas in the country or suburban immigrant neighbourhoods, which I assumed to be non-French speaking. But after some reading, it seems you are right, as people in the ghettos still speak French, and not necessarily fresh immigrants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_suburbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_...
- lloeki 12y ago
  May I recommend the interested reader to watch La Haine[0] ("hatred") by Mathieu Kassovitz. This movie really sets the mood, and things barely changed since '95. To be fair, such "ghetto" (la cité) people† mostly don't speak "verlan"[1] ("l'envers" with reversed phonetic syllables) anymore, but both the people and slang is usually referred to as "wesh"[2], from an arabic informal salute interjection. It's mainly poorly syntactically and grammatically worded French combined with limited vocabulary and heavy hand gestures and exaggerated arabic accent borrowings (e.g Rs are more pronounced) with various word borrowings from English or Arab. Interestingly enough, I watched it recently in close proximity with The Wire[3], which provided great contrast yet striking similarities, and brings an interesting light into how we used to consider surveillance. In that regard, things have changed a lot. An awful lot, and certainly not for the better. † It should be noted that many people and families that live there have adequate education levels and just live there because the rent is cheap and they can't afford anything else. [0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/ [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan [2]: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wesh http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wesh [3]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/

smeyer 12y ago

I'm an American who isn't very knowledgeable about France. Could you expand on this a little bit? There are definitely neighborhoods in the US where even if many people speak English, it's not the dominant language in the neighborhood. For example, places where more signs and labels on shops and such are in some other language than are in English. Are there no similar neighborhoods in France where another language dominates over French?

nraynaud 12y ago
the biggest immigrant community in the US is Mexican so they have a common language that is Spanish. In France it's Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, where they all speak good french and a local dialect of arabic (let's say 60% french speaking people in all 3 countries, declining towards the local dialect), so it's easy to get the French as a common idiom. So you have many languages, but it's easier for everybody to use French anyways. On the food packages, the second most common language (often exactly the same size as the french) is ... Dutch ... Ok, we'll have to go north and speak about Belgium. Those packages are sold in all european French speaking countries (Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Belgium, in one day of trucking you can cross the area). Of those countries only Belgium and Switzerland have another language as official language, and only Belgium require to have both of it's national languages on its packaging (another story of bigotry for next time). One exception to the language distribution I talked about might be the Chinese community, being such a populous country, they can be enough immigrants in an area to avoid French altogether, I don't know them very well, they are very concentrated in small areas, and I don't know if they speak both mandarin and cantonese, or if the majority is from only one linguistic area. But I'm pretty sure the kids speak french at school, it's mandatory and in French here.
- smeyer 12y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. I was thinking of examples in the US with languages other than Spanish, but I wasn't thinking about the substantial populations of francophone immigrants to France.
  - nraynaud 12y ago
    the difference in size of the country might also be a factor: we're just the size of California, there is not enough "space" (a mix of population and area), to create pockets of people dense enough to self-sustain in a different langage, in an immigration community that would not be the most populous one.
    - KMag 12y ago
      It doesn't take as large an area as you'd think. My buddy Dave's father-in-law was born and raised in Southern Manhattan, but speaks only Cantonese and is unable to hold a conversation with Dave (who is from Taiwan, native speaker of Mandarin and English). Dave's father-in-law's English is so poor that he spelled Dave as "Day" on his lai see packet his first Chinese New Year dating his now wife. Luckily, Dave's father-in-law went to Hong Kong to find a wife, who is conversational in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Manhattan's Chinatown is pretty small (the Mandarin-speaking Chinatown out in Queens is much larger), and yet there are people born and raised there who only speak Cantonese.

analyst74 12y ago

What was described to me was certain areas in the country or suburban immigrant neighbourhoods, which I assumed to be non-French speaking. But after some reading, it seems you are right, as people in the ghettos still speak French, and not necessarily fresh immigrants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_suburbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_...

lloeki 12y ago
May I recommend the interested reader to watch La Haine[0] ("hatred") by Mathieu Kassovitz. This movie really sets the mood, and things barely changed since '95. To be fair, such "ghetto" (la cité) people† mostly don't speak "verlan"[1] ("l'envers" with reversed phonetic syllables) anymore, but both the people and slang is usually referred to as "wesh"[2], from an arabic informal salute interjection. It's mainly poorly syntactically and grammatically worded French combined with limited vocabulary and heavy hand gestures and exaggerated arabic accent borrowings (e.g Rs are more pronounced) with various word borrowings from English or Arab. Interestingly enough, I watched it recently in close proximity with The Wire[3], which provided great contrast yet striking similarities, and brings an interesting light into how we used to consider surveillance. In that regard, things have changed a lot. An awful lot, and certainly not for the better. † It should be noted that many people and families that live there have adequate education levels and just live there because the rent is cheap and they can't afford anything else. [0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/ [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan [2]: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wesh http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wesh [3]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/