Talk:African French

I'm not sure La Francaphonie is relevent

Being a member of La Francaphonie requires cultural, not linguistic, links to France. The list definitely needs an explanation at the top about this - and maybe the list should be removed altogether. It's just misleading. Gronky 14:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I know this comment is 13 years old, but just to be clear, it's completely false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.27.112.11 (talk) 16:16, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Equatorial Guinea

Although is an official language in that country, it´s hardly used. They mostly speak Spanish, also Bubi and Fang, but French is only spoken by Camerunese inmigrants. Somebody should put a parenthesis saying: (Official but hardly used).

Yeah, and also it says that 60% of Equatoguineans are able to speak French... I doubt that this would be true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.16.87.124 (talk) 23:58, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Libreville

It would be good to include the french dialect spoken in Libreville(Gabon) too —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.79.57.106 (talk) 01:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Where are some of those numbers from?

In the article I read, 94.5% of the population can speak French either as a first or second language.
I must admit that I am somewhat surprised, where is that figure from? I am tempted to say that everybody speaks French on reunion island, but I could be very wrong.
But I am curious, what else do the 5.5% of the population speak?
What would be the first language of those that only speak French as a second language?
I am guessing that Creole would be an obvious answer, but as the Creole from Reunion Island is so close to French I find it very hard to believe the figure of 94.5%.

With that in mind, where do all of the other numbers come from? I checked the reference for Mayotte, (after a bit of digging further), and it looks about right, but I am not sure about any of the others. FFMG (talk) 13:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The reference is given at the beginning of the section. Aaker (talk) 14:44, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Really? A reference to a book on Amazon.com. Do you really think it is good enough for Wikipedia? Do you have at least the page numbers where those numbers were taken from? I think they would help a lot. FFMG (talk) 14:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah I’d rather believe a reference book than some of the stuff I read here in Wikipedia. At least a professionally publish book would be more reliable than wikipedia where anybody can post a bunch of nonsense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CF2008 (talk • contribs) 08:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hypercorrection

I have some trouble with this section:

A third phenomenon is hypercorrection, which is found especially among the educated and upper
classes of sub-Saharan Africa. Educated people there tend to speak a very formal sort of
French which may sound a bit old fashioned and conservative to European and North American
French speakers. This is somewhat similar to the way English is spoken by people of the upper
class in India.

Is hypercorrection really correct in this case? As far as I have understood it, hypercorrection refers to a linguistic mistake made while trying to avoid a perceived other linguistic mistake. Really formal language can't be considered hypercorrect, as long as it is correct. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 12:36, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess what the author wants to say that it is incorrect to use very formal language in informal situations. Aaker (talk) 19:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, if anything, it seems like ignorance of French stylistic levels, but not hypercorrection per se. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 14:38, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The numbers given by the OIF are exaggerated

The numbers given by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie are exaggerated. Take for example Equatorial Guinea: the OIF gives a figure of 60% French speakers, when Ethnologue [1] gives an estimation of 75000 to 100000 second language speakers (11% to 15%, the first language speakers are negligible).

In some other cases, the OIF is counting the speakers of French-based creoles as French speakers: in Seychelles most people speak Seychellois Creole, not French; in Réunion most people speak Reunionese Creole, not French.

And the São Tomé and Príncipe figure (65 %) is the most absurd of the whole list, since French isn't even an important language in the country in any sense.

I didn't check the complete list (I did only a quick survey), but this is enough to determine that the source is biased, very clearly biased -- 60% of French speakers in Equatorial Guinea and 65% (!!!) in São Tomé and Príncipe are in the limit of the open and deliberate lie.

This is why I'm putting a "non-neutral" warning in the sections quoting the figures given by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Sebasbronzini (talk) 04:13, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I removed the tages you added as they refer to POV and this is not really the issue here.

But, I do agree with you that those values seem very hard to believe, personally I think that the percentage for Reunion Island _below_ the real value, (see my earlier remark about it last year).

Si I think we need to find another reference somewhere or find someone who actually owns the book so we can verify the values given here. I would not be surprised if this is a simple case of vandalism that was never caught.

I am also not sure about ethnologue.com, they seem very vague as to where they are getting their own data, I would not make sense to replace an invalid reference with another invalid one. FFMG (talk) 09:34, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure the numbers are that exaggerated. The statement "French isn't even an important language in the country in any sense" is actually the most absurd. Aménagement linguistique dans le monde writes the following:

"Malgré les efforts du gouvernement de São-Tomé-et-Príncipe, le système éducatif connaît des problèmes d'efficacité interne entraînant des taux élevés d'abandon et de redoublement. Ainsi, dans l'enseignement secondaire, on y enregistre des taux de déperdition atteignant les 80 %. Au secondaire, la quasi-totalité des élèves apprennent le français comme langue étrangère, et ce, bien avant l'anglais. Présentement, on est en train de former des enseignants polyvalents pour l'enseignement secondaire dans les disciplines suivantes : portugais, français, histoire et géographie, mathématiques, sciences naturelles, physique et chimie. Dans le cadre de «l'éducation pour une vie meilleure», le ministère santoméen de l'Éducation et de la Culture a promis des améliorations dans l'enseignement de la langue française (langue seconde).

Au plan de l'enseignement supérieur, l'Institut supérieur polytechnique de São-Tomé dispense ses cours en portugais. Par ailleurs, le Gabon et le São-Tomé-et-Príncipe ont cru nécessaire de procéder à un échange d'enseignants et d'étudiants entre l'École normale supérieure de Libreville et l'Institut supérieur polytechnique de São-Tomé. La partie gabonaise pense octroyer des bourses aux étudiants santoméens, selon un mécanisme de sélection qui sera mis en place à l'ambassade du Gabon à São-Tomé. Les Gabonais entendent recevoir des indications précises sur le statut (privé, public ou mixte) de l'école bilingue franco-portugaise que l'archipel de São-Tomé-et-Príncipe souhaite installer dans la capitale gabonaise."

Remember that neighbouring Gabon, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville are probably the most French-speaking countries on the continent. Aaker (talk) 19:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Native French.

I will admit, most of these figures are rather unrealistic but what I am really curious about is how many people speak French as a first language. The article always combines both first and second speakers of French but how about come numbers about who many speak it as a mother tongue or as a working language.ThisguyYEAH (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The truth is that nobody knows how many they are because nobody has counted them. Many people grow up speaking indigenous languages in their families and later use French in school and at work. Often they develop much better literal proficiency in French than in their native languages. In informal contexts different languages are often mixed in a variety of ways. There are at least three contradicting trends in Francophone Africa today: 1. the increased use of French at all levels of society because of the progress of education and increased use of the written word as well as improved communication and media technologies. 2. Increased awareness of the importance of English (which by the way has so far manifested itself as a credible threat only in Rwanda which has a particular history). 3. Increased awareness of the indigenous languages value. Numerous, but by no means sufficient measures are being made in order to preserve and develop the native African languages. To sum up, the number of languages spoken in Africa is likely to decrease sharply as a consequence of urbanisation and the demographic transition and the most likely scenario is that French will co-exist with a rather small number of (bigger) indigenous languages. In this environment it will be interesting to see in what degree people will adopt the bigger indigenous languages (as in Kinshasa) or go directly to French (as in Abidjan). Anyway, the number of native French speakers will increase due to the language's privileged position and sadly it will be to the expense of indigenous African languages. A better alternative would have been to appreciate people's native languages and develop policies for multilingualism, where French could be kept as lingua franca/language for international communication, but most African countries do not have enough of resources to implement such policies so they prioritise more urgent issues. Aaker (talk) 22:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Insert Arabian Word Please

It North African Word الأفارقة الفرنسيون--OSAKA_JET 01:43, 6 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Takahara Osaka (talk • contribs)

I'm sure a serious article could be made of this ... but it hasn't happened yet.

If you compare Belgian French to French French you will find some different expressions and words ... soixante-dix and septantante, for example. Both words are considered French language, but from a differing tradition. Then take the section on the Democratic Republic of Congo - all the examples are just Lingala words ... they are not French at all. If a government minister used that type of French, it wouldn't be accepted. Understand that the development of the country includes business meetings and conferences with other Francophone groups from other countries. Speaking French has got to be mutually intelligible - just throwing in lots of a different language and saying ... that's how we speak French here, is not understood by anyone who speaks French. In other words, Wikipedia has allowed another nonsense article to be produced. Yes, there is something that can be considered as "African French" - usually it would include older obsolete or little used expressions, but this article doesn't describe it yet. Francis Hannaway (talk) 23:21, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

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Original research

Most of the article is original research and either unreferenced or poorly referenced. While it may be true that in a lot of French is spoken, I would estimate that here in the Democratic Republic of Congo fluency in French cannot exceed 20% of the population - probably less. The idea that a French person could arrive here and survive by speaking French, is far fetched. People's first languages are tribal language - probably a few hundred, after that people speak one (or more) of the national languages - after that they might speak French (after a fashion!). The other thing that could be mentioned is that DRC French is Belgian French. Francis Hannaway (talk) 07:53, 20 February 2020 (UTC).

I totally agree with Francis that most of the numbers are vastly exaggerated. 74% of the population speaking French in the Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) is absolute fantasy. Such a number may be desired by politicians and others from the upper and middle classes but is very far from reality. Another problem is the question how fluent people are. Maybe 74% are able to say "bonjour, ça va" but not much more. —Tuncker (talk) 09:07, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Egypt

Why is Egypt included but not Lebanon? Lebanese children and teens learn French at school.

Perhaps because Egypt is in Africa and Lebanon isn't? ព្រះមហាក្សត្ររាជ (talk) 17:03, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Are African French dialects related to each other linguistically beyond being dialects of French?

Are the African French dialects part of a larger dialect family in a linguistic sense or is African French a purely geographical grouping like Canadian French where most, if not all of the dialects within it aren't related linguistically beyond being dialects of French? ~Red of Arctic Circle System (talk) 12:03, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Donner Des informations

Men 197.250.225.154 (talk) 10:07, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

V. Y. Mudimbe quote

T

The paragraph where V.Y.Mudimbe is quoted seems biased and low-key racist. It comes out of the blue and presents a single opinion with no further discussion. The terms "repressed", "bloated", "tortured", "stuck" cannot appear in any serious writing in linguistics. The fact that french grammar is complex is questionable (compared to what standard?) and the assertion that this inhibits learning by most non-native speakers even more so. ContiNuziali (talk) 18:47, 30 September 2023 (UTC)