Vivre dans un monde Franglais

I know that you don’t all speak French, but this post has to be written in French, it makes more sense in French. Therefore, I apologize to you guys and I’ll roughly translate what I wrote. It's a deal? So, the English version will follow.

L’inévitable est arrivé, quand je parle en français, maintenant, il m’arrive de chercher mes mots et de penser en anglais, ou tout simplement, les mots anglais me viennent à l’esprit plutôt que les mots français… et souvent, j’éprouve de la difficulté à trouver l’équivalent français et c’est quelque chose que je veux éviter le plus possible, le français étant ma langue maternelle.

Selon ma petite sœur, Sophie, ma grammaire s’est détériorée, et surtout à l’oral. Assez pour qu’elle me reprenne, chose qu’elle adore faire, le français étant primordiale pour elle. Ma mère me reproche aussi de faire plus d’erreurs dans les courriels que je lui envoie. Hélas, il ne s’agit pas simplement d’erreurs d’inattention, c’est carrément des erreurs de grammaire faciles à éviter, surtout quand on sait que je la maîtrise quand même bien (il faut bien que 4 cours de français au cégep et un prof zélé en secondaire 5 aient servi à quelque chose). Le pire c’est que selon ma mère, il arrive que la tournure de mes phrase soit très anglophone, aouch!

Par contre, je crois que juste qu’à un certain point, c’est normal, je passe beaucoup de temps à écrire, penser, parler, écouter, étudier en anglais… et je lis de moins en moins de trucs en français et c’est la même chose pour la télé : The Hour et The Gilmore Girls en anglais et seulement Rumeurs en français… ce qui donne 5 heures d’anglais contre 30 minutes de français…

Je ne fais même plus la différence entre le français et l’anglais lorsque quelqu’un amorce une conversation, l’un ou l’autre, cela m’importe peu… même si parfois il y a un mot clé de la conversation dont je ne sais pas l’équivalent anglais et cela peut me frustrer… mais bon il y a toujours moyen de se débrouiller!

Français, anglais ou franglais? Ou les trois?

To live in a Frenglish world

*I just want to warn you that I find it really hard to translate something that was written in French, it seems to me that it still looks sort of French, and same thing for translating something that was written in English.

Something that I knew that would happen happened. When I’m speaking in French, I can’t find the word that I’m looking for, I just have the English one in my mind, and I can’t find the French one. I don’t really want that to happen because I’m francophone, and French is really important to me.

According to Sophie, my grammar is worst than a couple of months ago, well grammar when I’m talking, you know, to use the proper verb tense, or to accord with feminine and masculine and to avoid the use of English words. And French is so important for her, she wants to be a writer, in French of course, so whenever I do a stupid French mistake she’ll tell me! Even my Mom told me that sometimes, my e-mails look like a translation of an English text: English built sentences… the problem is that I did 4 French classes in cégep and that in high school, I had this crazy French teacher, which whom I’ve learned a lot and his class was really hard, but it seems that I started to forget what he taught me.

But, to a certain extend, I think it is sort of normal, I spend most of my time doing something in English, I don’t read that much French things, nor do I watch a lot of French speaking tv. I watch 3 tv shows : The Hour, The Gilmore Girls and Rumeurs (it is Rumours on CBC, but I watch it in French, it is way better and we are currently watching the fourth season I think)… so it makes 5 hours of English tv a week against half an hour of French one (even if I tapped a lot of theses shows and I’ll watch them later).

And if someone starts a conversation with me, French or English, it doesn’t really matter anymore. But still, sometimes, I don’t know what the English word is and it drives me crazy… I hate it when it happens… but English requires more thinking than French does.

So French, English or Frenglish? Or the 3 of them?

*Update : I went on wikipedia to see what they say about Franglais : I discovered that the French and the English meanings are different : The French one, the English one.

French sense

In French (and sometimes in English), the term refers to the use of anglicisms (English words) for which there are French equivalents, the most notorious of which is le week-end. These anglicisms are often regarded as unwelcome imports, and as bad slang. Plus, the term refers to nouns created on Anglo-Saxon roots, often by adding "ing" at the end of a popular word, e.g. un parking (a car park or parking lot), un camping (a campsite), le marketing, le shampooing (shampoo, pronounced ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃ and not ʃɑ̃puiŋ). A few words that have entered use in French are derived from English roots but are never found at all in English, such as un relooking (a makeover), un déstockage (a clearance sale). For those who don't speak English, those words are often mistaken for true English nouns. Due to the world wide popularity of the internet relatively new English words have been introduced in French, like the words 'e-mail' and 'mail'. The French and Quebec government have proposed the use of a French alternative: courriel (courrier électronique).