What's wrong with saying I'm American?

[The Empire of Pretantia]

I'm not surprised I haven't heard of those. Probably because they're not worth exporting like Fresh Prince is.

The fact that you could consider the freah prince as "worth exporting" kinda make me sad for you since you don't have the chance to know what GOOD t.v show are.
Anyway, the reasons of why you didn't heard about them are multiple.
For Kaamelot, Alexandre Astier the author of the show who is for me litteraly Molière reborn, refused to sell the right of distribution and of adaption of the show to other's country's T.V because he known that translating it would completly ruin his work.
However this case is pretty rare if not unique. A lot of other successful french T.V show (like Caméra Café and Un Gars, Une fille) sell their rights of adaption all around the world so you might have saw their localized version.
The real reason of why you didn't heard of them is simply that 1)France don't dominate the mass culture itself even if we are still highly present in both litterature and cinema and 2)French is a complex and meaningfull language and thus is horrible to translate to and even harder to translate from.

Ja, wassever you say, mein fuhrer! We must preserve sie culture of Mutter France from der untermenschen! Sieg heil!

Sorry, that's all I got from this little opinion piece. I can't even speak on Camelot or whatever since I haven't even seen it, and the rest of the post has too much French and improper usage of the word "literally". I'm sure they're on par with Breaking Bad or MLP or something.

As for French being a meaningful language: the phrase is redundant. Every language has meaning to its words.

But we digress. The merits of French television isn't the topic.

[Aelex]

French really isn't that special, Aelex. It is no more "meaningful" or complex than any other Latin language, or really any language, and the job of translators is not to literally put down the word-to-word translation but to convey the similar statement but in the native language the art is taking place in. It happens all the time with every country. The reason why France doesn't is because it simply isn't as culturally powerful on the world stage as the US and Britain.

Actually French is indeed both complex (as anyone who ever tried to learn it could tell you) and meaningful not because it has a whole more sense as a language but because each words have differents reading and their very place in a sentence is changing it's sense.
It's something quite hard to explain and I totally understand if you don't get what I mean.
Anyway, to go to your second point; France has indeed less "rayonnement" in the mass culture than the U.S though it's far from being excluded of having it's own one as the "Francophonie" prove it.

[Actan]

Actually French is indeed both complex (as anyone who ever tried to learn it could tell you) and meaningful not because it has a whole more sense as a language but because each words have differents reading and their very place in a sentence is changing it's sense.

How is this different from English or Spanish? Or especially Chinese, which by the way, has so many variations based on context and different readings that it outpaces whatever French can conjure up.

It's something quite hard to explain and I totally understand if you don't get what I mean.

I understand completely what you're saying, you're just wrong. These statements are born out of nationalism.

Anyway, to go to your second point; France has indeed less "rayonnement" in the mass culture than the U.S though it's far from being excluded of having it's own one as the "Francophonie" prove it.

Of course. But that's why there is less French culture across the world, not because it's "difficult to translate".

[The Two Jerseys]

Not so much. Language changes are either caused by conquest (which is the reason why 45% of english word come from french), by exchange between neighbooring country or, more modernly, by the influence of mass culture.
Since English failed to conquer France since a long time and that you're an Island, two of the reason which may cause English to influence French are caducs. It's to avoid the last one that the Académie Française regulate the number of American T.V show and impose French ones. It has the double advantage of sparing us from most of your shit like the Prince of Bel-Air or Dallas while in the same time keeping running our own T.V industry which create a lot of good show like "Kaamelot", "Scène de Ménage", "Un Gars, Une Fille" or "Caméra Café".

I'm not surprised I haven't heard of those. Probably because they're not worth exporting like Fresh Prince is.

And I'll bet that the number of Frenchmen who tuned in to find out who shot J.R. is still larger than the audience for any of those shows.

[Aelex]

And I'll bet that the number of Frenchmen who tuned in to find out who shot J.R. is still larger than the audience for any of those shows.

You would bet wrong both in pure numerical term, as Kaamelot did 60% of audience in prime-time when we're almost 66 millions while people were around 30/40 millions in the '60 and I doubt more than 1/3 people "stayed tunned", and simple interest about you which you're greatly over-estimating.
To be honest, we don't give a shit about you most of the time. We may talk a little about you when you have your election, when you got a massmurder or when you do some bullshit but, well, even so we don't give a damn just like we don't care qbout what is happening in Mexico or Romania.

[Aelex]

How is this different from English or Spanish? Or especially Chinese, which by the way, has so many variations based on context and different readings that it outpaces whatever French can conjure up.

Three words, "grammar", "conjugation" and "exceptions". Those are the reasons which make French be one the most complicated and hard to master of the European languages.

I understand completely what you're saying, you're just wrong. These statements are born out of nationalism.

Patriotism please. I'm not insulting your country nor culture. Just saying I prefer mine.
Now, I agree that I'm biased toward my culture, but that don't make me blind nor hateful neither.

Of course. But that's why there is less French culture across the world, not because it's "difficult to translate".

I expressed myself badly, what I wanted to say is that the difficulty of learning French is, no matter what you can say, one of the reason of it's lesser presence in the world level along with other more pragmatic geopolitical ones.

[The imperial canadian dutchy]

How is this different from English or Spanish? Or especially Chinese, which by the way, has so many variations based on context and different readings that it outpaces whatever French can conjure up.

Three words, "grammar", "conjugation" and "exceptions". Those are the reasons which make French be one the most complicated and hard to master of the European languages.

I understand completely what you're saying, you're just wrong. These statements are born out of nationalism.

Patriotism please. I'm not insulting your country nor culture. Just saying I prefer mine.
Now, I agree that I'm biased toward my culture, but that don't make me blind nor hateful neither.

Of course. But that's why there is less French culture across the world, not because it's "difficult to translate".

I expressed myself badly, what I wanted to say is that the difficulty of learning French is, no matter what you can say, one of the reason of it's lesser presence in the world level along with other more pragmatic geopolitical ones.

I can attest to this difficulty, Fuck learning French, spent 5 years on the shit, still finished my last time doing it with a 60%.

[Actan]

Three words, "grammar", "conjugation" and "exceptions". Those are the reasons which make French be one the most complicated and hard to master of the European languages.

All of these are present in other languages are by no means uniquely French.

Patriotism please. I'm not insulting your country nor culture. Just saying I prefer mine.

It's fine to prefer it. It's another to claim supremacy.

Now, I agree that I'm biased toward my culture, but that don't make me blind nor hateful neither.

You don't have to be blind or hateful to be nationalist. You have to believe in a degree of supremacy of some sort.

I expressed myself badly, what I wanted to say is that the difficulty of learning French is, no matter what you can say, one of the reason of it's lesser presence in the world level along with other more pragmatic geopolitical ones.

French isn't that hard to learn I'm sorry to tell you. For a Westerner, Arabic and Mandarin are far, far more difficult than French.

[New haven america]

How is this different from English or Spanish? Or especially Chinese, which by the way, has so many variations based on context and different readings that it outpaces whatever French can conjure up.

Three words, "grammar", "conjugation" and "exceptions". Those are the reasons which make French be one the most complicated and hard to master of the European languages.

French is actually one of the easier European languages to learn, for english speakers at least.

Hell, english is technically harder then french.

[Redentro]

I imagine a number of people have mentioned this already, but

English	Spanish
The United States of America	Los Estados Unidos de América
The USA	Los EE.UU.
America	Los Estados Unidos
American (from the US)	Estadounidense
The Americas	América
From the Americas	Americano

Translating American as Americano is not so much inconsideration as mistranslation, but people will see it as the former. On the other hand, there should be nothing wrong with Americans (from the US) saying in English that they are American, because in English, American means from the United States (United Statesian really does not work as a demonym in English).

[Aelex]

French is actually one of the easier European languages to learn. For English speakers at least.

To learn bases of. Maybe even to know how to write a little.
But as soon as you'll try to hold a simple conversation in French, you'll see they ain't in no way good enough.
Especially if you're english since you're not accustomed to masculin and feminin, you'll obligatory mingle them, as well as fail to use pronoms and abbreviation correctly, and most probably forget about the exceptions of some verbs, ending up with conjugation errors.
And thus, your level you thought to be decent won't have resisted the first chat with someone.

[Actan]

French is actually one of the easier European languages to learn. For English speakers at least.

To learn bases of. Maybe even to know how to write a little.
But as soon as you'll try to hold a simple conversation in French, you'll see they ain't in no way good enough.
Especially if you're english since you're not accustomed to masculin and feminin, you'll obligatory mingle them, as well as fail to use pronoms and abbreviation correctly, and most probably forget about the exceptions of some verbs, ending up with conjugation errors.
And thus, your level you thought to be decent won't have resisted the first chat with someone.

You know what's tougher than masculine and feminine words? Tonal words.

[New haven america]

French is actually one of the easier European languages to learn. For English speakers at least.

To learn bases of. Maybe even to know how to write a little.
But as soon as you'll try to hold a simple conversation in French, you'll see they ain't in no way good enough.
Especially if you're english since you're not accustomed to masculin and feminin, you'll obligatory mingle them, as well as fail to use pronoms and abbreviation correctly, and most probably forget about the exceptions of some verbs, ending up with conjugation errors.
And thus, your level you thought to be decent won't have resisted the first chat with someone.

No rule in english is without contradiction, a good chuck of english words are not spelt how they sound, these little things called tonal words exist, there are no accents alerting to tonal shift in a word.

Ya, no, french is easier than english, especially if you have some base knowledge in the other romance languages.(Masculine and feminine words aren't really that hard either)

[The Two Jerseys]

I imagine a number of people have mentioned this already, but

English	Spanish
The United States of America	Los Estados Unidos de América
The USA	Los EE.UU.
America	Los Estados Unidos
American (from the US)	Estadounidense
The Americas	América
From the Americas	Americano

Translating American as Americano is not so much inconsideration as mistranslation, but people will see it as the former. On the other hand, there should be nothing wrong with Americans (from the US) saying in English that they are American, because in English, American means from the United States (United Statesian really does not work as a demonym in English).

But Spanish does mistranslate "American". "Estadounidense" is the equivalent of an English speaker calling an Argentine a "Republican".

[Imperializt Russia]

I imagine a number of people have mentioned this already, but

English	Spanish
The United States of America	Los Estados Unidos de América
The USA	Los EE.UU.
America	Los Estados Unidos
American (from the US)	Estadounidense
The Americas	América
From the Americas	Americano

Translating American as Americano is not so much inconsideration as mistranslation, but people will see it as the former. On the other hand, there should be nothing wrong with Americans (from the US) saying in English that they are American, because in English, American means from the United States (United Statesian really does not work as a demonym in English).

But Spanish does mistranslate "American". "Estadounidense" is the equivalent of an English speaker calling an Argentine a "Republican".

That's not what this is.

[Rio Cana]

Seems some US and French rivalry in this thread.

Remember, you are neighbors. So be nice to each other.

Proof - http://www.distancefromto.net/between/S ... int+Martin

[Katyuscha]

Forgetting to leave out the "an"

[Mushet]

I imagine a number of people have mentioned this already, but

English	Spanish
The United States of America	Los Estados Unidos de América
The USA	Los EE.UU.
America	Los Estados Unidos
American (from the US)	Estadounidense
The Americas	América
From the Americas	Americano

Translating American as Americano is not so much inconsideration as mistranslation, but people will see it as the former. On the other hand, there should be nothing wrong with Americans (from the US) saying in English that they are American, because in English, American means from the United States (United Statesian really does not work as a demonym in English).

But Spanish does mistranslate "American". "Estadounidense" is the equivalent of an English speaker calling an Argentine a "Republican".

I'm guessing calling the Americas "América" and any such derivatives long predate the establishment of the USA, so that's probably why that distinction came about.

[Wallonochia]

To understand Aelex you guys have to understand that the French have a very bizarre view on language in general. They have this need to classify languages into a hierarchy, where French is of course naturally at or near the top. It's really gross display of nationalist, cultural and often ethnic chauvinism, made worse by the fact that most Frenchmen think it's not nationalism but objective truth. In that it's not so different from those "race realists" who honestly think they're not racist because their garbage pseudoscience supports their claims that the white man really is better than black people.

There are a number of reasons for this, of course. The French language was used to unify (although the French often confuse unity and uniformity) the disparate peoples living within the Hexagon and convincing them that French was inherently superior to their language was a pretty helpful technique. People who grew up in the 60s and 70s lived through the tail end of the state's overt campaign to kill its minority cultures so they generally unquestioningly believe in French's superiority. Young people (apart from Aelex apparently) believe it less but that sort of subtle nationalism is extremely pernicious. If French people were to come to terms with the normalcy of French then they'd have to come to terms with the state's campaign of cultural genocide within Metropolitan France and in the colonies and France just isn't ready for that.

Source: I've lived in France for several years.

A good example of French people's strange views on language: Aelex, could you tell us the difference between langue, patois and dialecte and perhaps give us an example of each?

[Lunar Nazis]

Latin Americans get hella butthurt over this shit. It's kinda funny when they blow a gasket over something most Americans probably didn't even know was an issue.

I've encountered that while living in Europe. I ignore it and laugh. I'm American, and Euros say that it's not politically correct, that we should be USians. I say why aren't you still living in the hellish ruins of your wars? Oh yeah, AMERICAN DOLLARS. That usually shuts them up.

hah! good job!

[Imperializt Russia]

Latin Americans get hella butthurt over this shit. It's kinda funny when they blow a gasket over something most Americans probably didn't even know was an issue.

I've encountered that while living in Europe. I ignore it and laugh. I'm American, and Euros say that it's not politically correct, that we should be USians. I say why aren't you still living in the hellish ruins of your wars? Oh yeah, AMERICAN DOLLARS. That usually shuts them up.

That's a complete non-sequitur.
Only a fool would consider that to "win" an argument.

As a European, I have never heard of anyone terming "American" to describe citizens of the US as "non-PC". And I know feminists.
I assume this is either because you met one group of people who told you it was non-PC or because they were not British. I assume we're equally blind to the whole "all of this is mine" mentality of naming.
Obviously, when both Spaniards and French literally call you "United-Statesians" I can see why they would tell you this (as I have through the thread) but cannot see them really calling it "non-PC".

[Gigaverse]

I've encountered that while living in Europe. I ignore it and laugh. I'm American, and Euros say that it's not politically correct, that we should be USians. I say why aren't you still living in the hellish ruins of your wars? Oh yeah, AMERICAN DOLLARS. That usually shuts them up.

That's a complete non-sequitur.
Only a fool would consider that to "win" an argument.

As a European, I have never heard of anyone terming "American" to describe citizens of the US as "non-PC". And I know feminists.
I assume this is either because you met one group of people who told you it was non-PC or because they were not British. I assume we're equally blind to the whole "all of this is mine" mentality of naming.
Obviously, when both Spaniards and French literally call you "United-Statesians" I can see why they would tell you this (as I have through the thread) but cannot see them really calling it "non-PC".

I'm inclined to just click the Quote button to say I agree with this.

[The Alma Mater]

Latin Americans get hella butthurt over this shit. It's kinda funny when they blow a gasket over something most Americans probably didn't even know was an issue.

I've encountered that while living in Europe. I ignore it and laugh. I'm American, and Euros say that it's not politically correct, that we should be USians. I say why aren't you still living in the hellish ruins of your wars? Oh yeah, AMERICAN DOLLARS. That usually shuts them up.

In my experience, Europeans usually suggest you call yourself a "Merkin" and then they snigger a lot

[Aelex]

To understand Aelex you guys have to understand that the French have a very bizarre view on language in general. They have this need to classify languages into a hierarchy, where French is of course naturally at or near the top. It's really gross display of nationalist, cultural and often ethnic chauvinism, made worse by the fact that most Frenchmen think it's not nationalism but objective truth. In that it's not so different from those "race realists" who honestly think they're not racist because their garbage pseudoscience supports their claims that the white man really is better than black people.

There are a number of reasons for this, of course. The French language was used to unify (although the French often confuse unity and uniformity) the disparate peoples living within the Hexagon and convincing them that French was inherently superior to their language was a pretty helpful technique. People who grew up in the 60s and 70s lived through the tail end of the state's overt campaign to kill its minority cultures so they generally unquestioningly believe in French's superiority. Young people (apart from Aelex apparently) believe it less but that sort of subtle nationalism is extremely pernicious. If French people were to come to terms with the normalcy of French then they'd have to come to terms with the state's campaign of cultural genocide within Metropolitan France and in the colonies and France just isn't ready for that.

Source: I've lived in France for several years.

A good example of French people's strange views on language: Aelex, could you tell us the difference between langue, patois and dialecte and perhaps give us an example of each?

You're playing the race card in the first paragraph? Really? Like this straight? Well, I won't go about how much it's lazy than to use it like that and instead'll try to answer this equivalent of Godwin's point but this post ain't honestly starting well.
Anyway, you're overthinking a very simple thing which is that one will most of the time prefer it's own language. It's a basic social reflex which induce nationalism and chauvinism, rather than being the cause of them as you mistook, and which is called "Communitarianism"; people will tend to assemble themselves in group and denigrate what isn't part of the said groups. Now, once again, it's not specially a french thing but rather an human one. Just ask the same thing to your average British or U.S citizen and they'll probably put English on the top of their own pedestal and say all the others languages are ugly.
Now, to go with the awful comparison you made, you may notice that; outside from it's stupidity; it's based on the false hypothesis that we're trying, as the racialists did, to prove French to be superior language and that by using pseudo-scientifics tools. And here is the problem. Because literally no one except some nuts in the 19th ever did that, and especially not me. Now, I indeed stated that I found French to be a better language than English by exemple, but I also precised multiple time that it was an emotional and biased statement, which I never tried to prove, by the way, by using any pseudoscience nor bullshit of the like.
So, sorry for you but no. Despite your strawman, no comparison with racialism is possible.

But before I can continue, I need to clarify something which, despite your allegation of having lived in France, you don't seem to have understood. This thing is the very notion of nationalism and patriotism and the French "approach" of them.
What is the difference between them you may ask? Well it's simple : "Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.".
So, no, I'm not brainwashed neither do are people who were born in the 60' or 70' (even tought they were subject to what was indeed almost propaganda) and like, indeed, most of the young people I have a critic eye on my country and the mistakes it did, especially on something I experience firsthand as a student which is called "Civical Education" and which is basically the remain of what was once State's propaganda. But that doesn't mean I'll let people spit on my country.
I'll say that my état d'esprit, which contrary to what you're saying is the norm rather than the exception, can be summed up to this quote from Cyrano of Begerac (which I translated awfully) "There is nothing that I like more than having a friend criticizing me but there is nothing that I hate more than having a stranger doing the same."

This said, I can go back to your second point where you make another mistake of interpretation which need me to put things in perspective so you can understand your error.
French, to the contrary of English or Irish, never was a nationality properly speaking as they were no real "ethnically" french people. The French were only the Frankish who settled and "breeded" with the locals which they ruled over.
For a long time, being French was only a noble concept, and every little lord, that he was Picard, Occitan or Normand, invented himself some filliation with one of the said Frankish conquerers and that was enough for him to be considered french and to add prestige to his name.
But as time passed and the Renaissance shown up, as well as the primitive concept of "nation", the notion of being french became more and more "universalist" and popular.
It grown and grown 'till the Révolution Française where it eventually reached it's paroxysm. At this time, 1/2 of the population, peasants for most parts as the people living in the city were already mostly talking in french, was still talking in Patois yet most of them were considering themselves as French. And that, for the simple reason that, since basically the 17th century, one was French not by birth but simply by behaving and talking as one. One could be born in Rennes and only able to baragouine one or two words yet still feel as French as a Titi from Paris. It's this ideal which impregned the Universalist First République and could still be found nowadays.

Anyway, to get back to your second point and the supposed "remorses" we should feel from destroying the Patois, it's making me kinda smile.
Yes what Jules Ferry did was an attempt to destroy the differents Patois and managed to do so. But this assimilation was done by offering free and laïc schools to kids so they can educate themselves and maybe rise from their parents' situation, a thing quite unknown of before. And not by separating children from their family and putting them into pensions were they were treated as animals and a good lot of them died.
I think that in term of "assimilating the local", France actually did a lot better than the U.S.

And, to answer your last question; to give you my personnal definition :- A Langue is the official language of the state, spoke by the majority of the population. Ex : Français
- A Patois is a, somewhat recognized by the state, language spoke by the majority of the local population of some part of a country. It has no relation with the Langue. Ex : Arpitan
-A Dialecte is a, somewhat recognized by the state, language spoke by the majority of the local population of some part of a country. It is the mix between the Patois and the Langues were the later had or is assimilating the first but some vocabulary (argots) or grammatical forms from it are still partially present in the "mix" of the two languages. Ex : Lyonnais

[Rio Cana]

Kind of off-topic but related to the language discussion that is going on between French and English.

They say Castilian (Spanish) is the happiest language.
http://www.newser.com/story/202534/span ... guage.html