{"id":824,"date":"2013-03-20T15:45:11","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T19:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/?p=824"},"modified":"2013-03-21T15:54:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T19:54:44","slug":"the-francophonie-in-ten-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/the-francophonie-in-ten-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The Francophonie in Ten Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Jean-Beno\u00eet Nadeau & Julie Barlow<\/h5>\n

 <\/strong>
\n\"Dis-moi<\/a>The French love to underline events with little glossaries of words. In honour of the International Week of the Francophonie, March 20, we’ve taken a shot at French art of the lexique<\/em>: The Francophonie in Ten Words<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0R\u00e9seauter<\/em>: R\u00e9seau<\/em> is French verb for \u201cnetwork\u201d. Now it\u2019s used as a verb, like in English. Networks are what link the francophone world together.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Francophone<\/strong>: To the French, this means anyone who speaks French, who\u2019s not French! For most Quebeckers, it\u2019s a synonym for French-Canadian. But in the dictionary, it just means anyone who speaks French correctly. Maybe if everyone replaced \u201cFrench-speaker\u201d by francophone, French-speakers would start to see the French-speaking world for what it is.<\/p>\n

3. Francosph\u00e8re<\/strong>: Speaking of the French-speaking world\u2026it\u2019s really a universe. French is the official language in 36 countries, but the Organisation international de la Francophonie <\/em>has 56 members. The Agence universitaire de la Francophone<\/em> has 90 member countries. There are Alliance fran\u00e7aises<\/em>, French lyc\u00e9es <\/em>and coll\u00e8ges <\/em>in 135 countries, and more than 200 countries get TV5Monde.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0Nineteen-Sixty:<\/strong> The number of Francophones in the world has tripled in the last 60 years to reach 225 million. This is mostly because former French and Belgian colonies chose French as their official language after decolonization in 1960.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Airbus<\/strong>: Languages don\u2019t spread because they\u2019re beautiful but because they\u2019re useful and necessary. If French has remained an important international language (and it has), it\u2019s because it\u2019s a language of ideas, of industry, science, business and diplomacy<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0Goncourt<\/strong>: The French language as we know it was largely built by writers. For the last 24 years, one-fifth of the winners of the prestigious French literary prize, le Goncourt, didn\u2019t speak French as a mother tongue \u2013 like three-quarters of the French-speakers on the planet, for that matter.<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0Purism:<\/strong> It\u2019s the central ideology of francophones. From Limoilou to Timbuktu, and from Sudbury to New Caledonia, French speakers share the idea that somewhere out there, there is a \u201cpure\u201d French that ever speaker must strive to master.<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0Franqus<\/strong>: It\u2019s the name of the dictionary the University of Sherbrooke is producing which will be the first dictionary to define proper Quebec French. For the first time, the French language will be described by Quebeckers, not Parisians.<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0Kinshasa<\/strong>: The capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the world\u2019s biggest French-speaking city after Paris\u2026and before Montreal.<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0Lieutenante<\/em>: In Paris, the lieutenante <\/em>(with an \u201ce\u201d) is the WIFE of the lieutenant<\/em>! If a lieutenant<\/em> happens to be a women, they call her \u201cMadame le lieutenant<\/em>\u201d! Since Quebec decided to feminize titles in 1979, Belgium and Switzerland have followed in its footsteps. The French are debating the question, proof that there are MANY ways to speak good French\u2026.<\/p>\n

So, what are your ten words?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jean-Beno\u00eet Nadeau & Julie Barlow   The French love to underline events with little glossaries of words. In honour of the International Week of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8344,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/8344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}