{"id":143,"date":"2011-02-19T15:38:28","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T20:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/209.44.100.85\/?p=143"},"modified":"2012-04-23T14:43:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T18:43:02","slug":"to-be-or-not-to-be-a-francophone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/to-be-or-not-to-be-a-francophone\/","title":{"rendered":"To Be Or Not To Be\u2026a Francophone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my last posting I spoke about francophones and used the pronoun \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Okay, where I live, in east Montreal, no one would call me a francophone. I moved to Montreal when I was 19 and learned French as I worked my way up in society, from retail sales to writing.<\/p>\n<p>Today I speak French almost without an accent.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But here in Quebec, it\u2019s origins that count, and I\u2019m still English. There\u2019s no stigma to it, but when you spend as much time speaking French as I do, it does fell like a bit of a put down.<\/p>\n<p>Strangely, in France, I\u2019m a francophone. I lived there a decade ago and my French friends regularly referred to me as francophone. I was rather flattered. Until I figured out that all they meant was: I spoke French well, but I wasn\u2019t French.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow, I can\u2019t help but think: why not liberate the word \u201cfrancophone\u201d from any association with origins?<\/p>\n<p>English speakers also distinguish between native speakers and others. But at least they have to make more of an effort, using clunky phrases like \u201cnative English-speaking\u201d or \u201cspeaks English as a mother tongue\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>French-speakers have a great compact word: francophone. It could mean the same thing for everyone who speaks French, non? People who speak French well and understand French-language culture should think of themselves as francophones, period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my last posting I spoke about francophones and used the pronoun \u201cwe.\u201d Okay, where I live, in east Montreal, no one would call me &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}