Do the French follow their grammar rules ?

[Carmody]

I believe this is the right place to put this question but hope that the Mods will place it elsewhere if need be.

Simply put: do the French follow all the rules when speaking French?

I recently asked a question re Ne...pas, ne, and pas and received some excellent answers but it left me wondering if the French follow all these rules; and there do seem to be a lot.

I am a college educated American from outside NYC, NY and simply do not see Americans as that attentive to language as the French. For example with the usage of the words further and farther. Most Americans don't know the difference between these words and newscasters could care less re usage of either word. It is my belief most Americans don't really worry about or think about their language.

But do all "college" educated French people follow all their rules and are they all proud of their language?

I personally love the French language, and the learning of it and want to get as proficient as possible at it but at the moment I am curious over whether the French follow all these rules of grammar.

Thanks.

[galaxyrocker]

The rules of grammar are only for the standard. Most people do not speak the standard natively. The French, no matter which version they're speaking, always follow all grammar rules of their native language. The issue is that it's usually not the standard form, so there might be things in the standard that they don't do. Usually the more educated people lean more towards using the standard.

The same is true with Americans and English. We all speak it perfectly, for our native dialect. Not so true for the standard.

could care less re usage of either word.

I find it funny you're criticizing people for their language use, but then you say "could care less", which will get you a lot of frowns from pedants.

[emk]

I believe this is the right place to put this question but hope that the Mods will place it elsewhere if need be.

Simply put: do the French follow all the rules when speaking French?

I do not think that this is a helpful way of looking at the question. By definition, college-educated French people speak college-educated French. (Yes, yes, I'm a staunch descriptivist. But bear with me here.) Imagine you had a choice:

1. You could speak French like a graduate of one of the grandes ecoles (roughly the French equivalent of the Ivy League), with excellent control over both the formal and casual registers. You could write a business letter or hang out with some friends and kick back.
2. You could speak French while scrupulously following all the rules in your beginner's grammar book.

Here's a test. If your roommate hollered, "Hey, Carmody, is that you banging at the door?", would you respond, "Yeah, it's me," or a clearly-enunciated "Yes, it is I"? The first is perfectly normal casual American English. The second would make you sound like a butler in an old British film, at least in most places in the US.

There's no "official grammar book" of French that you can just memorize, and suddenly expect to function like a well-educated French speaker. Instead, you need to read a lot, and listen a lot, and pay attention to what language people use in which situations. French is a moderately "diglossic" language, which means that the written language and the spoken language aren't quite the same. Certain spoken forms usually look terrible in formal writing (ça, c'est…, for example). Certain written forms would sound either highly formal or downright bizarre in casual speech. (For example, basically nobody uses the subjonctif de l'imparfait in casual speech except as a deliberate attempt to sound ridiculously hyper-formal. But it turns up semi-regularly in novels.)

But do all "college" educated French people follow all their rules and are they all proud of their language?

I've definitely heard French speakers correct each other's grammar in public. I'll be listening to a podcast, and somebody will interrupt another speaker to say, "No, no, that's an anglicism, it's better to say ____," and everybody will talk about it for a few seconds before getting back on topic.

French speakers are proud of their language, but they use it as a complex instrument with varying degrees of formality. Worry less about "following all the rules" (though the rules will explain many important things), and more about "sounding like an actual French speaker." If your study plan provides you with no idea what actual French speakers sound like, you should try to change that a bit.

…

BTW, If anybody here is an intermediate French speaker looking for long, written texts that sound like a 20s or 30s college-educated French speaker talking casually to a friend, I'm fond of girlsandgeeks.com. This isn't always 100% safe for work, but this is the way that plenty of actual French speakers sound.

Bon. C’est sympa les histoires de maman, mais y’a pas que ça dans la vie. Attendez, c’est hyper important pour moi hein. Mais c’est pas ça qui perturbe mon sommeil, qui me maintient les yeux grands ouverts fixés sur les ombres au plafond projetées par la lumière de la tablette sur laquelle je mets compulsivement n’importe quelle chaine diffusant les Experts ou NY Police Judiciaire dans l’espoir de m’abrutir pour m’endormir, stratégie qui selon toute évidence est défaillante puisque tard dans la nuit je continue de fixer ce putain de plafond en me demandant “mais putain… comment je vais faire ?”

This jumps around between informal and formal speech, and it's aggressively colloquial. And the unusual part is that it's spelled correctly, which is often a problem with informal French found on the internet.

[sillygoose1]

They're definitely more proud of their language than English speakers are, but that doesn't necessarily mean they speak it perfectly.

I'm a member of some online French forums targeted to 15-30 year old males and if someone makes a conjugation error, they get flamed for it. Usually they won't care if it's a simple error like "je fait" instead of "je fais", but even then that's only usually.

Another interesting tidbit I learned from a French linguist is the subjunctive with "apres que" where she told me that you aren't technically supposed to use the subjunctive because it's describing an action that would happen with certainty but many people use the subjunctive anyway.

So yeah I think that there are agreed on misuses in every language even with people who are proud of their language like the French.

[Marah]

do the French follow all the rules when speaking French?

Since you mention spoken French, then the answer is no. They don't. Even university teachers may say après que + subjunctive, drop their "ne" in "je ne fais pas", even sometimes say "la voiture à Cédric" instead of "la voiture de Cédric", the agreement of the past participle is rarely used in a "correct" way, etc.

[Cavesa]

I'd say this question leads to three possible areas of answers.

1.colloquial language almost never includes 100% correct standard grammar. No matter what language we are talking about. And French is no exception. There are differences between standard language and colloquial ones that most natives use (such as not using the "ne" in the "ne..pas" constructions, as was discussed, or prefereance for questions without inversion). The two examples I've mentioned are well spread in the population, even among older and well educated people.

2.regional differences. I have read an extremely interesting article about African French (sorry if that looks like I am getting further from the question possibly enquiring about people from France only). The take home message was something like: "while everyone agrees the Canadians have a French dialect, many consider the African dialects, usually influenced by other local languages and a bit separate development from european French, to be simply grammar mistakes and sign of low education instead". I wish I could find the link again. I suppose this subject will be discussed much more in the years to come, due to the massive immigration. Of course French spoken in Maroko or Mali is different in some ways, yet many people from there have/will become French citizens and their children will grow in the mixture of the parents' dialects and French spoken at school and will participate on the evolution of the language.

3.mistakes. Of course the French make mistakes in their native language, just like everyone else. Sometimes, you can find real jewels even on lefigaro.fr or anywhere else. In some cases, they are honest mistakes caused by oversight, lack of focus, fatigue. But there are as well people who simply do not know the grammar as well as they should, despite working in a field where such a skill is expected. There are very interesting books for natives, covering common mistakes. My favourite reference Toute la conjugaison by Gaillard and Colignon points common mistakes occasionally as well.

[s_allard]

I think emk has put it quite eloquently. There is a difference between the formal standard language that is more respected in the written form and the informal spoken language that often takes liberties with the rules of the standard. But I think it's the case with all languages. It's basically the difference between the spoken and the written and between the informal and the formal.

What I would like to add is that there is an element of linguistic change in the explanation of these differences. All the aspects of a language change, some albeit more slowly or rapidly than others. French pronunciation is changing. The grammar is changing, and even the spelling - one of the most conservative areas - is changing. The nouvelle orthographe is taking hold despite a lot of resistance and gnashing of teeth.

So, I would say that it's not a question of people not following grammar rules or not, but rather people are following different rules.

[Carmody]

Many thanks to all for the guidance. Special thanks to emk for all the time spent with the explanation.

emk, you obviously know more about the French language than I ever would or could know. Period. However, when you said that:

There's no "official grammar book" of French that you can just memorize

isn't it possible to say that Le bon usage : Grammaire française by Maurice Grevisse and André Goosse is at least a good indicator of what standards people speaking French should follow? That is a question; not a statement.

I have never seen that book but I hear that it is a pretty daunting tome to deal with. I don't believe American English has anything comparable, except for maybe Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage
by Jeremy Butterfield but most Americans have never even heard of that book.

I love learning the French language as well as hearing it and reading it. I am just struck that Americans in my region of the country have such little regard for their language compared with the French. I mean seriously for a moment just think how the Presidents of the US under George H and George W Bush spoke. Now they had serious problems with the language and could have cared less re their sentence structure when speaking.

And thanks for pointing out that "French is a moderately "diglossic" language" it just underlines how very much I have to learn.

By the way, I am on the email list of 2-3 places like http://www.commeunefrancaise.com with hopes of picking up a bit of the vernacular. Today as frequently happens Geraldine Lepere the teacher wrote to me starting with the salutation of Coucou Carmody. So when I was in my evening French class one night, I walked in and said a friendly greeting of Coucou. So.....my teacher of about 80 years old who speaks with an absolutely impeccable to-die-for Parisian accent made it perfectly clear that the term was an insult to her and I was never to say that again. I of course apologized but how was I to know? She said it was only spoken by adults to small children.

Learning a language is difficult; one never know what word or phrase will flip someone out unintentionally. If I speak in too high a register or too low a register to someone unknowingly, it could seem very insulting without my knowing it.

Know what I mean?

[emk]

emk, you obviously know more about the French language than I ever would or could know. Period. However, when you said that:

There's no "official grammar book" of French that you can just memorize

isn't it possible to say that Le bon usage : Grammaire française by Maurice Grevisse and André Goosse is at least a good indicator of what standards people speaking French should follow? That is a question; not a statement.

I do not have a copy of Le bon usage : Grammaire française, though I do have a copy of the excellent Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), which at 1,800 pages is actually a bit larger. CGEL explicitly focuses on "Standard English", which is the written dialect that you'd use in print. It mostly excludes the informal and colloquial dialects of English that virtually every native speaker has available. And even in the realm of formal grammar, it admits to being something of a summary—there's a huge bibliography of specialist sources in the back, which go into more detail.

These books are so thick because once you dig into the details of any natural language, the grammar gets weird and fiddly. There's something which is sometimes called "lexicalized grammar", which is basically a way of saying, "This group of 10 words has this weird special rule." Or notice these three boldfaced words, and then notice the underlined pronouns and verb forms:

If he wants to go to the concert, it is important that he be ready on time.
I want him to be ready on time.
I've seen him be ready on time for a dozen concerts; I don't know what's up tonight.

What's up with that? Well, it's complicated.

And even highly-educated speakers will sometimes switch between standard grammar and vernacular grammar for rhetorical effect. Even the most formal person, if confronted with a unpleasant subject of conversation, might laugh and say, "I ain't touchin' that." The shift to the vernacular conveys authenticity, or provides humor, or says, "We're all friends here and we don't need to keep up appearances." Using a strictly formal grammar can sometimes be way to convey that somebody is not your friend, or even that they're below you.

No matter how thick your grammar book, it's not going to teach you all this stuff. And yet, I've met plenty of intermediate French students (in the CEFR B1 and B2 range) who are already developing a knowledge of how and when to use informal forms.

I have never seen that book but I hear that it is a pretty daunting tome to deal with. I don't believe American English has anything comparable, except for maybe Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage
by Jeremy Butterfield but most Americans have never even heard of that book.

A "usage" book is almost never designed for adults learning a foreign language. Rather, such a book is typically designed for people who natively speak a poorer, lower-class dialect, and who which to sound like a member of the upper class. So such books spend all their time criticizing words and phrases that a great many native speakers use, but which are used by the "wrong type" of native speakers. It's the linguist equivalent of a poor parent who owns an expensive suit and a handbag for dealing with bureaucrats. If somebody doesn't already know a prestigious dialect of their native language, then it will make their life far easier to learn one, and to learn to turn off the colloquial expressions. But you also need to know when to turn the colloquial expressions back on.

Actual grammar books that describe the standard language carefully, including all the details that every native speaker knows, regardless of dialect, are much rarer than "usage" books.

I am just struck that Americans in my region of the country have such little regard for their language compared with the French. I mean seriously for a moment just think how the Presidents of the US under George H and George W Bush spoke. Now they had serious problems with the language and could have cared less re their sentence structure when speaking.

So politics is off topic here, but let me just observe that if you can get elected to high office, then a large number of voters thought you used the language acceptably well. George W Bush gets beat up for saying "nukular" instead of "nuclear", but in fact, the "nukular" pronunciation has historically been more popular among the people who design the bombs and work on the reactors. This includes former President Carter, who was a nuclear specialist in the US Navy, and who once had to walk inside a nuclear reactor undergoing meltdown to shut it off. I've seen script notes for professional educational materials for people who might have to deal with nuclear hazards, and those script notes were very clear that everybody on camera was to say "nukular". The script notes claimed that saying "nuclear" would supposedly take away from the credibility of the videos in the eyes of the professionals watching them.

And of course, almost every successful politician will shift between formal speech and colloquial speech for rhetorical effect. This communicates the message, "Yes, I'm intelligent and competent, but ultimately, I'm just an ordinary person." Virtually everybody does this to some degree or another.

And thanks for pointing out that "French is a moderately "diglossic" language" it just underlines how very much I have to learn.

The good news is that none of this is very hard to learn, at least not at a basic level. None of it matters before you can carry on a conversation or read a book. And once you can do those things, your brain will pick up a wealth of social nuances automatically, as long as you consume a decent variety of native media or just hang out with native speakers. The brain is built for this stuff.

Personally, I think of learning a language as less of process of learning rules, and more of a process of getting my brain so used to the new language that it seems normal. Of course, rules are a useful part of this process. But much of the real work happens at a different level.

[Tomás]

Sometimes usage errors simply indicate an inarticulate person. Choose your models accordingly. Me, I would never emulate young people on a message board. My models are newscasters and the professors in my MOOCs. YMMV depending on what you want to do with the language.