Talk:Franglais

Untitled

Nous doivons put this together with regard to : ever closer union and I do think it constuctive that the article has been divided into French and English sections. But: Reflecting the will of the citizens and States of Europe to build a common future. Innit? We must do more William Avery 01:01, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Wife of Bath?

It's the Prioress whose French is commented upon by Chaucer. "Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,/ After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe/ For the frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe" SilhouetteSaloon 01:58, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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- May we? - Mais, oui! =P — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.232.72.148 (talk) 19:47, 8 April 2005 (UTC)

I pense that franglais shouldn't be une language. J'habite proche of Moncton and we don't parle like I am asteure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.82.28.162 (talk) 13:02, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

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• vieux motard que j'aimais — old motorcyclist that I loved (play on "mieux vaut tard que jamais" — better late than never).

I removed this "example" of franglais as it has nothing at all to do with the English language; it's simply a French spoonerism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrew Levine (talk • contribs) 21:04, 3 July 2005 (UTC)

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I was very surprised by the "French sense" you gave to Franglais. In France, we use the word "franglais" for a language spoken with English words that is supposed to be well-trained or à la mode. Exactly like the English sense for Franglais that is explained in the article. For example, a French person who speaks Franglais would say "je t'appelle sur ton phone" ("phone" said with English accent) instead of "je t'appelle sur ton téléphone" (i call you on your phone) and so on. People who talk this way are often considered as jerks because even if they try to be well-trained thanks to it, they sound ludicrous.

Skylie 16:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

vous/tu

Alright, well in french, you says vous since its more proper than tu - where vouvoyer and tutoyer comes in, but in the examples, vous was used instead of tu. I believe that in sum franglais, verbs aren`t really accorded and positions and when certain words should be used (as vous and tu), aren`t used as when u just speak french. (im seeing this from a french point of vue). Maybe it should be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.230.66.181 (talk) 22:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Rétard?

Now, I'm French from France so I don't know about Quebec dialect, which is why I'm not making the change myself, but in my dialect of French (which is from Pas-de-Calais and pretty standard, ie, not Chti) we don't say rétard, we say retard. (Obviously not pronounced the same way as the English word spelled the same way.) Is the use of é a French Canadianism or is it a typo? It appears several times in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.231.18 (talk) 23:14, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Must be a mistake.. I've never heard it in all the myriad accents of Canada..! -Dan Carkner

Actually, a lot of this article seems kind of poorly written and unhelpful, there are much more plausible/common examples that could be given, etc. and I seem to have missed any mention of chiac. Maybe I'll try to work over this article later. Dan Carkner 14:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Quebecer here. I've never seen the word retard written with an accent before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dez26 (talk • contribs) 19:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Le (noun)

What about the old joke of puting "le" before every noun?

Le pant, le envy.

Found often in Pepe LePew cartoons.

I also saw an Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy cartoon featuring "Chez La Sweat", where everything had "la" in front of it, different from the usual "le". Eddy even pronounced "sauna" as "sawná", even spelled SAWNA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.172.165 (talk) 00:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is really the same thing. What you are describing is not a real mixture of French and English, but rather a way to make English sound French by those who don't know any French at all. That is why it is commonly found in American humour. --70.81.253.182 (talk) 04:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Added "faux franglais" section

I think it is necessary to make a dichotomy between occupational/casual-use Franglais and humorous/satirical Franglais.

Thus, I created the "faux-franglais" section, which I think more accurately describes sources like "La Petite Lesson en Franglais" and "Let's Parler Franglais!".

In my experience, students of either language consciously choose to ignore grammatic conventions and derive a sort of juvenile humor from mashing the languages up in interesting and highly-impractical ways. I think it's a significant enough phenomenon to merit mention on the main article, though if someone thinks it should be moved to its own post, that's fine too.--Behemoth101 23:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)Behemoth101

I agree that there is a difference. Dan Carkner 16:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Translation error

J'accuse réception — I accuse the secretary.
"réception" is not "secretary" but "reception" as in "receiving".
"un accusé de réception" is a "return receipt". "accuser réception" is "to send a return receipt". 24.37.160.221 18:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Hot dog not chien chaud?

I would challenge the notion that the use of the term "chien chaud" is the result of immersion programs. Chien chaud was used in largely French areas of Montreal for as long as I can remember. I can't remember ever seeing or hearing a French speaker use the term "hot dog" instead of chien chaud... steamé maybe, but not hot dog. Maybe the writer is confusing it with hamburger/hambourgeois nonsense in the '70s? --Michael Daly (talk) 07:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. "Chien chaud" is used by native French speakers along side "hot dog" in the region where I live (Gatineau, Québec). I think this may be an example of the difference between Canadian French and French French. --70.81.253.182 (talk) 04:37, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

French sense/English sense divide

I don't think this is a useful way to sturcture the article: franglais flourishes in bilingual societies. I will be bold and won't be at all offended if anyone comes up with some IMPROVEMENTS -- but the status quo is not good enough. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

"Flying Blue"?

This is a joke, my French mates??! In English, "blue" means the same as melancholic and usually in bad psychic shape. Germans will laugh about that, because blue translates to German "blau" which - in colloquial German - actually means "drunk" or "boozed". ;) -andy 92.227.17.160 (talk) 02:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

"de bas en haut"

This is given as the correct use, but I'm more used to seeing des pieds jusqu'à la tête ... which should it be? Dlabtot (talk) 20:17, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure this part is very clear: - "prendre quelqu'un de haut" means looking or talking to someone as from a superior to an inferior. - "scruter quelqu'un des pieds jusqu'à la tête ou de haut en bas" means looking at someone very carefully, from head to toe. Is it what this part means ? Because if so, it's not very clear to me, but well, I'm french ^^. I was under the impression that it was quite the opposite that was written in that part. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.54.193.1 (talk) 13:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

That's what it is referring to, yes. Clearly it needs a rewrite, but I don't think I'm qualified. Dlabtot (talk) 01:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"French sense" section

I'm French but I think that the statement claiming that K doesn't exist in French language is not accurate at all. While I totally agree concerning W, all the French words containing W being loanwords from English (even if some of them are not considered Franglais anymore, such as wagon), I think it's not exactly the case with K, even if it's still a very rare letter in unadulterated French. I'm almost sure words such as kaki, képi, kaléidoscope or kilomètre, just to name a few, are not English loanwords, they are, I guess, as legitimate in French as their similar counterparts in English. But now, take kermesse or kyrielle, for instance, these words don't even exist in English since their respective English translation are fair and stream, which are very different, meaning that some very rare native French words can contain this letter without being derived from foreign languages. By the way (even if I know it's not directly related), from what I know, the fact that there is a K in Dunkerque doesn't make this town any less French, does it? --Floeticsoulchild (talk) 17:05, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

My Larousse 2003 says that kaki is derived from hindi, képi from Alémanique, kaléidoscope from Greek (but it is a word that first appeared in English), kermesse is from Dutch, kyrielle from Greek.... Dlabtot (talk) 17:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"This is clearly a borrowed word since native French words (like most modern Romance languages) do not use the letter K (or W)." I agree that statement is clearly not accurate: the double 'o' in 'look' make this word borrowed, not the 'k' (I'm french and I don't think there is any native french word containing a double 'o').--BiAiB (talk) 10:25, 31 September 2009 (GMT+1)

Anyway, French didn't come out of nowhere, it had to borrow words from Latin, Greek...so "native French words" doesn't make sense to me. What does it mean? (Tanynep (talk) 20:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC))

• « Native French » does indeed not exists :) France is the agglomeration of several previously existing people, who banded together for convenience ( for trade, resisting invaders, because of drought, famines and whatever banana peels Life usually throws under your feet ), each having it's own language, itself a derivative of previously existing ancestral language and so on ad eternam. Each of these pre-France people still have a strong sense of identity nowadays, many of them still use their local dialect in addition to French despite pressure and sanctions from the French government, and we largely nag each other for the sheer pleasure of annoying our neighbors :)
  Here's a map roughly showing what France is made of : http://mathomstore.free.fr/Wiki/true_france.png
  Orme 82.127.174.187 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC).

Definition

I do not think the following sentence from the article is a very good definition: "Frenglish means a mangled combination of English and French, produced either by poor knowledge of one or the other language or for humorous effect."

I live in a bilingual area where Franglas is often spoken as the standard means of communication, not due to poor knowledge of English or French, or for humorous effect. The population is roughly 50% English, 50% French, so franglais is often the norm. --70.81.253.182 (talk) 04:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Circular

The article says that "circular" (for US-English "flyer") in Quebec English is derived from the French "circulaire", but this usage of "circular" is (was?) used in British English for much the same thing. I say "was?" because this use seems less common today than in the 1970s. 91.212.116.2 (talk) 15:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The word "circular" is used in that sense in New England as well, which may or may not have something to do with the large number of New Englanders with Francophone roots. Timothy Horrigan (talk) 00:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Quebec references

It seems that there are a lot of references to Quebec French throughout the paragraphs on Franglais, despite a separate Quebec section claiming that Quebec French is not the same as Franglais. As Franglais is a phenomenon of mainland France, are all the parantheses about what goes on in Quebec really needed? They just serve to detract from the main article - keep Quebec facts in the Quebec paragraph! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.113.167.76 (talk) 15:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

In response to: "As Franglais is a phenomenon of mainland France," I disagree. This is a very pertinent term when it comes to the concept of Canada. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:f2c0:e006:34:60d5:51fa:bffd:fcb7 (talk) 21:47, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Terrible, terrible page

This page is awful. The "sources" verify nearly nothing that is said in the page. It appears to be pretty much all original research and POV. I am inexpert in this topic and am so not in a position to re-write or make any substantial changes. I'd very much like to see it torn down and started from scratch to be honest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Privateiron (talk • contribs) 21:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia really needs to start limiting the amount of words on these inane articles. A simple definition is sufficient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.225.200.133 (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it’s terrible. I’ve never heard the word Franglais used to describe the use of French words in English; only the other way around. Full of waffle and guff, repetitive and very badly organised. --☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 04:20, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Frenglish

The article seems to make the claim that frenglish is synonymous of franglais. It also seems to keep completely silent the fact that it goes both way, and that there is also English-speaking minorities that does exactly the same, but with French words.

A few examples of Frenglish would be welcome, and perhaps a separate article could be written for that (it would be true as well for the french version of the article). Perhaps this article is a little too much centered around France, as others have remarqued. Anyway, for me Franglais and Frenglish are two differents things

Franglais: French mixed with many English words and constructs.

Frenglish: English mixed with many French words and constructs.

As an example, a native English speaker in province of Québec could say: "I am going to the dep" which is a shorthand from "dépanneur", the word used in province of Québec for Convenience store.

70.83.125.101 (talk) 21:47, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

le week-end

That word is official metropolitan, it's not a Franglais term. Not every word from a foreign language is perceived as slang. Languages evolve and there are loads of words of foreign origin in English not perceived as foreign. It's Quebec which is more conservative. This should be changed. --2.245.225.9 (talk) 23:33, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Yaourter

Came across this article mentioning something called yaourter. I know this is not the same as Franglais, but since it probably does not deserve a new article, should there be some mention of it here? Nyth63 17:59, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Just came across the article [Pseudo-anglicism] which may be a better description of what yaourter means. May still merit a mention in the see also section or given as an example of what Franglais is not. Nyth63 18:06, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Lolita

For literary examples, I seem to remember Mother Haze spoke in franglais often, to Humbert's disgust. Perhaps that could be added into the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.30.220.227 (talk) 23:51, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

February 2017

Paris 2024 bid English language only slogan

English/French Eurovision song sparks French row] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.69.225.209 (talk) 01:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

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Original research

As User:Privateiron said in 2012 in this section, "This page is awful." That was back when the page was only 20kb of awfulness; now it's grown to 33kb, and it's even more awful. With not too much exception, this article consists of a massive amount of original research and unsourced assertions.

To some extent, this is understandable, because everybody feels like an expert in their native language (and sometimes, in others as well). However, Wikipedia's core principle of verifiability is clear on this point: All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable, and that Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. It should be noted that adding an inline citation consisting of a dictionary definition of one or both words in a French-English melange may verify each of their meanings, but does not verify their status as Franglais unless the source says so. And it has to be in one source making the assertion: combining refs from two sources where one substantiates a portion of text as English, and the other source substantiates it as French, and neither says anything about Franglais is impermissible WP:SYNTH and does not verify the assertion.

There are two basic approaches to the situation: remove unsourced content, or roll back to an early version and rebuild.

The more conservative approach is to start removing content that is unsourced. This may mean large chunks of text, including perhaps entire sections that are unsourced, which might result in chopping it all the way down to a stub.

An alternative to cutting back, would be reverting to an earlier version and rebuilding. Sometimes, when so much cruft has been added to an article over the years that it's turned into an unwieldy monster, it may be far less painful to revert way back to an early version and build the article back up, almost from scratch, rather than try to scrape away at the endless barnacles that have adhered to the carcass over the years. I'm certainly open to this alternative as well, and seek feedback on it. I suspect this may actually be the easier of the two paths to a decent article, but it's more radical surgery, and I'd want consensus on that plan before embarking on it. (The option of doing a major rollback as a way of improving an article does have support in Wikipedia policy; when I find the policy page that discusses it, I'll link it here.)

Just to start off the discussion somewhere, I'd propose a rollback to revision 9533002 of 21 January by Erri4a. Your thoughts? Mathglot (talk) 10:43, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Still a mess in 2024, and getting worse. Now we have an editor edit-warring to keep unsourced examples in the article, in section § English sense. This section should be sourced or removed. Mathglot (talk) 23:03, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Are usage examples "original research"?

Right, so I've just been accused on my talk page and here of edit-warring for restoring the six usage examples of Franglais in the "English sense" section. I had seen them on several occasions, and was surprised when I wanted to verify that I had one of them correct for a conversation I was in today, and found they had all been deleted some time last year on the grounds that they lacked citations.

The editor who threatened to report me for edit warring on the Administrators' Noticeboard is the same one who deleted them last year, then reverted me for restoring them, claiming that all content needs to be cited to a reliable source. But as a veteran editor of both Wikipedia and Wiktionary, I know there are things that do not need to be cited to anything, because they are patently obvious and do not have to be attributed to a source. I cited WP:BLUESKY, and could have cited "translations and transcriptions" or "routine calculations", though perhaps a better instance would be usage examples on Wiktionary. While definitions and quotations need to be cited to reliable sources, simple examples of usage in a sentence do not, unless they are quotations: you can just make them up, and they are not "original research".

I think that's the case here: Franglais has already been defined and explained, with citations to reliable sources, as macaronic blends of French and English; sometimes with mixtures of French and English words, or with English figures of speech translated into French in a way that only makes sense if you know them in English, but which make no sense in French. Examples of such blends do not need to be cited to anything; you do not need a source to say, "this phrase is partly in French, partly in English".

I already know what Mathglot will say: I am completely wrong and everything must have a citation; you cannot make up examples of sentences that nonsensically blend French and English, any more than you can make up an example of a comma splice or a split infinitive or a mixed metaphor (IMO, you can). He's made that perfectly clear on my talk page. What I'd like to see is whether anybody who's not already involved in this dispute has to say on the subject. P Aculeius (talk) 23:26, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

• On Wikipedia, research can include any "facts, allegations, and ideas" (WP:NOR), even if they don't require field observation or bench studies, particularly if someone disputes or disagrees with something you've added. In the interest of building the encyclopedia, I offer some published examples of Franglais, available for free check out via Internet Archive:
  • Thévenot 1976, Hé! la France, ton français fout le camp!
  • Pergnier 1989, Les anglicismes
  • Wijnands 2005, Le français adultère
• Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 01:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  I don't see how providing an example of a sentence that fits a properly cited definition could require a citation. For instance, anyone can verify that "je vais driver downtown" or "je ne care pas" are mixtures of French and part English by looking at them. How is this different from stating that "to innocently stroll down the street" is an example of a split infinitive, without having to explain where the sentence came from, or find a source that contains it? If we've defined a compound subject and cited that to a grammar book, why can't I just make up a sentence like "Bob and Alice went to the lake" as an example, instead of having to find a published example that can be cited? Or that 24 + 5 is an example of an addition problem?

  As it happens, I found sources that mention most of the Franglais examples, but it took all evening, and all that it proves is that someone somewhere said them, as though that were relevant to their being examples of Franglais. I'll also mention that I wasn't the one who added them to the article—most of them were added between 2006 and 2008, and remained until they were all deleted in 2023; I was simply reverting that. Disputing them was pointless; it just created work for other editors. P Aculeius (talk) 04:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  If the sources you found mention "most of [them]", that could be a yellow flag – dig deep; WP:CITOGENESIS is a thing. Mathglot (talk) 05:51, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• It's simple: don't make up sample sentences. In the worst case, extract them from an existing text corpus (= primary source). Good practice is: cite examples from a secondary source that identifies the sample sentences as being from the same speech variety as covered in the WP article. –Austronesier (talk) 05:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
• One of the reasons not to make up sample sentences, is that language is infinitely more complex than arithmetical expressions, and you can't be sure that the sentence you make up would ever be produced in a real-world situation by a native informant. There are so many subtle "rules" involved in language, including things you know but didn't know you knew. Example: which is correct: 1) abfuckingsolutely, or 2) absofuckinglutely? If you are an English native speaker, you immediately know the right answer, and the "wrong" one will make you cringe a bit. (There's a reason for that; Steven Pinker explains why in one of his books.)

As hard as it is to create reliable language examples, it's folly to do so in a foreign language, which is essentially what Franglais is. It's certainly not the case that it's just random mixtures or substitutions of English words for French ones in a sentence. For example: example three is given as:

Je suis tired.     (In RL, that would probably be more like Chui tired..)

but that isn't random; for example, this would not be possible in Franglais:

*Je am fatigué.

I can't give you the reason why not (and it's not solely because of elision of e muet; *Il is fatigué. perhaps better illustrates this), but as someone who uses French and English on a daily basis, you'll have to trust me on that one. (Subject to citation, of course, if we want to add that claim to the article .) So there are still some language rules involved in Franglais—PhD student, where are you when we need you?—and all the more reason not to use our own intuition; we should always cull language examples from reliable sources, and not make them up. Maybe for simple arithmetic, but that's a different domain and another conversation. Mathglot (talk) 06:40, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Btw, that last example, "M'en va gazer mon char" doesn't sound right to me, and I'm not surprised you couldn't source it. I think we should strike that example. The last three words are fine, but the first part seems confused. But I'm not French Canadian, and it would be better to ask a native speaker. Mathglot (talk) 06:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

It is generally good practice in linguistic research to find real life examples rather than to make up your own. But there are exceptions, like when, say, you want a series of parallel sentences to contrast the different effects produced by altering, say, the aspect of a verb.

However, Wikipedia's language articles are not linguistic research. They are much more like a classroom situation, and language teachers make up their own examples constantly. I think there is a general consensus among those of us who work on language articles that it IS alright to invent examples, so long as the matter is uncontroversial. Our article on adjective begins by distinguishing attributive and predicative use, giving the examples "That's a funny idea" and "That idea is funny", which was made up by a Wikipedia editor, and while we would want a source for the distinction, I can't imagine anyone wanting a source for the example. Many articles have dozens of these sample sentences and I really would not want to overload the articles by requiring a footnote each one.

I think the problem here is not that these examples are made-up, but that Mathglot doesn't feel they ring true. And once a user expresses doubts about that, THAT is when you need sourced examples.

Would that be a compromise we can all live with? Doric Loon (talk) 10:15, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I found sources that include all but the last one—multiple instances of most of them, and I looked for the oldest ones I could comfortably cite to minimize the chances that any of them actually came from our article. But even if a couple of them found the examples here, they are by definition Franglais, and they've now been published in widely-available sources that discuss the subject, so they're out there and people will be using them. So in this instance I don't think "citogenesis" would be as serious an issue as it would be if we'd made a claim about history or science that couldn't be sourced to anything.

And in the "not citogenesis" camp, none of the sources that could have been drawn partly from this list contained the whole list or were limited to examples of it; the most any source had was four of the six, and it may have been citing them (clumsily, since I wasn't sure if they all were being attributed, or just the last one) to Lets Parler Franglais. Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to review Punch to see how many of these examples actually came from Kington's columns.

I was lucky to get a snippet view of a very early instance of Longtemps, pas voir, which was actually the phrase I originally came to the article to verify I was saying it right (and was surprised not to find, hence this whole argument). Just enough to (with some work) figure out that it was a good source and what the exact citation was. I couldn't see the whole page, much less the front page of the issue it was in, and had to rely on Google Books to fill in some of the blanks about it. There didn't appear to be many issues of Punch available online, but those would have been much more useful to me than the academic-looking French-language sources linked above. I tried searching each of Kington's books, but came up empty, and I can't tell if that's because they didn't contain the specific examples, or because the pages I could preview didn't.

As for M'en va gazer mon char, I'm not willing to conclude that it's not a valid example merely because I wasn't able to find a published example by Googling it. Quebecois isn't very widely published on the internet. I can't verify any of it, but it looks plausible. I do have some friends who speak Quebecois, so they might help inform my opinion. But of course, that's not verification, though it would be a reason to leave it until we can search more thoroughly for a potentially-authoritative source. P Aculeius (talk) 12:50, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Are you arguing in favor of "looking plausible" as grounds to keep something in the encyclopedia that has no source and has been challenged? How about, it's unsourced OR so remove it until it is sourced?

• "However, Wikipedia's language articles are not linguistic research." Agreed. (But many of them are replete with WP:OR, as everybody feels they are an expert in their native language—and they are—and that this means they don't need to source stuff they are expert in, but they do.)
• "[Wikipedia's language articles] are much more like a classroom situation..." Absolutely not; you're thinking of Wikiversity.

Wikipedia's language articles are not like a classroom, they are much more like a published encyclopedia, where we don't make up stuff; we summarize real stuff and source it. Mathglot (talk) 17:05, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

M'en va , is J'm'en va, with a mute J. Very common in Quebec French (example: M'en va à la fontaine --> Je m'en vais à la fontaine). Also exists in Acadian french.

But to Mathglot's general point, find examples that you can back with a source, don't make up your own. Because M'en va gazer mon char is not Franglais in the least. Gazer here means to fuel up, from gaz = essence. While 'proper french' would be mettre de l'essence, gaz/gazer is again, your regular variety of Quebec french (e.g. bicycle à gaz for motorcycle). Tanker would be the franglais equivalent (to tank up/fill the tank up). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Headbomb's point sounds persuasive; I think it's fine to leave it in (for a while) until sourcing can be found for it. Thanks for that. Mathglot (talk) 17:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC) Update: then again, if it's not Franglais, it shouldn't be here not for sourcing reasons, but for relevance to the article title, but that's o/t for this discussion. Mathglot (talk) 17:36, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

According to our entries on Wiktionary, gaz is borrowed from Dutch, though it doesn't have gazer meaning "to fill up with gas" (there are other meanings, including "to gas", i.e. exterminate using gas). One might reasonably guess that gazer is borrowed from English, meaning "to gas up". Char meaning "car" seems to be borrowed from English—presumably American English, since all of the regional dialects that are cited as using it are in the U.S. or Canada. So this phrase would be perfectly good Franglais.

A Quebecois friend tells me that people actually use this phrase, which of course does not supply verifiability—obviously I can't cite my friends as sources on Wikipedia! But it does suggest that sources probably exist that could be used to verify it. I just wasn't able to find any by Googling it. Google—and the internet—are far from being the only valid sources, however. Aside from a gut feeling that it shouldn't be good Franglais, are there any more concrete objections to it? P Aculeius (talk) 20:13, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Refs for its existence are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. However, that may not matter if it is not Franglais. The main objection is Headbomb's, namely that it is not franglais (and I agree), as gazer is not an English word (well, not in the 'fuel' sense, anyway); it is more slangy loanword, which is a different topic. If we say something is chic, de luxe, or a la mode in English, we are not using Franglais, just loanwords; that's something different. Mathglot (talk) 20:44, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

As I mentioned, our entries on Wiktionary say that gaz can mean "gas", but gazer is not attested with the meaning of "gas up" in French. Which suggests that gazer might be an English-speaker's attempt to convey "gas up" using a false friend—etymologically related, but not with the desired meaning in French—which would thus fall within the definition of Franglais. I'm not claiming that this is definitively the explanation—it may not be possible to determine what was in people's minds when they said things like this. Only that it's plausible that the phrase depends on borrowings from American English, and thus represents an example of Franglais. P Aculeius (talk) 22:24, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I linked five sources for you in the comment just above yours which attest to the meaning of "gas up" in French. Also, your comment about things that are "borrowings from American English, and thus represents an example of Franglais" is off—there is a clear distinction between borrowings (loanwords) and Franglais; in fact, in a way they are opposites: Franglais consists of substitutions that are *not* loanwords (like all of the examples you sourced). Mathglot (talk) 00:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I didn't dispute the phrase's existence: that was you. You want to cite any of those sources, go ahead, though since they're all web sites, they may not all have the same authority as print sources. Some looked academic, but not everything that appears on a university web site constitutes authoritative scholarship—or is durably archived as sources normally should be. And I submit that the distinction between Franglais and a loanword is one of degree: one is novel when used in French, the other has become widely adopted. And French is replete with foreign words and phrases that, while widely used, are rejected by authorities and academics, who maintain that they are not French. Loanwords aren't the opposite of Franglais—at least in some cases, they're what happens when Franglais words and phrases become so widely accepted that nobody bothers to correct them anymore. P Aculeius (talk) 02:10, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Don't want to cite them, because don't want to include the example in this article; it's not franglais. Mathglot (talk) 03:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@P Aculeius: Char means car here, but not via English, but rather from the original French meaning of char (as in char d'assault) from the Latin carrus. A (standard French) char is what you would call in English a chariot or a carriage. Please stop with the conjectures and gut-feeling based etymologies. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:37, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not, that's literally what our entry on Wiktionary says: "[d]oublet of car ("coach"), a borrowing from English". If we didn't use "car" in English, Quebecois would probably use "voiture" rather than "char". Obviously Wiktionary isn't a source we can cite, but it can point at ones that may be cited. Just because you don't think something is right doesn't mean that other people are just making things up out of thin air. P Aculeius (talk) 22:15, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

You keep mentioning Wiktionary, please stop. Wiktionary is not a reliable source; to be blunt: there is all sorts of crap on Wiktionary. The "borrowing from English" in that entry is bs, and was added in 2017 by wikt:Barytonesis (talk · contribs) who hung around for three weeks in 2017 and disappeared (and "coach" comes from Hungarian). I am also familiar with the 'tank' (as in, army tank) meaning of the standard French word char and its meaning of 'car' in Quebec French, and I can only echo Headbomb's advice about conjectures and folk etymology. This is exactly why we have the requirement for verifiability in the first place. Please let's just stick to the sources. Mathglot (talk) 00:41, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I didn't cite Wiktionary; I pointed to it as an indication of why some of the words might be regarded as English words rendered in a French manner as substitutes for words the speaker didn't know—that's what Franglais is. It doesn't prove anything besides a basis for suspecting that the phrase might be Franglais, or an explanation of why it was included in this list in the first place. The conjecture, if it is one, wasn't mine, and I certainly didn't rely on "folk etymology" just because I pointed out that other sources have made a possible connection. You want to discuss the authority of the people who made a claim? Fine, but don't accuse me of being negligent for not discovering how long the person who added something to a source was active on Wiktionary. I didn't cite it as proof of anything—merely a reason to forestall judgment about a phrase that was in dispute. P Aculeius (talk) 02:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@P Aculeius: You're just embarrassing yourself at this point. We (French Canadians) use char because before cars we had horse/ox carriages. The name stuck through familiarity/analogy. It's got zilch to do with what Americans decided to call things. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Please review WP:CIVIL if you want people to respond to you in kind. We don't call cars "carriages" in English, so it's reasonable to infer from the lack of a definition that says "an automobile" that it might be archaic in French as well. But we've gone beyond the point where it matters whether I made a reasonable inference from the materials I had available to me: now you're just pretending I can't read and don't understand how Wikipedia works, when you've been relying on your own knowledge and gut feelings just as much as you claim—without any basis—that I have.

Everything I've said has been based on what I've been able to find by looking it up, following the definition set forth for Franglais, and I've clearly stated when my sources aren't adequate or citeable. Repeating baseless claims that I don't understand verifiability—when it's not even established that example sentences need to be cited to anything—is just insulting. P Aculeius (talk) 01:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

We used to call them carriages. In fact, carriage goes back to 1387 as a wheeled vehicle drawn by horses; by 1727 it had the sense of "A wheeled vehicle for carrying passengers; spec. one designed for elegance and comfort and kept for private travel and recreation by people of wealth or high social status in the era before the motor car, typically four-wheeled and drawn by two or more horses" (OED). Early models of the automobile were in fact called horseless carriages, a synonym for automobile (M-W, AH). But we appear to be circling around the original topic, and we keep coming back to the question of inferring and conjecturing versus sourcing, and we should rely on the latter and not the former, as our policies require. That includes sourcing example sentences, and if the reason why wasn't clear before, it's amply demonstrated here. I'll just cite policy one last time:

"All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable." (emphasis added).

That is our verifiability policy, and I don't know how you get "except for example sentences" out of that, especially given all the suppositions and hypotheses about example sentences in this very discussion that turned out to be mistaken. Do you feel there is anything to be gained by continuing this further? Because it feels repetitive to me, or at least reaching a point of diminishing returns, and I'm content to let it go at this point, unless there's something really new to discuss. Mathglot (talk) 02:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Listed at: WT:V, WT:NOR. Mathglot (talk) 17:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I saw the note at WT:NOR. I think @Doric Loon has it right: It's okay for editors "to invent examples, so long as the matter is uncontroversial".

In this case, the matter is not uncontroversial. Editors disagree over whether some of the examples actually represent Franglais, or if they might be other things (e.g., regionalisms or Dutch words). Therefore, to resolve the dispute, editors should restrict themselves to non-invented examples (and any non-controversial examples that they agree on).

(To the list of reasons above on why using someone else's example isn't always feasible, I add copyright considerations. Some examples are sufficiently long or creative that they can't legally be copied into Wikipedia. This includes, by the way, copyrights that apply to lists, so please don't copy one source's whole list of examples.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Article needs a bit of work

This article contains a lot of OR, and I suspect much of this is faulty. It is also rambling and not clearly structured. It feels like one of these articles where people keep adding their favourite anecotes without thinking about the whole. I think it needs a radical overhaul, and it needs to be a lot shorter. One problem I see is that it is never quite clear whether this is an article about a linguistic phenomenon or about humour in popular culture. I don't feel motivated to start a rewrite, but I would like to give a couple of pointers to those of you who are committed to working here.

The lede says that the term first referred to the overuse of English words in French (what is subsequently called the "French sense"), and then came to mean a French-English hybrid (the "English sense"). So the article structure should follow that. But in fact you cover the "English sense" first, which not only belies the chronology but also the logical development of the concept.

The lead also suggests that the "English sense" is a genuine linguistic phenomenon, but in fact the section on the "English sense" is mostly about humorous parody. Even the top part, before you start talking about "English humour", cites Miles Kington. That is an utter muddle. This section has to start with serious linguistics, and that has to be discussed properly on the basis of published research. The English humour bit should probably be a lot shorter, or else moved to a separate article, but at any rate, if it is kept here, it should not leak over out of the humour section into the linguistics.

And by the way, "French sense" and "English sense" are terrible headings. Surely there is something more descriptive of the ideas that could be used as headings?

Good luck with this. Doric Loon (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. And the article says nothing at all about the Académie Française, which stands at the forefront of efforts of organized Francophonie to combat Franglais, and the very different approaches taken in Quebec and Africa to the same question. This may be a rare case where I would support WP:TNT, as it may be easier to build it back up from a single sentence or lead paragraph into a full-blown article with proper organization and sourcing, than to figure out what to prune, modify, or add to the current mess in order to end up with the same end result. I'd support a blow-it-all-up approach if someone wanted to take lead on that; I could participate a bit around the edges, but I don't have the bandwidth just now to take lead on this. Mathglot (talk) 01:01, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Agree as well with the whole thing. The 'English sense' is very minor and this section makes it look way more legit than it is. There are WP:WEIGHT concerns here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

This article is in need of cleanup/restructuring, which can be achieved through the normal editing process. TNT is simply another form of deletion, and it is not cleanup. It is certainly not justified by "I don't have time to deal with this right now." There is usable content here, some of which is appropriately sourced, and some of which can probably be sourced. If editors have more important things to work on, the article can remain as it is, with minor improvements being made when someone has the time to make them, until a major restructuring can be done. There is no deadline. P Aculeius (talk) 03:10, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

This topic is clearly WP:Notable, and nobody is suggesting deletion for a notable topic. TNT is not a form of deletion, it is a form of improvement. It may be appropriate when a topic is clearly notable, and the article is in poor enough shape that improving it may go faster by starting over than by trying to just nibble at the edges. Nobody is suggesting TNT because they want to delete it, or because they do not have time to restructure it. I am suggesting TNT, because I think it may be the fastest path to a good article. We agree on major restructuring, apparently, but not the most efficient/fastest way to get there. If we simply removed everything that isn't sourced or cited to sources that never mention Franglais even once, there would be little left of the article other than the Etymology section, the examples which you recently sourced, and a few scattered bits here and there which wouldn't provide anything like a coherent narrative. There *are* valid sources for Franglais, we should consult them and build a good article out of them. Here are some links to sources that could result in good article content:

"Find sources" links to aspects of Franglais

Following are "find sources" links to sources about various subtopics of Franglais: history – Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL histoire – France sources: Bing · Cairn · DuckDuckGo · E. Universalis · Gallica · Google · (books · scholar) · Persée · Qwant linguistic features – Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL caractéristiques linguistiques – France sources: Bing · Cairn · DuckDuckGo · E. Universalis · Gallica · Google · (books · scholar) · Persée · Qwant usage by region – Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL utilisation par pays ou région – France sources: Bing · Cairn · DuckDuckGo · E. Universalis · Gallica · Google · (books · scholar) · Persée · Qwant sociocultural aspects – Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL aspects socioculturels – France sources: Bing · Cairn · DuckDuckGo · E. Universalis · Gallica · Google · (books · scholar) · Persée · Qwant criticism and controversies – Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL critiques et controverses – France sources: Bing · Cairn · DuckDuckGo · E. Universalis · Gallica · Google · (books · scholar) · Persée · Qwant

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:45, 24 April 2024 (UTC)