Persepolis

[_JS]

I watched this movie today.

I highly recommend it. It gets a bit slow towards the middle, but all in all it was a very good movie. It is animated (taken from the graphic novel) and tells the story of a girl who grows up in Iran during the 1979 Revolution, then the subsequent Iraq-Iran War. Very poignant, but with dark comedy mixed in as well.

[Amianthus]

Did you watch it in the original French or the translation?

[_JS]

I watched it in the French, with subtitles. My French isn't good enough without the subtitles! Yet, I don't much care for dubbing (even on animation).

[fatman]

You should come to work with me for a day JS, I took four years of French in high school and two more in college, but on the project that we're working on now I have to deal with a Quecois who speaks almost no English, and Quebecois is a hell of a lot different that your standard French.

It's been challenging.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Standard French is rather different than what one learns in school. They understand what I have learned, but I often hear them say things that are not to be found in any French textbook I have studied.

Standard Spanish is a lot more like textbook Spanish.

Standard French is what people speak in Paris now. Quebeçois is what they spoke in Picardy AND Normandy and other places in the 1600's, but with a lot of English and some Indian thrown in.

[kimba1]

Standard Spanish is a lot more like textbook Spanish.



huh??
Quite often I was told my little bit of spanish that I learned from books sounds fancy.
it kind of stands out.

[_JS]

I think XO means that the high form, or proper Spanish is textbook Spanish. It would still sound more formal than dialects from Central America or the Caribbean.

I believe he is saying that standard French is more dynamic and less static (please correct me if I am wrong). I know little French and no Spanish.


This is certainly true of English. Proper Oxford English is much more formal than the dialects most of the English-speaking world speaks. Like the Francophone communities of Quebec, Americans already start off by speaking an older form of English. We use the term "Fall" as opposed to "Autumn."

[Xavier_Onassis]

I do not know who you are speaking Spanish with, Kimba. Mexican Spanish is pretty close to what one finds in most textbooks used in the US. Many Mexican immigrants have a sort of "sing-song" inflexion, which sounds horrible to middle class urban Mexicans. but there is no way to write inflexion or tone in Spanish.

There are a number of Indian words that Mexicans use that are normally not found in textbooks: escuintle for niño (child), tacuche for traje (suit) , cuate for amigo, etc. These are used in jest by middle class Mexicans, but are the standard words for campesinos.

There are a few verbs that are different as well.

As a rule, Spaniards from Castilla la Vieja and Leon are supposed to speak the most elegant Spanish, followed by Colombians from the highlands, then Mexicans. Here in Miami, where there are more Cubans than anyone else, all the TV anchorpersons are from elsewhere: Colombia, Argentina, Mexico. Cubans do not sound elegant to other Cubans.

[fatman]

We both bought English to French dictionaries, we spend a lot of time digging them out of our pockets.