What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today:
• I’ve found another upside to spending time with That’s My Boy. I can now answer, quickly and unequivocally, when asked: “What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?” (Which is usually the second question I get from people who’ve just learned I’m a film critic, after: “What’s your favorite movie?”)
• Dammit, I am *really* doing something wrong… Andrew Sullivan’s Presales for Subscription Website Near Half a Million Dollars
• Ah, the myopia of white male hetero filmmakers channeling their inner 12-year-old dork. They think what they do is “new” and “different”!
To the critics: You always complain that Hollywood never gives you new stuff, and then when you get it, you flip out. Lighten up.P
— Farrelly Brothers (@farrellybros) January 27, 2013
To the critics: Movie 43 is not the end of the world. It’s just a $6-million movie where we tried to do something different. Now back off. P
— Farrelly Brothers (@farrellybros) January 27, 2013
• Awww. These men are window washers at a children’s hospital in Pittsburg.
• That’s right: Cold weather doomed some crappy movies. The crappy movies didn’t doom themselves. The movies themselves are never, ever to blame when they flop. Hansel and Gretel Wins, Movie 43 Bombs
• This is one good way to put a language on a track to irrelevance. English Word ‘Hashtag’ Gets a French Alternative
(hat-tips for today’s links: JimRomenesko.com, Mike McGranaghan, Rory L. Aronsky)
The next time someone says that critics don’t matter, it might be worth pointing them to the many, many reviews of Movie 43 that say “worst film of all time.”
Considering we just had Oogieloves…
Those critics clearly haven’t seen *That’s My Boy.*
But is that movie really worse than “Battlefield Earth”, my current “worst movie I’ve ever seen!”?
Yes.
Whoring yourself out for years to rags like the Atlantic’s website?
It’s ignorant, imperialist anglo bias to assume other languages should just borrow the English term for something rather than use their own.
Yes it is.
But what would you call the idea that native speakers of a language, rather than being allowed to borrow and repurpose the vocabulary of other languages as they see fit (as, for example, English, and Japanese — to name two languages I happen to use regularly — do) should be told by an elite committee that they are not allowed to do so?
Coincidentally, have you ever heard of manga? Or anime? Or, come to that, sushi? How would you feel if some august body insisted that we were not supposed to use those words, but instead refer to “Japanese-style comics,” “Japanese-style cartoons” and, er, “a Japanese dish involving vinegared rice and a variety of toppings or fillings”?
Whoa. English has absorbed so many words from other languages! That’s what makes English so powerful and so versatile. And so useful. If another language has a word that says what we need to say, we use it, happily.
It’s ignorant, franocophile arrogance to assume that the French language deserves to be protected from change.
I think Ide Cyan’s point, which got a bit drowned out in the rancour, was that the Académie doesn’t actually ban words. It selects from French possibilities already circulating, says these are the uses to be adopted by the government and therefore implicitly standardises the language. In that sense it is more like the language-regulating bodies of English: the dictionary compilers, grammar-book writers and so on. It is more prescriptive than they are, but it is an agent of (controlled) change, not a protector from.
Although I’m in agreement with you, as my earlier comments should have made clear, my experience of what the importation of “English” is doing to Japanese (my other language) makes me at least aware of the passions driving the “other side”. Oddly enough, my own objection to the widespread use of “English” in Japanese is that it damages Japanese students’ ability to learn English. Differences in usage, nuance and grammar make Japanised English a hindrance rather than a help.
I understand that the Academie doesn’t actually ban words. (It’s tough to see how that could actually be accomplished.) But it is ensuring that “official” French is going to bear increasingly less resemblance to the way French-speaking people actually speak.
English-language dictionary writers and grammarians are not government officials with any authority. That’s not a fair comparison at all.
I understand your concerns regarding Japanese and English, but here’s the thing: How do you *stop* one language from invading another? You’d have to cut Japanese speakers off from Hollywood movies and American TV and the Internet. Is that realistic?
I find the idea of the language drifting away from the “official” version quite interesting, and it relates to the various non-standard varieties and dialects. Including, presumably, the Canadian French Ide Cyan speaks?
On the other hand, we can see that official language is going to have an effect on everyday language. It’ll be recycled in news broadcasts, taught in schools etc. So I’m not sure the drift is going to be that dramatic: as Bob pointed out, English officialese is itself pretty divorced from the language of the street.
I don’t think my comparison of the Académie with the regulators of English is quite so unfair, once you accept that I was making the point that the former is an official regulator while the latter are “privatised”. Both are involved in setting boundaries of what is considered “acceptable” in certain forms of discourse.
On your last point: absolutely! It’s impossible to stop it. And I guess this brings us back to the Académie again. But it isn’t a case of people absorbing neat language from Hollywood and American TV (or indeed that of any other country) or the Internet. It’s a case of pseudo-English terms being coined by Japanese people who aren’t very good at English. “I will challenge English!” say my students. And what they mean is “I will try my best to learn English!” One or two of these wouldn’t present a problem, but as it proliferates, the students find that they are having to relearn stuff they thought they knew, and that’s a burden to a language learner.
PSA: we (MAJ & I) had a discussion Twitter last night, discussing this. Didn’t seem to change either one’s opinion, but it was somewhat more productive.
Glad to hear it. As I said above, reaching an amicable conclusion is a precious thing on the Internet. I hope I didn’t misrepresent you in my comment here to MAJ.
Movie 43….new and different. Except for Amazon Women from the Moon and UHF…but whatever.
And The Kentucky Fried Movie and The Groove Tube.
Native speakers already come up with their own translations. Courriel, and the related pourriel, are excellent ones. The Académie just picks one it likes, and it only has the ability to enforce its use by government employees — did you skip that part of the article? Mock the French Académie française all you want, but make it clear it’s that organisation you’re targeting, and not people’s ability to come up with and use words in their own languages.
And FYI the Académie isn’t coming up with the translation — it’s only picking one for *official* use to uniformise things. (Mot-clic would be another possibility.)
For crying out loud.
I think “For crying out loud” is the most apposite part of your post.
You appear to have missed the “Yes it is” with which I prefaced my comment, indicating that I am no supporter of English linguistic imperialism either.
You launched into an assault on unspecified persons for “assuming” that other languages should borrow English words. Although this was not the argument of the article, nor, I would infer, MaryAnn’s comment above, I made a more gentle, general point about language borrowing. Certainly I failed to spell out that the “elite committee” I was referring to was the Académie Française; I thought this was rather obvious in context, especially to anyone who had read the article.
In both your original comment, and in your response to me, you’re generating an aggressive argument where there could be a reasoned discussion. MaryAnn clearly feels that the form of language management practised by the Académie is ultimately damaging to the French language. It’s a position shared by many, not all of them “ignorant, imperialist anglos”. Indeed, you may even find that some of them are French…
That “like” was a misclick — meant to hit reply instead.
Don’t lecture me on tone while mansplaining. You’ll get irony poisoning.
There’s no point asking Paul not to lecture you on tone, or, indeed, on anything else. It’s what he does, and he seems to have an inordinate amount of free time in which to do it. Best ignore him-he’ll find someone else to pick an argument with, probably about” the canonicity of Dr Who”, or something, and then he’ll move on.
Wondered how long before you showed up.
Hello Bob, nice to see you.
Ide Cyan appreciates the irony of an anglophone criticising the Académie française. I appreciate the irony of you leaping in to show how you rise above internet arguments by, er, jumping into an internet argument. The trouble with what you’re doing here is someone might just go back to other threads and find you being perfectly happy both to lecture others on their tone, and to argue on at length, and furthermore, pointedly ignoring overtures of compromise and apology. As I said in the reply that you ignored: a far more admirable outcome on the Internet is to reach an amicable conclusion, whether agreeing or disagreeing.
You may happen to be a staunch defender of the Académie française. I don’t know. But if you don’t express an opinion one way or another is it really so wise to jump in with an ad hominem? Ide Cyan seems perfectly capable of giving me a bilingual pasting without the assistance of a white knight.
Hello, Paul, hope the New Year is treating you well. I found it very difficult to bite my tongue when I stumbled across your exchange with Ide Cyan, because it seemed eerily reminiscent of our own earlier-irony alert- contre temps. You seem to struggle to debate with others without resorting to cheap-shot attempts to make the other person sound stupid. If you ask someone, particularly the sort of person who posts on this site, if they’ve ever heard of Manga, or Anime, don’t be too surprised if this leads to ”aggressive argument” in response-or even”inflamed rhetoric”, although I think you should really be getting ointment for that one. Nobody likes a smart arse-and before I find myself on the receiving end of a rapier-like riposte pointing out my own smartarsery, the difference between us is that I know when I’m doing it, and can switch it off if required. On your recent form, you can’t seem to help yourself.
“I found it very difficult to bite my tongue”
vs
“I know when I’m doing it, and can switch it off if required.”
Are you absolutely 100% sure that I’m the guy in the black hat, and you’re the one in the white? Feel free to go back and read a few earlier posts, if it helps. Including the posts I’m responding to. And the ones which you carefully ignore, where I do bite my tongue.
I’ve pleaded guilty at several points along the way. I’ve yet to see any admission by you of even argumentativeness, despite twice jumping into other threads to have a go at me.
I’m still waiting for your opinion on language development. If you haven’t got one then your sole reason for posting here is a personal attack (my own reason was a personal and professional interest in language development). Which hardly makes you the man with the magic switch that you’re portraying yourself as, does it?
Admit it: someone wound you up on the Internet. It happens reasonably often. It’s not an admirable thing, certainly. But when you turn it into a grudge match you just end up demeaning yourself. Even if I am indeed as awful as you portray me, you still look a little creepy popping up to say nothing but “Hey! This guy’s awful!” as if people can’t make their own minds up.
From the brief article cited, it does not appear that any ”elite community” here is dictating to native French speakers what expressions they can and can’t use. This is a ”decree” of the French Government, and will only directly affect its employees and officials. As, in the UK, central and local government already use a very strange, laboured and jargonistic version of English to describe the most simple exercises and processes, and enforce the use of this language among their employees, I don’t find it particularly surprising to be told that French bureaucrats would behave any differently. French speakers remain free to call it what they like-although it would be nice if they rejected ”hashtag” for aesthetic rather than political reasons, as it’s an ugly, guttural expression, apparently difficult to pronounce by native French speakers, that sounds more like ancient Anglo Saxon than cyberspeak.
For the record, Paul, I own neither a hat, of any colour or shade,nor a ”magic switch”- although the latter sounds like it might be fun-I don’t bear you any grudge, and I certainly don’t think you’re awful-unintentionally funny sometimes, but certainly not awful.
Oh, and just to point out that the inflamed rhetoric with which you initially commented rides over any consideration of the nuances at issue here, can I just remind you that the Académie itself can be accused of linguistic imperialism in its continued suppression of regional varieties of French.
C’est beau de voir un anglophone s’insurger contre l’impérialisme d’une organisation francophone quand ils ont bon rire d’elle lorsqu’elle se défend contre eux.
Indeed. Almost as amusing as someone being so butthurt in this forum about the terrible crimes inflicted on the poor little French language.
And it’s a shame that you couldn’t compose your excellent rebuttal in Occitan, the language of my ancestors. But then, it’s “severely endangered”. And I’m not going to complain too hard since I would have had some difficulty understanding it: a Francophile I may be, but I am nevertheless, as you so insightfully point out, an anglophone.
You’d already given me irony poisoning. It probably explained why I was uncharacteristically polite to you.
I’ve clicked “like” on your comment as it seemed like the fair thing to do.
If a film’s bad performance could be blamed on the film, someone might try blaming the producer, director or scriptwriter. And that would never do! (Though of course it happens anyway; direct or star in a flop, and you won’t get any work for a while, even if it really wasn’t your fault.)
Bilingual pasting?
Yeah, I was referring to the slang “strike forcefully” meaning (bilingual because of the posts in French and English) rather than the toothpaste and nipples thing, which I’ve only just learned about.
Sorry about any confusion caused.