{"id":8424,"date":"2023-12-19T10:46:54","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T10:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=8424"},"modified":"2023-12-19T10:46:54","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T10:46:54","slug":"africans-are-changing-french-one-joke-rap-and-book-at-a-time-3-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/19\/africans-are-changing-french-one-joke-rap-and-book-at-a-time-3-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Africans Are Changing French \u2014 One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time (3-3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Agencies – Sudan Events<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, more than a third of Ivorians speak French, according to the International Organization of the Francophonie. In Tunisia and the Democratic Republic of Congo \u2014 the world\u2019s largest French-speaking country \u2014 it is more than half.
\n\u201cAfrican children are still learning in French in extremely difficult conditions,\u201d said Francine Qu\u00e9m\u00e9ner, a program specialist in charge of language policies at the International Organization of the Francophonie. \u201cThey must learn to count, write, read in a language they don\u2019t fully grasp, with teachers who themselves don\u2019t always feel secure speaking French.\u201d
\nStill, Ms. Qu\u00e9m\u00e9ner said French had long escaped France\u2019s control.
\n\u201cFrench is an African language and belongs to Africans,\u201d she said. \u201cThe decentralization of the French language is a reality.\u201d
\nAt the Hip Hop Acad\u00e9mie, a youth program founded by the rapper Gr\u00f6dash in a Paris suburb, teens and children scribbled lyrics on notepads, following instructions to mix French and foreign languages.
\nCoumba Soumar\u00e9 Camara, aged 9, tried out a few words from the mother tongues of her Mauritanian and Senegalese parents. She ended her couplet with \u201ct\u2019es magna\u201d \u2014 you\u2019re mean \u2014 combining French syntax and an expression from Mauritania.
\nHip-hop, now dominating the French music industry, is injecting new words, phrases and concepts from Africa into France\u2019s suburbs and cities.
\nStudents at the Hip Hop Acad\u00e9mie, a youth program founded by a rapper, in Les Ulis, a suburb of Paris.
\nOne of the world\u2019s most famous French-speaking pop singers is\u00a0Aya Nakamura, originally from Mali. Many of the most streamed hip-hop artists are of Moroccan, Algerian, Congolese or Ivorian origins.
\nAccording to the New York Times, \u201cCountless artists have democratized French music with African slang,\u201d said Elvis Adidiema, a Congolese music executive with Sony Music Entertainment. \u201cThe French public, from all backgrounds, has become accustomed to those sounds.\u201d
\nBut some in France are slow to embrace change. Members of the French Academy, the 17th-century institution that publishes an official dictionary of the French language, have been working on the same edition for the past 40 years.
\nOn a recent evening Dany Laferri\u00e8re, a Haitian-Canadian novelist and the only Black member of the academy, walked the gilded corridors of the Academy\u2019s building, on the left bank of the Seine River. He and his fellow academicians were reviewing whether to add to the dictionary the word \u201cyeah,\u201d which appeared in French in the 1960s.
\nLaferri\u00e8re acknowledged that the Academy might need to modernize by incorporating entire dictionaries from Belgian, Senegalese, or Ivorian French.
\n\u201cFrench is about to make a big leap, and she\u2019s wondering how it\u2019s going to go,\u201d Mr. Laferri\u00e8re said of the French language. \u201cBut she\u2019s excited about where she\u2019s headed.\u201d
\nHe paused, stared at the Seine through the window, and corrected himself.
\n\u201cThey, not she. They are now multiple versions of French that speak for themselves. And that is the greatest proof of its vitality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dany Laferri\u00e8re, a Haitian-Canadian writer and the only Black member of the French Academy, in the academy\u2019s halls in Paris. He said there are now \u201cnow multiple versions of French that speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agencies – Sudan Events Today, more than a third of Ivorians speak French, according to the International Organization of the Francophonie. In Tunisia and the Democratic Republic of Congo \u2014 the world\u2019s largest French-speaking country \u2014 it is more than half. \u201cAfrican children are still learning in French in extremely difficult conditions,\u201d said Francine Qu\u00e9m\u00e9ner, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8432,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424\/revisions\/8432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}