Talk:Francophone

Francophone

This term is no longer confused with the early French-language-only cellular telephone network MaxiTel. Although some people still use it to try to call up old Spanish dictators... --Mucho G. Usto

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The new link to Allophone (Canadian usage) can be removed without consulting the linker by anyone who prefers the original link.

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Hence many people would only consider France as the only truly francophone country as other contries have French spoken by a minority of the population. as a native speaker of French and no other language. But I doubt that most of the people who interpret 'francophone' in that way would claim that Canada, Belgium, or Cameroon are not francophone nations. For that, all you would need would be a significant francophone minority. (At the least, they're all members of La Francophonie.) --Saforrest 23:04, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Assumption and WikiPolitics

The following passage was added by Mikkalai after he was upset with my attempts to redirect this and similar articles to French language:

In a narrower sense the notion of "Francophone" reaches beyond the dictionary definition of "French language speaker". The term specifically refers to people whose cultural background is primarily associated with French language, regardless ethnic and geographical differences. The Francophone culture beyond Europe is the legacy of the French colonial empire.

Similar passages have been inserted at Anglophone and Hispanophone as well, all with wording along the lines of "...reaches beyond the dictionary definition of..." I can only interpret this as an attempt to defend the articles by inserting subjective definitions rather than to accurately describe the term. I can find no hint that this interpretation exists outside of Wikipedia. No other encyclopedias seem to keep any kind of separate articles on both languages and the speakers of a language sas a group, and I have no reason to believe that this is done merely because of lack of article space.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

We are "no other encyclopedia" and have quite a few articles absent in traditional encyclopedias, see Wikipedia:Unusual articles.

This article lacks any pertinent content beyond that provided by the Wikitionary article. Futhermore, every paper-published dictionary I consult is certain that a Francophone is a speaker of the language, not a descendant thereof, with the exception of certain usage of the term in the French-langauge for persons claiming to be descendants of immigrants from France before the 19th century -- since this usage is not English, it ought not be considered as such. I am redirecting the article to French language. Ciao. --→ Chèvredan∫ante ^{talk · contrib} 22:56, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Who says about "descendants thereof"? the article has a reasonable content beyound dictionary definition. Restoring the article. `'mikka (t) 19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Your generic misunderstanding is that an encyclopedia article indeed goes "beyond the dictionary definition", and it is not a "subjective definition". In fact, it is not a definition, it is a description. Definition is only part of it. In addition, the encyclopedia article writes about people who are francophones: where they live, how they became francophonic, how heighbors treat them, how many of them, how they treat each other, whether they have their organization or community, how they educate their children, and so on and so forth. And there is no reason to put all this into the French language article. Yes, I inserted "similar passages" into several articles. And some of them, e.g., Russophone already have content going beyond "Russian language". `'mikka (t) 19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Mikkalai, some of your proposals are good examples of things like language acquisition and language history. Some of them, like "how they treat each other" and "how they educate their children", seem to be more about sociology than linguistics, but extremely generalzed. You're pushing groupings of people that aren't recognized among academic disciplines and that are too general to properly define. You could elaborate forever about the kind of candy French speakers eat, what films they like, which religion they prefer, etc, etc, etc. That's not encyclopedic.

You're also the one insisting that very relevant linguistic information can't be contained in the main language articles, or that appropriate titles be given to articles that would cover some of the more reasonable topics. For example, French language acquisition or attitudes towards French. The issue of how French-speaking people started speaking French is something that should be covered by history of French. You're also the one putting limits on the main language articles by fiercely resisting all attempts to redirect them and saying that certain that are about languages actually belong in articles about the speakers of the languages.

And what's more, none of the -phone-articles seem to be attract anything but highly generalized and completely unverifiable information. You're certainly not helping in that department by weasel statements like: In a narrower sense the notion of "XXX-phone" reaches beyond the dictionary definition of "XXX speaker. Why would any article need to try to excuse its own existence?

Peter ^Isotalo 19:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization

Is "Francophone" properly capitalized or not? Badagnani 10:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

As of now, the article reads: the noun Francophone (also spelled with a small character 'f') , which is pure contradiction. Which one is correct? Sources would be welcome as well. Zouavman Le Zouave 23:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

French : cultural language in Canada?

It's an official language and is frequently used alongside English in government affairs. Canada shoould be colored fair blue, "administrative language", not light blue, "cultural language". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.80.19.149 (talk) 01:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

I agree that the image reversion made by the user aaker on October 23, 2008 is incorrect. There seems to be some confusion because the terms are not defined. The illustration appears to come from the French Wikipedia so I checked the definitions there:

• Langue maternelle means "mother tongue", which is the first language learned by a child.
• Langue administrative is not defined on Wikipedia but if it means langue officielle ("official language"), then this is certainly the case for Canada.
• Langue de culture is defined as one that is priviledged but is not an official language, which is certainly not the case for Canada.

Thus, the current image is incongruous since it is contradicting Wikipedia itself. I believe that it should be reverted back to the image of September 18, 2008, which is the correct version.67.71.190.146 (talk) 20:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)