Transfer Language French
back to indexThe particular Advantages of French as a Transfer Language
Basically, any Romance language can be used as a transfer basis for intercomprehension. But there are a few
facts to be considered. In many educational systems French is taught as a secondary language, rivalled by Spanish only recently.
This alone can make it a transfer language, but it does not explain why it is the perfect basis.
Every Romance language has its typologic characteristics which will classify it as transfer language for a given Romance target language. There are, for instance phenomena, in the Italian nominal und verbal systems as well as in its phonology, that make it a perfect transfer language for Romanian. The Iberian languages Spanish, Portuguese, Galician (and in the same order Catalan) are each ideal transfer languages for the other members of the Iberoromance. Speakers of Catalan (who are bilingual in today's Catalunia) have a particularly efficient access to the rest of Iberoromania and Italian, but also to French and Romanian. A particularly close neighbour or relative of Catalan is Occitan.
The particular usefulness of French as a transfer language (cf. Contribution by H.G.Klein in fh 33, 2002) is based on several criteria:
1. The competent French speaker really has two competences: the competence of analysis of the written language, which can be called Pan-Romance to a high degree and the competence of the spoken language, which has drifted far apart from Romance standard in in many respects also typologically.
This becomes obvious in many grammatical aspects. Where there is a Pan-Romance tendency to mark the plural according to the word ending (-s or -i/-e), this differentiation in spoken French depends exclusively on the phonemic opposition of the vowels in le, la and les. While Pan-Romance marks the feminine by changing the last sound -o to -a or (Fr.) -e, spoken French functions according to a different system: the feminine form is considered the marked one, in which the last consonant is pronounced; the masculine form loses this last consonant sound.
2. French spelling has also developed profile forms, which have drifted away from the Pan-Romance norm. Just think of the introduction of a question by est-ce que?, forms like qu´est-ce que c´est?, aujourd´hui, jusqu´à ce que, or the topicalisation (c´est ... qui), the prefixed conjugation, phenomena which can all be traced back to Romance but demand a lot of acrobatics in their explanation.
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Every Romance language has its typologic characteristics which will classify it as transfer language for a given Romance target language. There are, for instance phenomena, in the Italian nominal und verbal systems as well as in its phonology, that make it a perfect transfer language for Romanian. The Iberian languages Spanish, Portuguese, Galician (and in the same order Catalan) are each ideal transfer languages for the other members of the Iberoromance. Speakers of Catalan (who are bilingual in today's Catalunia) have a particularly efficient access to the rest of Iberoromania and Italian, but also to French and Romanian. A particularly close neighbour or relative of Catalan is Occitan.
The particular usefulness of French as a transfer language (cf. Contribution by H.G.Klein in fh 33, 2002) is based on several criteria:
1. The competent French speaker really has two competences: the competence of analysis of the written language, which can be called Pan-Romance to a high degree and the competence of the spoken language, which has drifted far apart from Romance standard in in many respects also typologically.
This becomes obvious in many grammatical aspects. Where there is a Pan-Romance tendency to mark the plural according to the word ending (-s or -i/-e), this differentiation in spoken French depends exclusively on the phonemic opposition of the vowels in le, la and les. While Pan-Romance marks the feminine by changing the last sound -o to -a or (Fr.) -e, spoken French functions according to a different system: the feminine form is considered the marked one, in which the last consonant is pronounced; the masculine form loses this last consonant sound.
2. French spelling has also developed profile forms, which have drifted away from the Pan-Romance norm. Just think of the introduction of a question by est-ce que?, forms like qu´est-ce que c´est?, aujourd´hui, jusqu´à ce que, or the topicalisation (c´est ... qui), the prefixed conjugation, phenomena which can all be traced back to Romance but demand a lot of acrobatics in their explanation.
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3. The leading role of French in feudal Europe and during Enlightenment as well as the elegantly phrased
thoughts of the French Revolution and the political norms coined in the 18th century have - like no other Romance language -
left their linguistic mark that has found acceptance in all European languages. Romanian is to be mentioned foremost in this context.
No other Romance language has been "re-Romanced" by French to the same degree.
4. In the entire Romance (except bilingual regions like Catalonia) French is the most widely-spread Romance foreign language.
5. Starting from no other Romance language is it possible to deduce spoken French, but its spelling may very well be deduced.
For all these reasons it seems to make sense to have French as a transfer language as the Romance basis of intercomprehension. Anyone preferring a different transfer language may very well reach a reading competence in all Romance languages, but will hardly make the leap from reading competence to listening comprehension in French on a satisfactory level.
EuroCom for an English speaking target group will for all these reasons use French as its transfer language.
Any other Romance language of departure is certainly possible, but it will not meet the requirements for developing a good listening comprehension of French.
4. In the entire Romance (except bilingual regions like Catalonia) French is the most widely-spread Romance foreign language.
5. Starting from no other Romance language is it possible to deduce spoken French, but its spelling may very well be deduced.
For all these reasons it seems to make sense to have French as a transfer language as the Romance basis of intercomprehension. Anyone preferring a different transfer language may very well reach a reading competence in all Romance languages, but will hardly make the leap from reading competence to listening comprehension in French on a satisfactory level.
EuroCom for an English speaking target group will for all these reasons use French as its transfer language.
Any other Romance language of departure is certainly possible, but it will not meet the requirements for developing a good listening comprehension of French.