"Fransin" simplified orthography for French
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Sat Feb 11 20:04:44 CET 2017
I am forwarding this information to the list as a service to the
requester, Pierre Paillé. I'm expecting that he will join this list
shortly to participate in any discussion that follows.
Briefly, the request is for a variant subtag to represent a simplified
orthography for French. It's not clear yet whether this system is
actually in use by anyone other than the inventors, which of course is
important.
The references to ‘ffs’ can be ignored here; they have to do with the
fact that Pierre originally proposed this to ISO 639-3/RA as a language
code element. Obviously if it is approved here as a variant, the subtag
value would have to fit length constraints, and in fact ‘fransin’ seems
reasonable.
Pierre's original request was in rich text, and included nice tables and
formatting, but unfortunately went well over 100 kB and thus could not
be posted to this list. The nicely formatted version (in French) can be
found at the web site noted at the top of the post.
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
--- Original message ---
Hello Doug,
As explained in this page in our web site:
http://www.fransin.org/WebPage_About.aspx, the Fransin is a simplified
phonetic transcription of the French language (‘fransé fonétik sinplifié’
in Fransin => ‘ffs’ code).
The next block of text below (between the 2 next horizontal lines) is an
English translation of this web page (that explains the target of the
Fransin transcription of the French language):
______________________________________________________________________
It is a fact that people speaking French understand themselves perfectly
in the vast majority of cases. It is therefore possible to write
phonetically the French without any loss of meaning: the context
generally allows us to overcome the ambiguities born from the many
homophonies of the French language.
Why trying to transcribe the French phonetically? Because it takes years
of learning to master the spelling of French (orthography, conjugation,
grammar): its complexity is such that some people never even do it
perfectly after decades... A contrario, it takes only a few minutes to
master the rules of Fransin. This being done, we can immediately write
without committing any fault because we only need to reproduce in
writing what we heard; we can also read, and so access to the knowledge.
The simplification that is provided by Fransin has the following
advantages:
To allow the millions of people mastering the listening of French - but
not its writing/reading - to potentially access, in Fransin, to the
universal knowledge corresponding to the French language corpus that is
transcribed into Fransin (Wikipedia firstly, and then all the digital
books in the public domain).
To facilitate the accessing to the French language by the immigrants,
and to promote its use to foreigners who tend to learn English instead
of French.
Perhaps, in the future, to save children years of suffering related to
the mandatory learning of French spelling and conjugation. Indeed,
although the scripting of French is the witness to the history of the
French language (and the story of the French language is very exciting
and interesting), why should the whole population be experts in this
particular field of historical science on a daily basis?
Much more hypothetically, to annihilate the socially discriminating
factor of mastering French spelling?
People who master the French scripting can read and write Fransin fairly
easily, although the force of habit makes this exercise rather painful,
even very unpleasant at first glance: our brain sees mistakes
everywhere!
The learning of Fransin is very fast: it is enough to know the unique
sound corresponding to each letter or couple of letters of the alphabet
as indicated in the table below:
a
la, apparemment
b
Bas
d
De
e
je, jeu, leur, œuvre, rocheux, voient
é
été, père, fête, fait, pied, lier,…
f
fer, orthographe
g
gâteau, guère, second
i
dix, dynamo
j
je, rage
k
képi, carpe, quart
l
Le
m
Me
n
Ne
o
ode, aube, eau
p
Pas
r
Rien
s
souris, casser, ça, ceci, opération
t
toit, théâtre, question
u
Tu
v
Va
w
wikipédia, one-woman-show
y
joyeux, paille, pareil
z
zèle, rase
oi
Toi
ou
Tout
an
pendant, rampe, tempe
in
pin, pain, peint, timbre
on
donc, tomber
un
Un
ch
Chat
gn
Pagne
Remarks:
In Fransin, the letter 'c' and the letter 'h' do not exist in isolation:
they are always associated together to make the sound [ch].
The different sounds close to the sound [e] are transcribed by the
letter 'e':
{ je → je }
{ jeu → je }
{ leur → ler }
{ œuvre → evr }
The terminal 'e' of a word, when it is silent, is generally omitted as
for the words:
{ artiste → artist }
{ roche → roch }
On the other hand, a final 'e' is written if it exists phonetically:
{ rocheux → roche }
Warning! The final letter {e} of a French word, when it is muted - but
preceded by the letter {n} - is preserved in the case where its presence
makes it possible to signal the non-nasalization of the previous vowel :
{ une → une }
and NOT :
{ une ↵ ün }
{ tétine → tétine }
and NOT :
{ tétine ↵ tétïn }
When the French letter 'e' is silent within a word, both transcriptions
with or without 'e' are possible:
{ paquebot → pakebo } : OK
{ paquebot → pakbo } : OK
The different sounds close to the sound [é] are all transcribed by the
letter {é} as in:
{ été → été }
{ père → pér }
{ fête → fét }
{ un fait → un fét }
{ c'est fait → s'é fé }
{ pied → pié }
{ lier → lié }
The letter {y} is used to transcribe the [i-wet] sound when it is in
front of a vowel, as in :
{ paille → pay }
{ joyeux → joiye }
On the other hand, this [i-wet] sound is transcribed by the letter 'i'
(as in French) when it is before a consonant as for the words :
{ opération → opérasion }
{ tien → tiin }
The letter 'x' of the French is not used phonetically in Fransin: it is
replaced by its three phonetic transcriptions namely:
gz comme pour :
{ exact → égzakt}
kx comme pour :
{ excellent → éksélan}
s comme pour :
{ dix → dis}
Nevertheless the letter ‘x’ is used as a not-pronounced-mark to signify
the plural against singular when there is no difference of pronunciation
between both:
singular :
{ il voit → il voi}
plural :
{ ils voient → ilx voi}
The letter 'w' is used only in the transcription of words of foreign
origin ('oui' remains 'oui', and not 'wi') :
{ Wikipedia → Wikipédia }
{ one-woman-show → ouane-woumane-cho }
{ Adenauer → Adénawér }
The letter 'q' is not used at all in transcription Fransin.
In Fransin, sentences do not necessarily have to start with a capital
letter. The capital letters are rather intended to indicate that the
word is not a Fransin word (abbreviations, to keep the spelling of the
proper names, names of foreign origin, etc.). We will therefore write
indifferently:
{ C’est un hooligan. → s’é un Hooligan.}
{ C’est un hooligan. → s’é un ouligane.}
Phonetical links made in French for words starting with a vowel are
freely transcribed in Fransin without this being a fault :
{ les enfants → lé anfan }
{ les enfants → léz anfan }
{ les enfants → lé zanfan }
Note: the current Fransin-transcriber 1.0 outputs the first syntax
because it has been the simplest to develop. Nevertheless IT improvement
seems possible in order to output the second syntax that is much more
comfortable visually for readers.
_____________________________________________________________________
Recalling only the first of the four potential advantages of Fransin
highlighted above, it is important to try to quantify it:
According to Wikipedia, The Francophone community in 2015 was 284
million people in 2015.
According to Wikipedia, the illiteracy rate of 15-year-olds in France in
2010 is slightly under 20%.
Nevertheless, this percentage must be lower in the overall Francophone
population because:
- young French people can learn to read after their 15th
birthday, especially at the beginning of their young adult life,
- speaking French in a country other than France samples
persons more in the portion of the people who had the chance to take a
course in their life => knowing the French, they have also learned how
to read and write it (see report:
http://www.francophonie.org/Langue-Francaise-2014 ).
But, by default of better information, let us keep this order of
magnitude: 20%. We thus obtain approximately 250 million Francophones x
20% illiteracy = 50 million francophone illiterate persons.
Among these 50 million persons, we can expect to render a service to
about 20% (?) of them (mainly the younger ones; the other ones may live
in such a difficult material environment that Internet, computers,
smartphones are just not available): The computation gives a potential
of 10 million people.
The big question is now to estimate the final percentage of persons
among these 10 millions who will have the courage and the willingness of
learning the Fransin to access to the knowledge?
Even if we take 1 person about 100, we get finally the very pessimistic
figure of 100.000 persons, for which the Fransin will become the quicker
mean to access to the knowledge.
Even if this very pessimistic figure looks small, we think that these
people (output from full analphabetism thanks to Fransin) could play a
very important role within their own community, which is a key point to
consider.
And these people might be perhaps able to drain other people not in the
francophone community to the French, since the latter would become very
easy to learn thanks to its phonetical transcription in Fransin?
The 3rd advantage relating to the teaching of Fransin to children is
only listed here as a future hypothetical perspective. Nevertheless we
can say today that many hundreds (thousands?) of hours of learning the
French spelling and conjugation could be saved by children, and so
reinvested in other teachings creating immediate and tangible gains for
the community? Without falling into any hasty comparison, it is
nevertheless true that the Finn and the German children have the chance
to learn a language that is written phonetically: Finland is a very
small country but they have been able to invent mobile telephony (one of
the more important revolutions of the end of the 20th century), and
Germany is one of the most flourishing economy in the world.
What is the materiality of Fransin today?
- We currently have a computerized dictionary containing the
transcriptions of 1,167,439 words from French to Fransin. We have
transcribed almost all the French terms existing in:
https://fr.wiktionary.org.
- We developed a first version of a French-to-Fransin text
transcription engine, a web version of which is already accessible to:
http://www.fransin.org/WebPage_ Transcripter.aspx.
- We already used this transcription engine to transcribe the
wiki-source codes of all the pages of the French Wikipedia into Fransin:
these 3.109.204 Wikipedia articles s of Fransin are currently available
in our database and could be used immediately to feed a Fransin version
of French Wikipedia, which is our first goal to reach.
- If the Wikipedia-ffs reaches its goal (100.000 readers?), our
group of IT persons will launch the step-by-step transcriptions of all
the digitalized books that are available in the public domain.
- Writing correctors in Fransin will be also our next IT
priority for the Windows, Google, Apple Operating Systems.
- We have created a first version of the web site:
www.fransin.org which will allow the community to correct the
French-Fransin transcription errors, the errors that have crept into the
transcriptions of the Fransin Wiki pages and digitalized books, and
also, in the future, to define collaboratively the evolution of the
Fransin.
About the Fransin as a transcription of the French, we think that it is
always possible to endlessly discuss religiously of its characteristics.
But this is not the point today: the Fransin is not an ideal language
engraved in marble forever: it is a historical process driven
collaboratively by a community (only 4 persons today).
Nevertheless we can prove that the current version 1.0 of Fransin is a
point of convergence representing a good equilibrium between the
different constraints associated to its goals:
- It is nearly phonetical. Any attempt to make it 100%-phonetic
would lead to much more complexity to learn it without any real
advantage for students (they may have already their own local way of
pronouncing!).
- It is the closest as possible to the French: several
intermediary opportunities of interesting theoretical changes have
raised during its definition: all the ones that would have been too far
from French have been discarded.
- It fits the materiality of the world: it takes into account
the difficulty of keying texts with a smartphone. Typically only 1
accent is remaining: the one on the ‘e’ to form the existing French
letter {é}. Any attempt to replace this {é} by something without accent
has led to versions that were too difficult to read by French readers.
Compared to the other historical proposals of alternative orthographies
of French, the Fransin seems to be the only one that:
- does not present itself as being theoretically “ultimate”,
but only as a “becoming”.
- is supported by a powerful IT force able to ensure this
becoming.
These 2 points are the 2 key-factors that could make the Fransin a
success, if there is an effective need for it.
If we have the assurance that Wikimedia will propose a Fransin version
of the French Wikipedia, we wish to invest more in this computer project
so that the transcription of the French pages in Fransin is executed
continuously by our transcription engine: information will always remain
up to date without delay, and without any need of Fransin contributors,
and also without any need of page content supervising by Wikimedia since
this supervising has already been done in the French version of the
page.
As everything will be computerized, the human cost of this attempt will
be very small, but its potential effect, massive. As the goal of our
project is more and more important everyday (limiting the desperate
immigrations by providing educational means locally, and preventing the
rising of the feeling of exclusion leading to introspective
communitarianism, and so violence), we would like to try… to see if we
could help… somewhere.
As it is, we were told by Wikimedia: 1) that we need a 639-3 code for
the Fransin to go ahead, and 2) that SIL manages these codes.
Thanks to Melinda we understood that the 636-3 codes refer only to
spoken languages, and not to writing variations. As the Fransin is an
alternative writing of French, we have been told that our request falls
in your perimeter.
We suggest you to entrust us a writing-variation-of-French code for the
Fransin in order to continue our attempt to help people with our Fransin
IT project. Note that this code could be made available/free again in
2-3 years if we are not successful.
We are available for any demonstration of our achievement in your office
at your convenience.
Best Regards.
Pierre Paillé
+33.660.140.386
Manager of VECTALIS SARL
30, rue Notre-Dame des Victoires
Bâtiment B, 8ème étage
75002 PARIS
FRANCE
PS: We have not yet created any French non-profitable association
entrusted with the development of the Fransin.
This will be done as soon as we will get our code and the approval of
Wikimedia that they accept to run a Wikipedia-fr-ffs.
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