Kim:
>>What does "metropolitan French" mean?
>
> The French of France. No offence intended to Winnipeg, Vancouver or
> any other metropolis.
Hmm, then why not just call it "European French" to avoid confusion?
> I can't dispute your experience, though one might suspect a degree of
> influence from English on Canadian French.
Yes, and I admit this. I remember sitting in an extra-credit course
that taught us basic linguistics and IPA symbols. The teacher made
claims on "Canadian English" but I knew for a fact that many Canadians
weren't pronouncing it this way (Are Manitobans slurring their words?
Maybe). However, I did notice that I was pronouncing "day", not as
/dEj/ (the "proper" Canadian English way) nor even a lazy /dEI/ but
rather /de/, no doubt influenced by my upbringing in French. The
deviant pronunciation wouldn't be terribly noticeable in English
anyway as long as the "d" is alveolar.
> I deny that your Google statistics prove anything [...]
Yes, so do I. They _hint_ at everyday speech. That's all I'm getting
at. So when it's claimed that the gerundive is oddly used here in
either French or English, I have to argue against it. It's not that
unusual based on my own experience. Of course, this is a subjective
debate and so I think we'll have to learn to disagree. It's good
though to at least share experiences about a language to gain more
insight.
> [...] at all except that the construction can be found in written
> sources, which was never at issue.
Yes, but the Internet is hardly "literary" by normal standards.
It's a soupkitchen of thought and a large brunt of it is written
by the regular joe-shmoes that got their hands on a computer and an
internet connection to lend their opinion in the way they feel
most natural -- their own everyday speech as they type it.
Quite different from _published_ text in print which tends to follow
much more closely the formulaic, less natural ways of conveying an
idea. A distinction has to be made between simply "written" and
"literary". We can all write in various styles to express the same
view without changing one's medium of expression. I don't have to
use weird conjugational forms like "fîmes" for example. I can just
type how I talk and that's what the majority on the internet do.
= gLeN