(October 10, 2015 at 1:12 pm)Pyrrho Wrote:(October 10, 2015 at 1:01 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: I actually don't understand why "proper" French people make such a big deal of them. I think they're unnecessary, except in distinguishing important syntax or meaning, like the difference between a and à.
I can understand making a big deal out of such things. Without the proper accents, it is wrong. Imagine if someone typed words in English, but did not use English letters all of the time, but sometimes used letters that only somewhat resembled the correct letters. Like imagine the letter "n" without the first vertical stroke. It would not look right, and it would likely annoy most native English speakers, even though it would not thereby look like some other letter leading to confusion.
It is disrespectful to be willfully careless about details. It is one thing to make an honest mistake occasionally, but it is quite another to willfully do things wrong when one knows better, and especially when one knows that it is going to annoy someone.
MTL, in Canada, don't they have French keyboards for people living in Québec? Can you just get one and plug it into your computer for your French communications?
(As an aside, since I am writing in English, I could have used "Quebec" instead of "Québec," as "Quebec" is the English spelling of "Québec." But I wanted to use the French spelling in this instance to both illustrate the concept of respect, and to avoid false accusations of getting it wrong when I just explained why someone might object to omitting accents in French. They are a part of the French language, and so one does not properly write French without them.)
Most keyboards can be changed back and forth to type in french but mine is possessed, apparently.
or would be if I wasn't Agnostic.
or drunk.
