Talk:Tours

Extras!

- Visit the place where Joan of Arc had her armor made, right in the heart of Tours!

I added it, just came back from Tours and France, WONDERFUL city!

"Perfection" of local French

Please, reconsider the inclusion of "renowned for […] the perfection of its local spoken French". I was drawn to this page by a forum on examples of bad linguistic, the explanation it gives for linking this page is:

“ This one is innocuous enough, but it still made me roll my eyes when I came across it. The implication is that some varieties of French are "more perfect" than others, even though objectively no variety of French is better or worse than any other. The author would have been better off saying something about the accent being perceived as beautiful or particularly close to standard textbook French. ”

—/u/blissed_and_gone, badlinguistics subreddit

What does it means for some natives to speak more perfectly than others? This claim is non-scientific, please reconsider its inclusion User:ThunderingTyphoons!. There seems to be some people pushing this idea online, but as a 30yo French, I've never heard of it, so I wouldn't call it a "well known claim".

-- 37.171.167.186 06:27, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello! I thank you for taking the trouble to make this post.

You may not have heard of this, but you've only to google "accent tourangeau meilleur" (wonderful syntax there, I know!) to find plenty of results in French talking about this idea. Personally, I'm with you in that no native speaker of any language has a more perfect accent than others, but this article is not my personal work and it's not only my or your opinion which counts. Our focus on Wikivoyage is that the traveller comes first, and I know from first hand experience that many people visit Tours because there's this perception that it has the "purest" accent, so we should talk about it in the article.

Now, if you would like to suggest alternative wording to make our article more accurate, that would be very welcome, but to ignore the idea completely would not best serve the traveller, in my view.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Wikivoyage's rules, but if there is something similar to WP:UNDUE, I'm not sure this deserve to be in the introduction, I won't insist though. Would you agree with changing the wording to: "and is renowned for its wines and claims of perfection of the local spoken French." ? (My English is far from perfect, hope it's not too unnatural.) 37.164.181.226 03:10, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello, again :) Your suggestion was reasonable, but I put it as "supposed perfection", which flows better. There's nothing unnatural about what you wrote, and I could imagine a native speaker writing that.

WP:UNDUE doesn't really have an equivalent here, because that principle stems from needing to use neutral language on Wikipedia. On Wikivoyage, we are not required to be neutral, and are encouraged to write in a lively, engaging tone; as long as we're being fair, we have a lot of editorial freedom.

By the way, later this month the French phrasebook will be on our Main page as Featured travel topic. If you have the time or interest to review it, you'd be very welcome to do so (no pressure).

Hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your help ! I'll take a look. 37.167.134.242 21:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)