My friend’s daughter is very happily just beginning Highschool French classes (well, as of 3 months ago).
She is also very fond of the karaoke game on Wii.
Thought maybe a French Wii Karaoke game might be a fun language tutor.
Could I get her a French Wii game for her to use with her American Wii?
Here is a good link. The short answer appears to be no, but NTSC/PAL issues can cause problems.
Hmmm, how about this (which is an excellent question I should have thought of BEFORE being concerned about Region Coding):
Seems I could find a Wii Karaoke game marketed in Quebec, which would still be NTSC- right?
How much French Lyric music is listened to in Quebec anyway?
Is there a market in Quebec for French karaoke Wii?
Between now and when I sit at the computer again later today, I’ll be thinking of the best way to Google this myself. Still, if anyone has any good insight to offer that would be great!
Thanks, Mahaloth!!!
If she’s studying France’s French, Quebecois products might not be the best thing to look for. Though they certainly are easier to get for an American user (I still dont understand how the hell movie companies and DVD publishers got away with this DVD zoning stuff that has nothing to do with technical issues, just companies screwing their consumers. Again).
I don’t see why not. It’s the same language, and the girl in question is just starting French as a foreign language classes, so she’s still got a long way to go before dialectal differences start to matter.
However, I cannot find any French-language karaoke game in the few Quebec-based retailers I’ve looked into. And honestly, I don’t even know if French-language home karaoke games are very easy to find in France either. If I find something interesting I’ll post it here.
Of all the different takes on French, Quebecois is the furthest from France’s French. It’s not even the colloquialisms, it’s the pronunciation. If you 're trying to learn English, I dont think immersing yourself in Scottish culture or its specific pronunciation of English is going to help you a lot.
OTOH, there are French Karaoke DVDs, but if they’re too hard to find, I can understand going for QC ones.
That’s your opinion, but I don’t know how you came to it. There are African dialects of French that sound very different from both France French and Quebec French, and to me much more different than one is from the other. What is your actual exposure to Quebec French? Have you heard Quebec television, or Quebec music?
If you can link to a French karaoke Wii game, I’d be interested to see it.
Yeah, I was aware that Quebecois is pretty different from standard French- I should have specified that in my “How much French Lyric music is listened to in Quebec anyway?” question.
I figure, plenty of British music acts are listened to in America- so, I was wondering what French Language music is listened to in Quebec. Is it mostly the local scene, or is Quebec a solid market for French musicians from France?
It’s the “easier to get for an American user”/NTSC concerns that made me think to look to Quebec. I figured if French (from France) musicians have a fan base in Quebec then they might be well represented on a karaoke Wii game.
Hmmm, bummer.
Actually, I thought the whole “English is the language of Rock” thing had been dying out in the past couple decades- particularly as Rock is no longer the dominant pop music- and I thought that it had been dying out in France at a faster rate than other countries.
In particular (though I don’t know from experience or my own research) I was under the impression that French language pop and rap was on the rise in European markets.
My Thread title is now probably pretty limiting for what we’re discussing in the Thread, but the discussion is going along pretty nicely- and the whole scope of the topic is viewable in the mouse-over, so seems we’re good.
I’m part French part African, spent some of my teen years in Africa, got a lot of family in North Africa. I think I have been exposed to a wild variety of French variations but to tell the truth I wouldnt need all of that to consider Quebecois as being rather unique among those variations, and most Frenches would hold the same views. Especially regarding its colloquialisms. Most of the French spoken in former French colonies is based on XIX th century French for the very earliest, Quebecois French sounds like what it is , that is more like the early XVIIIth century version of it (when the whole of the country was speaking more in dialects than in “proper” French) with a lot of regional dialects thrown in, and then growing up in a mostly Anglo environment. It definitely is one of the hardest takes to understand for an average French.
There are quite a lot of Quebecois entertainers in France (hey, it’s a bigger market than Quebec). Dont worry, France is seriously exposed to Quebecois and their culture.
Now, for th actual OP:
yes, big names from France’s musical scene have DVDs, I guess some must have karaoke DVDs (I guess both Johnny Halliday [sic] and Michel Sardou would be the biggest providers). I also think that you should be able to find those through QC importers (or even shops catering to a French audience in the States, there’s bound to be some). Now, for the zoning itself, I dont know how Quebecois actually do, as they’re in zone 1, but are also consumers of zone 2. So maybe there’s a conversion market in QC for this.
OTOH there are Quebecois artists who have karaoke DVDs and might fit your request (that is they sing in some kind of compromise between QC’s French and France’s French. I’m thinking people like Garou for example. Or Natasha St Pierre [I know, she’s Acadian]). Now all the artists I’ve mentioned so far are quite shitty for my tastes and I’m not sure a teen girl would find them compelling, but to learn some popular French songs, they’d do the job. If anything I’d think QCs might be more susceptible to have karaoke DVDs on Wii than Frenches, if you really want your DVD to be only in this format.
I wouldnt necessarily go digging for French rap, while it was quite unique in the nineties with groups like I.A.M. or NTM, it has seriously dived in the last decade in quality. Basically it’s just French versions of US rap now, with every band or rapper trying to put its own unique spin (translate: completely inintelligible pronunciation) on it. I dont think this will help the girl in mastering French any better.
There is pop/rock music in many different languages, that’s for sure, and yes, its popularity in some countries challenges or surpasses English-language pop/rock. What I wonder is if it made its way into karaoke home console games. It seems to me that most video games are aimed at a worldwide audience.
Or are karaoke games easier and cheaper to produce than other games? Capitaine Zombie’s posts seem to imply so. Is it just a matter of making a DVD with a lyric-less sound track and a video track with printed lyrics, and putting that in the Wii?
Quebec has a solid local music scene, some of it is exported in other French-speaking countries/the rest of the world, but most famous French and francophone Belgian musicians will also be known and listened to here.
Well I can’t dispute your opinion, but let me suggest that you’re comparing informal Quebec French with formal (or at least “internationalised”) France or African French. If you listen to teenagers in the suburbs of any good French city, I’d wager that you’d find as many unique colloquialisms as what you hear in Quebec French. You just don’t think of that as “France French”. While if you listen to a Quebec television news program, you’ll find it adheres quite closely to “international” French.
Music can be a somewhat formalised type of speech, so depending on what you’re looking for you may find French-language music from several different countries that doesn’t use much in the way of colloquialisms.
In terms of DVD regions, Canada is in region 1. If I want to rent or buy a French movie (for example) it is a region 1 copy. There is no conversion industry that I know of, and I suppose that small, low budget movies that had no wide release might be hard to get a hold of.
Moved to The Game Room from Cafe Society.