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French Dialects | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6003 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 1 of 15 09 December 2010 at 5:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard quite a bit of French being spoken, the vast majority with the standard Parisian accent, some with a Quebecois accent, and less with some sort of African accent (and I don't think I've ever been aware of a Southern French accent, if I've even heard it), and I think my favorite is actually the little African French I've heard. I don't remember what countries the African French speakers I've heard were from, but retrospectively their accents seemed more or less similar. Can anyone explain the differences in French accents, especially any coming from Africa, and/or does anyone have any resources for nonstandard French?
How do other accents of French sound to native French speakers? To me, Parisian French sounds dignified and very flowing, Quebecois sounds somewhat twangy, and African French (which is probably an awful generalization) sounds more clear and articulated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FrostBlast Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5099 days ago 168 posts - 254 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 15 09 December 2010 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Being québécois myself, I can say that the parisian accent (which is, here, sometimes erroneously generalized as being the overall-France accent) has, in Québec, a reputation for sounding obnoxious, know-it-all, self-important, etc.
As for Québec accent, it's not Québec accent (singular), it's Québec accentS (plural). There's quite a wide range of accent all over the province of Québec. Some of them take pretty deep roots in English vocabulary (I'm thinking about the term « botaouèle » used by some people in the back-water Côte-Nord region, which refers to a sail-boat; botaouèle, bot = boat, aouèle = à voile, the right french word being bateau-à-voile, litterally, boat-with-a-sail). Some of those accents can be pretty hard to understand even for someone who lives somewhere else in Québec than where such a thick accent is found, let alone for foreigners... Edited by FrostBlast on 09 December 2010 at 6:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Desacrator48 Groupie United States Joined 5308 days ago 93 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 3 of 15 09 December 2010 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm curious, is that classification of the Parisian accent based solely on how it sounds, or perhaps thats just the general view of Parisians in general? That's basically the same thing I've heard Latin Americans say about the Castillian accent, that it "sounds" obnoxious, self-important, etc. Now I'm just wondering if that's just a tendency by all former colonies to see all their once colonialists' qualities (including their accent) as know-it-all, self important. Funny because I have a 3rd example to prove this theory in that Americans sometimes think the London, BBC accent can sound know-it-all and self-important. Maybe we just can't separate an accent objectively from the person who is speaking it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FrostBlast Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5099 days ago 168 posts - 254 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 15 09 December 2010 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't know which came first - chicken or the egg - but both are definitely linked in a lot a of people's mind. France accent = obnoxious and know-it-all. That about the colonies : it does make sense. But as for the cause of this, I can testify that France tends to treat us Québécois with varying degrees of condescension. I know a lot of French people have next to no clue how the Québecois society is, but our accent does tend to make us "cutesy" and all, if you see what I mean. Some French artists have been known to say things about the Québécois accent like "oh come on, we don't speak like that since the 18th century." That doesn't quite help the situation, even if it was said for shock value on French television and not meant seriously. On the other hand, a fairly significant number of Québécois artists capitalize on this feeling of exoticism to sell themselves in France, not unlike french-speaking africans. But then, French people from Paris tend to look down on the Ch'ti as well, French people from the northern regions of France - and the Ch'ti happen to also have a pretty thick accent, extremely different from the Parisian one and actually similar to the Québécois accent in some respects - phonetically, I mean. In the end, I guess it's all just a matter of two historically related societies not being able to really understand each another and relying of false perceptions and deformed ideas to judge each other. Nothing all that surprising. Edited by FrostBlast on 09 December 2010 at 10:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6003 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 5 of 15 13 December 2010 at 5:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, and let's not forget the Cajuns! Has anyone heard Cajun French? Is it even mutually intelligible?
There's some seemingly paradoxical things about languages left over from colonialism, they seem to preserve archaic pronunciations and sometimes grammar (Icelandic definitely did), but also get simplified through language contact (Afrikaans), and seem to view the new accent of the European version of the language as uppity, even though you would expect archaic pronunciations to sound more uppity. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5495 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 6 of 15 13 December 2010 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know much about Cajun French, other than that it comes from Acadian French. See
the Expulsion of the Acadians to find out why. Acadian French is spoken in the Canadian Maritime provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island), the Magdalen Islands and some of the St. Lawrence north shore region of Quebec, and northern Maine, USA. Some of my friends speak it, usually it's easy to follow, although sometimes I get lost. They tell me that French speakers from France and even those from Quebec sometimes don't fully understand them. It's not surprising since a different accent + unique expressions and vocabulary + lots of English words is a really confusing mix! On the other hand, I've been told that people from the western regions of France where most of the Acadians originate, can in fact understand it quite well. There is also an unrelated Newfoundland French, which is closely related to Breton and Norman French, but I've read that it is in steep decline. Edit: I tried to fix the text, but the links give it a funny format. Edited by canada38 on 13 December 2010 at 12:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5130 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 15 13 December 2010 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I think we North Americans - and I'm including Mexico and Canada in this - tend to place a lot of importance on our heritage. How many times do we hear people say "I'm half Irish, quarter German, 1/8 French, 1/16 Italian and 1/16 Cherokee" or some such nonsense? I think what you perceive as condescension is more a general feeling of not caring. During my time in Spain I heard many transplanted Mexicans say that Spaniards can't stand them. It's almost universally from those that most loudly claim their Spanish heritage. And if I were in a pub somewhere in London, proudly claiming my English ancestry, I'd probably get the same treatment. I may have English ancestry, but I'm not one bit English. Just my observation. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 13 December 2010 at 4:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tornus Diglot GroupieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5143 days ago 82 posts - 113 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Danish | Message 8 of 15 13 December 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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french has a large variety of accent indeed and each of the main area includes its own differents accents . The main are those from quebec, parisian, african and belgium.
i personally find hard to understand quebecois sometimes concerning france, there are : - common french (in fact the parisian accent is a bit different from the rest of france) - ch'ti and picard (spoken in the north of france, close to belgium accent, it's both an accent and a dialect) - alsacien ( alsace is the region close to Germany, so people from these are spoke with a huge German accent, and really slowly ) - marseillais ( with g at the end of each word ) - corse mine accent is a mixture between ch'ti and parisian, people often notice it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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