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Are there French regional accents ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 17 17 September 2010 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I have recently revived my knowledge of French by following some excellent advice I received on this very forum to follow a basic course and it will all come (flooding) back. My first French output in some 25 years was with a cabin attendant on a business trip, she complimented me on my French but commented that my accent was Breton.
I was always taught that French was French and there were no regional accents - but my teacher came from Guernsey and I spent several summers in Brittany. Are there regional accents in European French/Canadian French ? Please don't let this degenerate into a 'xxx accent is better than yyy' argument. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 17 17 September 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Within France, most of the accent is standardized. Yes, people from the south may have a
slight accent, but they typically try to suppress that. However, Belgian French and Swiss French are definitely very different from the France-French accent, and the same can be said for Canadian, North African, Sub-Saharan African, Oceanian and other regional varieties of French. Also, within Quebec, accent differences are bigger than within France. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 3 of 17 17 September 2010 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Sprachprofi, I am not sure how she worked out the 'Breton thing' but that is where I first started producing french in real life and for native consumption. I might just look into that when I have my German back on track, in about 8 weeks!
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| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7104 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 17 17 September 2010 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes there are regional differences. If you look at the website La Guinguette, they've got a really good set of articles + audio on this. The last one available is on the homepage, others are in the archives.
Another (somewhat dated) but still useful resource is this website: Les Accents de France 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 5 of 17 17 September 2010 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dated is good: matches my 80's slang!
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 17 17 September 2010 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Accents in most countries are levelling out, thanks to TV.
My French tutor has a very strong Breton accent (even to the point of using ingressives!) and some people in the south have accents that sound quite "hard" to me. The PC game La Petite Grande Aventure of the late 90s had a very southern cast for the voiceovers, with heavily rolled Rs, like Italian or Spanish, instead of the northern German-like guttural Rs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 7 of 17 17 September 2010 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do you adopt the Breton accent of your tutor or because of your self training in linguistics/phonetics follow a classic/neutral French accent?
I just followed the speech pattern of my teenage exchange partners sister (go figure.... wrong answer ! unfortunately :-( )though to me it sounds like Breton accent and Lancashire/NW England are not a million miles apart in vowel sounds: what do you think? However I have a definite Neapolitan accent in Italian but a house in Liguria. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 17 17 September 2010 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I beg to differ, Sprachprofil, when you say that accent differences are bigger in Quebec than in France. What exactly do you mean by that? What accents are you talking about? The population of Quebec is about 1/10th that of France and nearly half the population lives within the agglomeration of Montreal. Of course, there are regional differences, especially in rural areas and among the less educated, but within the major cities and among the educated there is a trend to standardization. In a city like Montreal, the differences in accent are definitely along social class lines which tend to correspond to areas of the city. But the geographic foundations are shifting as the sociological make-up of certain neighbourhoods changes. Where France is concerned, what we know is that the extreme centralization of power and prestige in the city of Paris has produced a form of standardization of pronunciation especially in the spoken media and in education. So, all French television, movie and stage actors tend to sound alike. The same could be said of the graduates of the Grandes Écoles and, to a slightly lesser extent, of the universities. If you judge only by the movies, you would think that all French people sound the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are major class differences that are quite audible in Paris and particularly in the suburbs with large immigrant populations. And, of course, if you go south to cities like Marseille and Toulouse, the local accents are quite noticeable. I don't understand how one can say that people from the south of France try to suppress their accent. What is true is that education, radio, television and migratory movements have contributed to the attenuation of major dialect differences. I wouldn't say that people are trying to suppress their accent. I think simply that the accents are evolving in the same direction. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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