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How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

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Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#351

Post by Tade0 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #347
n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #318

Hello, I'm a french (non Parisian) reader, and was very surprised by the comments I read. More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians". I really don't feel it this way and am so surprised. I don't have more to add since I really never thought about this. Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the proces…

In the EU, especially EU administration, we have evolved a Euro-English dialect. It is mostly English, but with some typical European (French, German, Italian and Greek mostly) pronounciations and phrasings. Btw, Whisper has no trouble transcribing Euro-English, even with thick accents and very fast (Italian) delivery.

Makes me wonder if the word "ananas" and 24h time was already incorporated to it.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#352

Post by kubanczyk »

eloisant wrote: post #324
dudul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French people always get criticized for not understanding foreigners' broken French. It is not out of malice. It is because it actually is very hard to understand broken French. A lot of very different words sound similar. A very simple grammatical mistake can completely change the meaning of a sentence. And yeah, it's probably kind of the same in English, but French is not the linga franca English is today (see what…

The first time I went to US, I was pretty confident in my English but natives didn't understand me. I could repeat the same, grammatically correct sentence 3 times and they still wouldn't get it. Then I realized that in English (especially American English) you have to accentuate the right syllabus or they won't understand you. Say you're going to "mounTAIN view" instead of "MOUNtain view" and they have no idea what…

True, but aren't you primarily talking here about vowel length? As a language feature it's more pronounced than accent/stress.

/ˈmaʊntɪn/ MOUNtain

/mɒn'taɪn/ mounTAIN (?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#353

Post by kbrkbr »

n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #318

Hello, I'm a french (non Parisian) reader, and was very surprised by the comments I read. More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians". I really don't feel it this way and am so surprised. I don't have more to add since I really never thought about this. Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the proces…

> "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians"

I don't judge if this is right or wrong, but I lived in south west of Germany for a while, where they teach French starting in primary school. Among the people there this is a common concept.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#354

Post by 4ggr0 »

Bayart wrote: post #339
carlmr wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec French is very different though. It's like Swiss German and German, the Swiss understand the Germans, but not the other way around. It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.

Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.

As a Swiss who's mother tongue is swiss-german, but also talks french, AND has a French-Canadian co-worker - Disagree.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#355

Post by achenet »

saiya-jin wrote: post #71
dudul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French people always get criticized for not understanding foreigners' broken French. It is not out of malice. It is because it actually is very hard to understand broken French. A lot of very different words sound similar. A very simple grammatical mistake can completely change the meaning of a sentence. And yeah, it's probably kind of the same in English, but French is not the linga franca English is today (see what…

I interact with french in France for some 13 years, spending most weekends there (Chamonix! but all over the place from east to west to south, not much north yet). First of all, french is not some beautiful language once you grok the grammar, rather pretty weird and old layered 'spaghetti code' with tons of exceptions to tons of obscure rules (nothing, absolutely nothing elegant there). Its needlessly complex especia…

I often say the French is the C++ of natural languages.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#356

Post by BSDobelix »

Bayart wrote: post #339
carlmr wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec French is very different though. It's like Swiss German and German, the Swiss understand the Germans, but not the other way around. It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.

Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.

>Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages

Not a different language but a dialect-group within high german called Alemanic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German

Also interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#357

Post by n0n0n4t0r »

alejoar wrote: post #337
n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #318

Hello, I'm a french (non Parisian) reader, and was very surprised by the comments I read. More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians". I really don't feel it this way and am so surprised. I don't have more to add since I really never thought about this. Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the proces…

> Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the process of becoming fluent: native speakers are the hardest to understand for me. The easiest being the french, but surprisingly, a strong Italian or Moroccan accent isn't stopping me at all. Interesting. I am not a native speaker either but I usually find french people the hardest to understand when speaking English. East coast Ame…

I think this is because french being my native language, hearing this accent on spoken English kind of fall in my ears naturally.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#358

Post by CTDOCodebases »

n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #318

Hello, I'm a french (non Parisian) reader, and was very surprised by the comments I read. More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians". I really don't feel it this way and am so surprised. I don't have more to add since I really never thought about this. Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the proces…

> I have more trouble understanding Indian, Australian than Americans, but it may be due that I watch a lot of American made content and am more used to their accent.

As an Australian who has lived in Europe you are not alone. I had to change the way I talked in order for non native english speakers to understand what I was saying. Australians tend to cut the end of the words off and mix vowel sounds e.g "dinner" gets pronouced as din-na.

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#359

Post by n0n0n4t0r »

kbrkbr wrote: post #353
n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #318

Hello, I'm a french (non Parisian) reader, and was very surprised by the comments I read. More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians". I really don't feel it this way and am so surprised. I don't have more to add since I really never thought about this. Speaking of English: I work in an international company since one year and am I the proces…

> "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians" I don't judge if this is right or wrong, but I lived in south west of Germany for a while, where they teach French starting in primary school. Among the people there this is a common concept.

Yes, reading from all the comments here, this seems like a fact!

I'll have my own introspection in order to try to detect/avoid such a behavior if I do have it!

Re: How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

#360

Post by achenet »

Cyph0n wrote: post #106
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To non french readers: le gorafi is the french equivalent of the onion :)

And it seems to be a play on one of the largest French newspapers, Le Figaro (think: WaPo of France).

le Figaro would be more like the Wall Street Journal, it's right wing.

Le Monde is more leftwing, maybe NYT, and WaPo would be like Liberation (very left)

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