Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 502 posts

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

#461

Post by [deleted] »

pyeri wrote: post #405
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…

Indian English has to be one of the easiest accent/dialect to understand. The way we speak isn't much different than how a Spanish, French or Italian would speak English, a bit slowly and trying to emphasize each consonant as we want to get it right.

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by chikitabanana »

frosting1337 wrote: post #85
sesuximo wrote: post #41

This seems completely unsurprising? Subcultures have their own slang, and some of it is spreading? That’s true in French/English/anything

I don't think anyone is surprised half a continent speaking French has its own twist on the language. But it is interesting to read about, especially the impact that hip-hop and rap in these countries have had on the dialects, such as calling your boyfriend bread.

probably petit copain -> pain, ouais?

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

#463

Post by acjohnson55 »

twixfel wrote: post #427
acjohnson55 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By complex, I assume you mean highly irregular?

I think I was being vague in my terminology. I wanted to say more broadly that German verbs are generally simpler than English ones because there are fewer tenses and aspects. There are however a greater number of strong verbs in German than in English.

I'm not familiar enough with German to evaluate. But when I think of Spanish, you've got 6 conjugations for every tense, and a whole bunch of different tenses. That makes for many dozens of different inflections, just for verbs.

English, by contrast, only has 8 regular inflections, across all parts of speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection#Examples_in_English

English does have a rich ecosystem of compound verbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_verb), but if this is taken to be part of the complexity of English verbs, I don't know how this stacks up to other languages.

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

#464

Post by akavi »

pyeri wrote: post #405
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…

Indian English has to be one of the easiest accent/dialect to understand. The way we speak isn't much different than how a Spanish, French or Italian would speak English, a bit slowly and trying to emphasize each consonant as we want to get it right.

Pro-tip for everyone reading these comments: The "easiest", "clearest", "most neutral" accent is generally the one you're exposed to the most often (or the one spoken as a 2nd language by speakers of the language you're exposed to most often)

There is no universal metric of what makes one accent easier to understand than another.

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

#465

Post by woopwoop24 »

ecef9-8c0f-4374 wrote: post #438
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 work at an international English speaking company. We all speak English. I even talk to my colleges in the office English and we are not from/in an English speaking country. Then there is our French site in Paris. You write them a mail in English, they will answer in French. You chat them up in English they will answer in French. They will hijack a group chat with +4000 people and just start writing in French. no f…

same experience, absolute ignorance, very annoying

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

#466

Post by csdvrx »

thriftwy wrote: post #330
csdvrx wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Лига Опасного Интернета was nice but Morgenshtern caught my eye again with ЧЕРНЫЙ РУССКИЙ (ПОЙДЕТ was boring) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7CIj-_uBk

Recently stumbled on Uratsakidogi https://youtu.be/QcyEZOLn1rw?si=ZFYJzR600IuY9qD5

Not bad, but it's more metal to me (including roars at 4:14)

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

#467

Post by red-iron-pine »

davidguetta wrote: post #419
nicbou wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised. I'm from Quebec. I am more comfortable speaking English with anyone than I am speaking French around French people. They just can't get over the accent, like I'm some sort of curiosity at the zoo. There are so many YouTube videos of French people mocking us. It's not curiosity but a distinctly French superiority complex. My friends who learned French had similar struggles in France versus elsewhere…

I'm french and I think you are mistaking several things: - Mocking Quebec accent is not 'superiority': it just happens that your accent kind of sounds funny for some reason that I have no other reality behind, probably some specific sounds bites make it 'funny'. I've always thought it's in good fun and certainly not disparaging. All french people I've met including myself have stellar opinion of people from quebec (e…

I live in Canada, and the folks I know who live in France (direct blood relatives) have mentioned that Quebec French sounds like a weird mix of Russian and Valley Girl, with a few weird terms mixed in.

The English equivalent would be something like a deep Northern England accent which sounds goofy to my N. American ears.

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

#468

Post by mjan22640 »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #358
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" get…

Thats a common misconception among non native speakers, that the letters in the written form have some relation to how the word is pronounced.

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

#469

Post by thierrydamiba »

csdvrx wrote: post #35
thierrydamiba wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, did not expect to see a Magic System fan when I opened up HN today. I was living in the Ivory Coast when Premier Gauo came out. I love their music and it brought back some good memories. Thank you!

If you have some current hits you can recommend, I'd love to get recommendations from another Magic System fan! In return I can suggest artists like Slava Marlow, or places like zaycev.net to get a nice curated experience without involving youtube: just click on the play button at the bottom of the screen: currently I'm listening to Subbota (Дым бомбим)

I havent listened to French music ever since I moved to the states, so unfortunately I don’t have any tunes to share. I’ll have to give your recommendations a listen. Thanks for sharing!

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

#470

Post by thierrydamiba »

seszett wrote: post #73
thierrydamiba wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, did not expect to see a Magic System fan when I opened up HN today. I was living in the Ivory Coast when Premier Gauo came out. I love their music and it brought back some good memories. Thank you!

> Woah, did not expect to see a Magic System fan when I opened up HN today. Maybe "fan" is a bit too strong but I'd say any French speaking person, at least in France and Belgium, growing up in the 90/2000s, knows Premier Gaou and can sing a bit of it. It was very popular.

Interesting, I didn’t realize the song spread to France! We used to listen to a lot of I Am. I guess the world was more connected even back then than I realized.
Post reply on HN