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

How good is your French accent?

frenchmeter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 183 posts

Re: How good is your French accent?

#31

Post by teekert »

joeblau wrote: post #27

Funny Story: I was traveling from Portugal back to the U.S. through Charles de Gaulle Airport and my Dad gave me 4 Euros. I went to this little bakery and the man behind the counter asked me what I wanted in French. I mustered up as much throat as I possibly could and said croissant which was apparently good enough for him to go off on this long answer to what I ordered. I looked at him blankly and said "Sorry man, t…

The French are very proud and protective of their language. I have a similar experience, I was asking Je cherche le croissants (or something: I'm looking for croissants), I got a blank stare until my friend made a very theatrical overly french "Croissants!" hand waving and all, then the supermarket guy understood. I know of no other language that invented new words when computers came to the market (ordinateur) or when RNA splicing was discovered (Épissage). French will be spoken long after Dutch completely Englifies.

Re: How good is your French accent?

#32

Post by AdamSC1 »

Really great concept - I feel the UI needs some work, there were a lot of times where it showed an "x" and didnt give me a score - I assume this means its having trouble hearing me. Some sort of distance or volume indicator would be great.

As a Canadian I'm a bit surprised though as all the words it was able to detect I got 100% scores - I know a lot of the Quebecois french pronunciations we learn in Canada are very different than French from France so it'd be interesting to hear how that is taken into account.

I really hope they keep going on this project as mastering accents is one of the largest gaps right now in online language learning and market leaders either lack the feature all together (like Duolingo) or do a rubbish job of it and charge a fortune (like Rosetta Stone).

Re: How good is your French accent?

#33

Post by mgbmtl »

rconti wrote: post #26
morinted wrote: post #2

Any love for the difference between French and Quebec?

I used to have TV6 Monde here in California back when I had cable. The Quebecois programming was inevitably subtitled in (real) French, which was an endless source of humor for me.

Well it's similar to US and UK English. c.f. how confused people in the US can be when they hear UK English for the first time if they were not exposed to it when growing up.

On the other hand, while Quebec French has its regional expressions (as do most US, UK and French regions), it's fascinating how the language and accent has changed in 30-40 years only.

This archive video from 1963 church-era is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HjSfZWI-ZA -- Radio-Canada interviewing a bunch of people at the municipal pool asking them about short shorts. Lots of different accents.

Re: How good is your French accent?

#34

Post by zero_iq »

teekert wrote: post #31
joeblau wrote: post #27

Funny Story: I was traveling from Portugal back to the U.S. through Charles de Gaulle Airport and my Dad gave me 4 Euros. I went to this little bakery and the man behind the counter asked me what I wanted in French. I mustered up as much throat as I possibly could and said croissant which was apparently good enough for him to go off on this long answer to what I ordered. I looked at him blankly and said "Sorry man, t…

The French are very proud and protective of their language. I have a similar experience, I was asking Je cherche le croissants (or something: I'm looking for croissants), I got a blank stare until my friend made a very theatrical overly french "Croissants!" hand waving and all, then the supermarket guy understood. I know of no other language that invented new words when computers came to the market (ordinateur) or wh…

I studied computer science in Wales in the 90s. Although the lectures were all in English, we had the option of taking our exams in Welsh. (University Policy was that everything must be bilingual, even hand-written student posters on bulleting boards. There was a free full-time translation service in the student union.)

This was especially odd because a lot of the Welsh terms for computing subjects were invented and/or standardised after we took the classes, and different colleges were using different terms for the same concepts.

Needless to say, nobody did the exams in Welsh.

(The only Welsh most of us learned was just enough to fake our way into Clwb Ifor Bach, the welsh-speakers' bar/nightclub!)

Re: How good is your French accent?

#35

Post by funkaster »

Funny, maybe cute, but not very useful if you're actually trying to learn a new language.

Having "perfect" accent is pointless. When learning a new language you should aim for learning grammar, understanding basic pronunciation, but not "speaking with native accent". That's pointless, unless you're a spy[1] (Look the answer to "Q: Is it possible to acquire a language to a "native" level?").

[1]: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article.php?id=517093

Re: How good is your French accent?

#36

Post by notalaser »

teekert wrote: post #31
joeblau wrote: post #27

Funny Story: I was traveling from Portugal back to the U.S. through Charles de Gaulle Airport and my Dad gave me 4 Euros. I went to this little bakery and the man behind the counter asked me what I wanted in French. I mustered up as much throat as I possibly could and said croissant which was apparently good enough for him to go off on this long answer to what I ordered. I looked at him blankly and said "Sorry man, t…

The French are very proud and protective of their language. I have a similar experience, I was asking Je cherche le croissants (or something: I'm looking for croissants), I got a blank stare until my friend made a very theatrical overly french "Croissants!" hand waving and all, then the supermarket guy understood. I know of no other language that invented new words when computers came to the market (ordinateur) or wh…

Ordinateur was not invented when computers came to the market. It was coined in its modern sense of computing machine, not by Proud French People Who Liked Their Language but by IBM France, because they felt that "calculateur" (French for -- whaddya know! -- "something that computes", a literal equivalent for "computer") was too restrictive. In the 1950s, when that happened, "ordinateur" had been in use for a very long time. I don't know how common it was (I'm not a native French speaker), but it's certainly not a word they made up on the spot (it's of very obvious Latin origin), and they don't use it because they don't have a more appropriate word for "computer" (which they do -- "calculateur", which they deemed inappropriate because a "calculateur" could do a lot more than "calculer"; just like, indeed, a "computer" could do a lot more than "compute").

Many European languages had a local equivalent for "computer" long before electronic computers were around, and French is certainly not the only one that kept it.

Re: How good is your French accent?

#38

Post by gerbilly »

zdkl wrote: post #18
panglott wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the first question that came to mind: what dialects does it support? I assume it is standard Parisian French.

"standard"

>standard

Uh huh, whatever that is. Even Paris has more than one accent. (St Denis for example)

It's interesting how pronunciation in France shifted after the revolution.[1]

Before that, everyone from the terroir to the king spoke mostly the same way. It was called the "Bel usage."

When the king said: "La loi c'est moi" it probably came out more like: "La loi c'est moé."

There was a more formal, accent reserved for public speeches, and sermons at church called the: "Grand usage."

After the revolution the new ruling class adopted the "Grand usage" in day to day speech and it became Parisian French.

In Québec, we were cut off from France after the British won the war, so our accent remained closer to the "Bel Usage."

In my linguistics classes it was always drilled into us that no accent is 'better' than any other. However ...

I personally prefer my accent, It is more demotic and earthy, it's the language of my grandmother and my ancestors, not of the village priest or the politician making a speech.

I find it funny how Parisians almost twist themselves in knots to over-pronounce every written letter of every word. It's almost as if it references the _written_ word more than the spoken one.

[1]: http://legoutdufrancais.org/dou-vient-laccent-des-quebecois-...

Re: How good is your French accent?

#39

Post by twright »

Very cool! I've been looking for something like this to improve pronunciation in other languages. The next best thing I have is to change the input language on iOS and try to talk to Siri. One could certainly do the same thing on Android/Google Now, but keep in mind not all voice recognition/synthesis is equal between languages.

Re: How good is your French accent?

#40

Post by pavlov »

teekert wrote: post #31
joeblau wrote: post #27

Funny Story: I was traveling from Portugal back to the U.S. through Charles de Gaulle Airport and my Dad gave me 4 Euros. I went to this little bakery and the man behind the counter asked me what I wanted in French. I mustered up as much throat as I possibly could and said croissant which was apparently good enough for him to go off on this long answer to what I ordered. I looked at him blankly and said "Sorry man, t…

The French are very proud and protective of their language. I have a similar experience, I was asking Je cherche le croissants (or something: I'm looking for croissants), I got a blank stare until my friend made a very theatrical overly french "Croissants!" hand waving and all, then the supermarket guy understood. I know of no other language that invented new words when computers came to the market (ordinateur) or wh…

I know of no other language that invented new words when computers came to the market (ordinateur)

Many European languages have native words for computer. In Swedish it's "dator" (from "datum"), in Finnish "tietokone" (literally "knowledge machine").

The English word "computer" is not a new word, but an old job title reassigned to a machine. It makes sense that other languages might choose a different etymology for an information processing engine.

Post reply on HN