[HN Gopher] Parisian Accent in 1912
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Parisian Accent in 1912
Author : paganel
Score : 275 points
Date : 2021-01-14 11:26 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.franceculture.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.franceculture.fr)
| kome wrote:
| it's me, or it sounds a bit like french swiss accent?
| dirktheman wrote:
| I scored straight A's in french back in school. Then I went to
| work in France, expecting little issues with understanding the
| locals.
|
| Turns out understanding a heavy Auvergnat accent is... difficult!
| I wrestled with the accent a couple of weeks, but after a while
| it 'clicked'. This was pretty much a matter of 'waking up and not
| having to translate it in your mind', a very strange sensation. I
| learned to distinct several accents: Parisian and Marseillais are
| different beasts, and Swiss-french is also different (I totally
| dig their counting system though, septante, huitante et nonante
| makes so much more sense).
|
| Also, I learned that the french in school is nothing like the
| french they speak in France. Sure, you get by and they'll
| understand you, but french relies heavy on vernacular, sayings
| and expressions.
|
| Nowadays people think I'm a Walloon (French-speaking from
| Belgium, while I'm Dutch), which is a great compliment to me!
| martincmartin wrote:
| Have you ever gone to Quebec, or heard that accent?
| dirktheman wrote:
| Never been there, but I met a french-speaking couple from
| Montreal once. I could understand them just fine, but
| couldn't place the accent. It didn't really occur to me
| hearing white people speaking french were from another
| country than France. (My former neighbour was from Congo and
| I was able to converse with him in french although his patois
| was hard to follow).
| younohoo wrote:
| It is said that the Quebec French accent is the same as was
| spoken in France in the 1600's and hasn't changed that much
| over the years whereas the French accent, has. I'm not sure
| if this is true, however.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Redoing counting was the best thing the Swiss may have ever
| done.
| geebee wrote:
| I often watch French language tv shows or movies to keep up my
| language skills. I recently watched "Call my agent." Way better
| than "Versailles" ;)
|
| Thing is, it's very difficult for me to understand. But I
| realized that if I put on CC in French, I can understand it no
| problem, almost as well as if the CC was in English. But
| without the CC, I can't understand it well enough to enjoy the
| show.
|
| This leads me to believe that my difficulty in understanding
| spoken vs written French might not be so much grammar and vocab
| of spoken French, but rather the difficulty of translating
| sounds to words in real time.
|
| I really should leave the CC off entirely, but I want to enjoy
| the show, so for now, my compromise is to watch with CC in
| French. I am almost certainly compromising my language skills
| this way, though.
| robotmay wrote:
| I asked some French friends if there was any good French TV
| that I could watch to learn more, but also enjoy at the same
| time. They started talking amongst themselves and I honestly
| thought they hadn't heard me, until about 5 minutes later
| they turned back and just said: "Non" :D
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Engrenages, le Bureau des Legendes. You will not regret it.
| bertil wrote:
| For an learner who wants to understand, I'd strongly
| recommend _Le petit prince_e and _L'homme qui plantait des
| arbres_. Both about an hour long, beautifully animated,
| adapted verbatim from books that have easy to find
| translations.
|
| Both as meant for children (and adult who think like them)
| so you might feel condescended to -- but both have a very
| simple, classic language, distinctly articulated that makes
| it easier to follow for foreigners.
|
| The stories are wonderful too: about what makes a life
| worthwhile and conservation.
|
| The other recommendation I'd make are:
|
| * audio-books that might not have movie equivalent: the
| accent in _Regain_, by the same Giono as _L'homme qui
| plantait des arbres_ has me to tears;
|
| * any version of Criminal (the UK one was popular but the
| French, German and Spanish one are great too); all have the
| same minimal set and nothing but dialogue (it feels like a
| hilarious and successful exercise in saving money on
| production);
|
| * hopefully _Lupin_: it's brand new, I haven't watched it
| yet but friends say it's great. It seems to have a wide
| variety of contemporary accents, fast paced dialogue so not
| for the early learner.
| jrockway wrote:
| I have that experience with anime. Sometimes Japanese
| subtitles really help.
| antb123 wrote:
| Canadian (anglo) here that went to French immersion (teachers
| were mostly from France). I don't really have an accent which
| sucks. People just think I am a stupid French person who makes
| grammatical mistakes here and there and has a more limited
| vocabulary set.
|
| I am jealous of my American friends who speak with heavy
| accents and receive praise about their mastery.
| soperj wrote:
| As someone who also did French Immersion in Canada, I'm very
| surprised that most of your teachers were from France. Over
| 13 years in school, I think every single teacher I had that
| spoke french was Quebecois, and taught Quebecois.
| cperciva wrote:
| This was my experience too. A few years ago I was at a
| conference in Paris, and I understood every word which the
| people around me said in French... but the people around me
| didn't understand a single word I said in French!
| r00fus wrote:
| While working in France a couple of decades ago, I found that
| I got better service if I botched the accent and stuck to
| basic language (which I was ok at) than if I tried to match
| accent, use l'argot and sound native (which is my tendency)
| and screwed up language.
|
| It was a helluva realization about psychology.
| geebee wrote:
| I know someone who was in that situation. She had a
| remarkable knack for accents (and recreating sounds
| generally) and did pick up French more quickly than I could.
| I wonder if this counts as a kind of "uncanny valley",
| because my experience was exactly what you reported. I spoke
| understandable but accented French, tilted more toward
| written formal French than conversational French (where I was
| much more limited). My friend, on the other hand, just seemed
| like a French person but with a faint speech anomaly and an
| oddly limited vocabulary at times.
|
| It's not surprising that people initially took my version of
| French as an effort to learn a language properly, and hers as
| a sign of cognitive issues or trouble with language. Even
| once someone's aware of it, it won't necessary change the
| fundamental reaction (kind of what taller children go through
| - even when people learn they're much younger, they still
| apparently have trouble applying the standards they normally
| would for younger children).
|
| Not sure what else to say about this, other than that I've
| seen it exactly was you describe (though not quite with the
| "heavy" accent, more of a moderate but immediately noticeable
| one).
| watermelon59 wrote:
| > My friend, on the other hand, just seemed like a French
| person but with a faint speech anomaly and an oddly limited
| vocabulary at times.
|
| Damn, now I wonder if that's how I come off when speaking
| English.
|
| I'm from South America and have been living in the US for
| the last 8 years. But even before that, I always really
| liked English and as a kid worked really hard to emulate
| the way I heard it spoken in American TV shows.
|
| The way I speak has been described as, "pretty much no
| accent, but you don't sound like you're from anywhere in
| particular." Other immigrants sometimes think I'm American,
| but most people say I sound like someone who speaks English
| as their first language, but they aren't be able to tell
| which country I could be from.
|
| Maybe I should just have a bit more of a foreign accent,
| after all :D
| f430 wrote:
| They teach us Quebecois accent which is sort of like the
| Texan/Southern dialect. It's associated with negative
| stereotypes.
|
| On one call I recall a team from Paris snickering as my
| Quebecois co-worker spoke who was confused and embarrassed.
|
| _Heureusement, mon professeur etait parisien._
| soperj wrote:
| That's it in a nutshell though, would in the US/Canada
| actually snicker because someone was talking with a Texan
| accent? It's a bit ridiculous.
| [deleted]
| jedimastert wrote:
| > I don't really have an accent which sucks. People just
| think I am a stupid French person who makes grammatical
| mistakes here and there and has a more limited vocabulary
| set.
|
| I recently stumbled across a French/English comedy special
| which has a bit specifically about this, and how much French
| people judge other French people's French.
|
| I have absolutely zero experience with French and I still
| found most of the clips entertaining
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIqVY1SwXls
| antb123 wrote:
| Thanks ! Hilarious. Its true French are super judgmental
| about French (not Quebecois so much). Amusingly African
| French are exactly the same or worse then Europeans.
|
| I had a girlfriend who did exactly the same as his wife.
| ftio wrote:
| In this boat with my Italian. Northerners think I'm from the
| South. Southerners think I'm from Rome. Imagine their
| surprise when I tell them I'm from another Italy... Staten
| Italy.
| davidw wrote:
| Hah, I had this happen when doing some work in Rome. The
| CEO of the startup remarked that I had a heavy American
| accent, which... I was a bit taken aback by, because I
| rarely hear that, and I work hard to speak Italian well.
| Later, he heard me speaking with another guy at the company
| who was from near where I lived in Padova, and it dawned on
| him (I don't think he was the sharpest tool in the shed)
| that my accent was more 'Veneto' than American.
| GEBBL wrote:
| Is that in staten island?
| ftio wrote:
| Staten Island == Staten Italy
|
| Staten Island has a very large population of Italian-
| Americans. Italian-American culture pervades many facets
| of Staten Island life and culture, even among non-
| Italians -- so much so that many residents (and former
| residents like me) sometimes jokingly refer to it as
| Staten Italy.
| idoubtit wrote:
| > french relies heavy on vernacular, sayings and expressions.
|
| It's more than that. There's a growing divergence between the
| spoken French and the written French.
|
| Ou irions-nous ? Nous hesitames... (written French)
|
| On allait ou ? On a hesite... (spoken French)
|
| Writings from the XVIIth century bare little difference to most
| modern novels. Of course, some words have evolved (e.g.
| "caresser" was akin to "praise", now it's more like "pet" or
| "fondle") but the grammar and the vocabulary is mostly
| identical.
|
| Centuries ago, the langage spoken was already different from
| what was written. I think the main difference was that there
| were many local variations, like shown in the Littre dictionary
| (1870s). The uniformization came with WWI, then the modern
| communication.
| dirktheman wrote:
| Yes, they don't teach you the "on a...", "faire le truc
| avec...", "ouais" and "ca marche" at school, altough everyone
| uses this. I just wish schools would prepare you a little
| better for the difference between writing and speaking. My
| daughter learned to say "chouette, c'est jolie!" in her
| french class, which is preposterous and almost akin to saying
| 'Jolly gay, old chap!' in English today.
| pmezard wrote:
| > My daughter learned to say "chouette, c'est joli !" in
| her french class, which is preposterous and almost akin to
| saying 'Jolly gay, old chap!' in English today.
|
| Don't be so harsh. I would not be surprised to hear a child
| (~6/8 years old) say that, assuming some kind of
| polite/policed family background.
|
| > Yes, they don't teach you the "on a...", "faire le truc
| avec...", "ouais" and "ca marche"
|
| Imagine us watching Stringer Bell from "The Wire" for the
| first time. Or listening to pop or rap. Or chatting with
| native speakers.
|
| We just have more exposure.
| [deleted]
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Not sure if you are a wine drinker, but the natural wines
| coming out of Auvergne are absolutely delicious!
|
| Some of the most interesting wines in the world IMO.
| mistahenry wrote:
| I'm an American living in Germany and I'm always thrilled when
| Germans think I'm Dutch after hearing my German ;)
|
| As for the accents, I had a similar experience when moving
| around from Berlin to Munich to Mainz with regard to the
| "clicking". It's like my brain suddenly recalibrated to
| understand the vowel and consonant changes in the accent (and
| particularly in certain areas the parts of the words that
| simply were dropped off the beginning/end of the word).
|
| People often tell me "Wow, I wish I was good at languages like
| you" and I honestly want them to understand how I feel: I
| didn't learn German, I simply spent enough time in the language
| for my brain to catch up and learn it for me.
| dep_b wrote:
| Because you sound like the guy who dubbed Goldeneye to them!
|
| (JK ;) )
| brnt wrote:
| What's interesting and weird to me: both Dutch and French
| speakers from Belgium (so, Flemish and Walloon people) often
| sound like they have the same accent when speaking English! To
| me at least. Anybody else noticed this?
| dep_b wrote:
| French R and soft G are shared among other things between the
| French and people from the South of Holland and below.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| And Flemish people have a totally different accent when
| speaking English than Dutch people. TO my ears most Dutch
| people have a distinct English accent; some more than others,
| but almost always identifiable as from Dutch origin.
|
| Walter Lewin (as in e.g. https://youtu.be/sJG-rXBbmCc) is a
| quite extreme example, despite the fact that he has lived in
| the US since 1966. Carice van Houten (Melisandre in Game of
| Thrones) has it too but less pronounced.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Flemish people have a
| distinct English accent too, and that I simply don't notice
| it as much (being Flemish myself).
|
| Germans speaking English are often recognizable as well.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Flemish people have
| a distinct English accent too
|
| Yes! One thing I sometimes notice is that, in Flemish we
| pronounce "wat is" as "wadis", and sometimes Flemish people
| in English will also say "Whad is". So Flemish people end
| up saying "Whad is dat?" instead of "What is that?". (Also
| lots of "eh?"s and the occasional "allez" pop up.)
| ilamont wrote:
| Godfather was Walloon, ex-roommate was Flemish. Very
| different accents when speaking English - my godfather
| sounded like a French person, the Flemish roommate could be
| mistaken for a Scandinavian ... also notable that he sounded
| nothing like a Dutch person, who in my experience have very
| good British or North American "clean" accents.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| As a Flemish person, I wouldn't say Flemish and Walloon have
| the same accent in English, but I guess I'm not the one to
| judge. What is funny though, is that _in English_, you can
| sometimes detect different Flemish accents, i.e. when someone
| is speaking in English, I can tell whether they're from West-
| Flanders, from Antwerp, or from Limburg (in the east of
| Flanders). Their typical Flemish accent seeps through in
| their English. Also, the Dutch have the same accent in
| English as they do in Dutch (compared to the Flemish variant
| of Dutch).
| hobby-coder-guy wrote:
| Ninety-nine makes a lot more sense than four-twenty-ten-nine.
| chrisandchips wrote:
| > Also, I learned that the french in school is nothing like the
| french they speak in France. Sure, you get by and they'll
| understand you, but french relies heavy on vernacular, sayings
| and expressions.
|
| Virtually everyone who learns a language in school as you
| described will feel this way when they encounter native
| speakers in the target language's country(s) of origin.
|
| The reality of school teaching is that it enforces prescriptive
| snapshots of the language. It teaches the grammatical "rules"
| of a language at a moment in time, but these rules are always
| changing. Common English has changed a lot since 1800; consider
| how different an English class in 1800s might be from one now,
| though they are both valid in being called English classes. The
| classes continue exist, but they are often lingering behind the
| real deal.
|
| Language is developed naturally by our minds, and its inner
| workings are still largely unknown to us. The best way to learn
| it is by actual exposure to it, as it is meant to be used. You
| are always going to be removed from this reality if you are
| sitting in a classroom with minimal direct exposure.
| f430 wrote:
| I can literally hear La pizza song [1] in my head as I read
| your comment which is pretty much all I remember from
| elementary school. It was only in my final year of high
| school that our teacher who was from Paris really pushed us
| and it didn't involve us singing awkward songs.
|
| Now I have PTSD everytime I see or eat pizza, the song plays
| in my head, like some sick Pavlov experiment.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j3hPW3pvOw
| robotmay wrote:
| Every time I try to pronounce "Auvergne" to a French person
| they quite literally cannot comprehend what I'm aiming for.
| It's pretty remarkable that I've been trying for years at this
| point and still can't get it right! I can manage Clermont-
| Ferrand at least so I can sort of fudge what I mean using that
| but still, it would be nice to figure it out one day :D
| bertil wrote:
| Auvergne has a lot of the sounds that are almost impossible
| to get right: 'au' has few equivalent other than the
| Scandinavian 'a' (and they rarely make the connection), 'v'
| is muted, the wet 'gn' sounds like the Spanish 'll' but is
| hard for even then to put in the middle of a word -- and the
| unheard final 'e' will trip anyone in the country for less
| than two decade.
|
| "Bonjour" and "croissant" are classic examples too: the
| opening 'b' is muted, 'j' only exist in some arabic dialect,
| etc.
|
| I used to live near the Louvre and the hundreds of tourist
| ordering at the local bakery were offended that, pointing at
| the pastries and articulating as much as they could, the
| baker would claim to have no idea what they wanted. I had to
| explain that she genuinely couldn't understand and she was
| sincerely confused at them pointing at a croissant and asking
| for a "Keurrawssanteu". Those two things could not be the
| same -- it's not an accent: someone from Switwzerland or
| Quebec would have no problem even though they sound
| completely different. I could make sense because I spoke
| English. "But I'm speaking in French..." Well... almost.
| triceratops wrote:
| > (I totally dig their counting system though, septante,
| huitante et nonante makes so much more sense).
|
| French beginner, holy shit I'm just gonna use that if I ever
| speak with native speakers. I'll tell 'em I learned in
| Switzerland. soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix is bonkers!
| pipologist wrote:
| So is there a big difference between the artisan's accent and
| modern day Parisian accents? Other than the recording quality and
| lack of modern fillers like ben ouais bof quoi etc, I can't
| personally tell.
| kemenaran wrote:
| There are many more recordings in the BNF archives linked by the
| article.
|
| There are even recordings of people speaking latin and Esperanto
| in 1912. Fascinating stuff!
| efwfwef wrote:
| They speak like my grand mother pretty much (who's not from paris
| but from the south). Slow, old words and expressions, same
| intonation towards the end.
| enriquto wrote:
| It is fascinating how fast accents change. I have recordings from
| my childhood (30 years ago) and you can hear a definitely
| different accent! Today only people born in small towns speak
| like that, but I had never left my city by that time,
| raverbashing wrote:
| No kidding. The way I managed to identify the accents of my own
| city was to not live there anymore.
|
| Then you come back and suddenly most people have an accent!
| It's funny.
| mrighele wrote:
| A few years ago I moved for work from a town in northern Italy
| to another. While only 70km away the two places have very
| distinct accents. After a couple of years people from my
| hometown would comment on how I sounded as a guy from the new
| town (people from the second town would never mistake my
| origins though, so I guess I had a funny mixed accent).
| navaati wrote:
| As a Frenchman in Dublin, Ireland, even I could hear a
| distinct accent difference between people from the north and
| the south banks of the river.
|
| Now I wonder if the same could be true of Paris and I'm just
| blind to it because it's my native language.
| borroka wrote:
| I can recognize Italian accents and words that are distinct
| between towns that are < 20 km apart.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| I am from south east in France (nearby Marseille), now living
| in Switzerland, and while my accent was fairly tamed for a
| provencale, before, I have taken a light French Swiss accent
| now :'
| colechristensen wrote:
| I moved from iowa to minnesota and made some friends from
| rural wisconsin, my mother was quite amused when a new accent
| would come out from time to time.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Another funny one, the more "locally idiomatic" an
| expression, the heavier is my accent.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Each one of those are very distinctive, and even eastern
| Iowa is more like Wisconsin than the rest of the state. You
| ask any of those people to say a word like "cow" with a
| vowel and you get different and notable accents. I recall
| meeting a woman recently who had been born and raised in
| Seattle, but her parents came from Wisconsin - I knew,
| because I could clearly hear their accent in her speech.
| gnulinux wrote:
| I left my country about 10 years ago to come to US. I talk to
| my parents and friends every once in a while, so my native
| language is sharp but that's my only interaction with it (I
| read, write, speak, think, dream etc in (sometimes broken)
| English exclusively). But a couple days ago my mom was watching
| TV and I overheard the conversation (by teenagers) in the show
| she's watching and it blew my mind how tiny tiny little things
| were different in their accents. I cannot put it into words
| exactly what was off about them, probably something to do with
| stress, but it was a shocking revelation. I asked her about it
| and she said she can't notice any difference. I asked her to
| switch to some other shows to see if it was idiosyncratic style
| of these people, but other shows had similar differences. I
| guess 10 years is long enough for tiny changes in languages.
| nippoo wrote:
| This is also noteworthy because it's the first time (presumably
| only in French) that we have a recording of someone listening
| back to their own voice and reacting to it. The interviewee
| clearly recognises their own voice, and is surprised at how heavy
| their accent is!
|
| It must have been an odd feeling - like looking at your
| reflection for the first time!
| agumonkey wrote:
| What makes me think is that people before this and photography
| didn't have precise recordings of anything natural. Images,
| sounds, videos... all that was totally evanescent and
| inspecting it wasn't even in the people's mind I guess.
| SilasX wrote:
| I remember some Reddit shower thought that the first person to
| record and play back sound must have thought they did it wrong
| when they heard their own voice.
| yaantc wrote:
| I went through this same experience as a student, having gone
| "up" to Paris. As part of a "communication class" we were
| taped, and then saw our own recording. Video was not as common
| at the time as it is nowadays, but to me it was quite shocking:
| I could barely understand myself!
|
| It was not only the accent (now weaker with time), but also
| mumbling plus talking too fast. It was a good experience.
| Definitely motivated me to pay more attention when I speak,
| slow down and articulate more (the accent part was not the main
| issue there ;).
| edeion wrote:
| This is a recording from an interview of a Parisian craftsman
| that took place in 1912. The purpose was to study the different
| accents that were found in Paris at the time. They mention that
| it's easy to tell apart someone from Paris 14th arrondissement
| (south-ish) and someone from Montmarte (north). When the
| interviewee listens to the recording, he's astonished to hear why
| people have sometimes been mentioning slowness in his speech.
| gamache wrote:
| He's just about the first Parisian I can understand!
| edeion wrote:
| That's the funny thing! French with what are called regional
| "accents" (be it parisian) is more pleasant to speak and
| easier to get.
| js2 wrote:
| Some interesting U.S. accents:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6089621A87373FBE
|
| The oddest is Tangier Island, VA:
|
| https://youtu.be/AIZgw09CG9E
|
| Relevant to this submission, a Cajun accent:
|
| https://youtu.be/hV8TQTUSsgw
|
| Relevant to HN, tech talk circa 1985:
|
| https://youtu.be/C4ctm0tElsU
| dang wrote:
| Posts to HN are supposed to be in English*, but this thread is so
| good that we won't bother it.
|
| *We have deep respect for la belle langue and other languages,
| but HN is an English-language site.
| spongepoc wrote:
| People placed a lot more 'art' into their speech than people
| nowadays. You hear it in the old English of England as well with
| the particularity of enunciation. Speech was the main interface
| of communication compared to today's more logocentric and
| multimedia audio visual world. In our age we appear to place that
| art into crafting text messages (nuances of capitalisation,
| punctuation, abbreviations, emojis etc.).
| theelous3 wrote:
| I think this is hugely reaching, as though some random french
| craftsman is consciously making an art of his speech. It's just
| an accent. Accents come and go.
| ldng wrote:
| No, it's really not. The spoken French has simplified over
| time and lost nuances in the process. It also shows if you
| compare tv news from the fifties and now. The parent remark
| is not about accent.
| Bakary wrote:
| It has gained new nuances in the process. I wouldn't call
| it a simplification, given that foreign speakers often
| struggle with some of the finer points of slang.
| malikolivier wrote:
| I would not say that nuances were lost. At most, word usage
| and the way nuances are expressed have changed. People from
| the 1910s just happen to make use of many words that have
| fallen out of use for the people living in 2021.
|
| Someone from 1910 would have a hard time understanding all
| the neologisms that were introduced after two world wars
| and decolonization until today.
|
| For us from 2021, someone from 1912 uses words that are
| commonly found in written works from the same period (and
| after). This is why we feel it sounds like 'art'. Written
| words live way longer than spoken words.
|
| Even today, common spoken French is very different from
| common written French.
| theelous3 wrote:
| But what has that to do with making an art of speech?
| Nothing to indicate literacy has made speech "unartful".
| dmch-1 wrote:
| Perhaps being recorded was a big deal back then. So they made
| more effort. Today it is common to have ones speech recorded,
| even for mass media.
| pmezard wrote:
| One of the highlighted characteristic of this recording, is
| it is a live conversation, not something rehearsed.
|
| So, while what you said may be true for radio broadcasts, I
| am not sure it is at play here even if the interviewee knows
| he is being recorded.
| alricb wrote:
| In 1912, the recording equipment would have been quite
| conspicuous.
| seszett wrote:
| I don't know if I would call that art, if we're talking about
| the traditional Parisian accent that is linked here (a popular
| accent, mostly used by lower classes). Today it sounds rather
| uneducated, and although it is easier to understand than many
| other local French accents, it doesn't sound especially clearer
| than modern speech.
|
| Although it might sound clearer to English speakers because it
| features more word-level stress while standard French doesn't
| really have it (but this has not been lost recently).
| ryanianian wrote:
| I studied French for many years in high-school and college.
| I've since forgotten much of it, but I was able to easily
| follow this "uneducated" accent. At times I found myself not
| even needing to read the subtitles. I had forgotten some of
| the meanings, but I could pick out the words and structure.
| Compare this to when I was learning French: most of the
| spoken material was in a more modern accent and was spoken
| much more quickly (as is _de rigueur_ ). I wonder if some of
| these older accents may be useful in teaching.
|
| Similarly I've been learning Spanish the past few years, and
| the most comprehensible accents are those from Guatemala,
| Nicaragua, and Honduras--some of the poorest Spanish-speaking
| countries. I cannot for the life of me understand a heavy
| Mexican or Chilean accent, but I can easily follow
| Guatemalan. It's interesting from a socio-linguistic
| perspective if nothing else.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| No. The sentences are more elaborate and pronunciation, while
| heavily emphased in comparison with modern casual french,
| doesn't suffer yet from "word eating". Links(?) between words
| are also clearer, less mumbled together.
| Tainnor wrote:
| The one thing that is as steady and unavoidable as language
| change is people complaining about language change.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Born in the wrong generation? I think the 'art' part you
| mention is just different nowadays.
|
| I mean one of my favorite channels on youtube is a pair of
| disembodied Canadian hands and voice, he has a way with words:
| https://youtu.be/toewD0VInlc. Here's a dictionary (do set it to
| show more than 10 at a time):
| https://codepen.io/LegoLife/full/YVXbMR
| simias wrote:
| There's a huge selection bias at play. Back then being recorded
| was a big deal and quite rare, so what little of it survives to
| this day was probably not representative of the bulk of how
| people talked.
|
| Also back then people traveled less (especially in the lower
| classes) which probably made accents stronger and more easily
| identifiable. Now it's routine for people of all classes to
| move to a different part of the country for studies or work,
| and you have mass media spamming a somewhat "standard" Parisian
| French across the country.
|
| And speech is still the main interface of communication. In
| general when people send casual texts they'll try to emulate
| the spoken language, including nonstandard inflections and
| spelling changes etc...
|
| If anything on average we probably pay a lot less attention to
| the written word than we used to because we use it so much more
| and for much more casual conversation. Few people used to write
| "wanna grab sumthin 2 eat?" a few decades ago.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| England/the UK is also a bit of a special case with its strong
| class system. Your accent is important socially in that regard.
|
| This is still the case today but was even more so and educated
| upper classes people were taught to speak 'properly'. That very
| posh accent you hear in old British films and old BBC footage
| is called "traditional received pronunciation(RP)" [1].
|
| That being said, accent is a social marker almost everywhere.
| It certainly is one in France, including because the country is
| very centralised on Paris and regional accents are usually
| deemed 'inferior' (it's similar to England, tbh). These days in
| France the accent and way of speaking you want to avoid at all
| cost is "l'accent des cites", i.e. the accent of people, often
| of foreign descent, from the bad suburban areas.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
| ginko wrote:
| This is a French language article. I don't understand what this
| is supposed to be about.
|
| Is everyone commenting so far French?
| rjsw wrote:
| I'm not French but it is my second language.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Interestingly, the guidelines say nothing about non-English
| language submissions. I think every now and then this is okay
| although obviously it would become a problem for moderation if
| it happened all the time.
| hyakosm wrote:
| It's more about French language. It can possibly be interesting
| to listen even if you don't speak French.
| Fnoord wrote:
| > Is everyone commenting so far French?
|
| You don't have to be French to understand French. There are
| other countries where French is the main language, and you can
| speak French as your second (or third, ..) language.
|
| You can use DeepL or Google Translate to translate to a
| language you understand.
| ginko wrote:
| >You don't have to be French to understand French. There are
| other countries where French is the main language, and you
| can speak French as your second (or third, ..) language.
|
| Obviously. I still don't understand why this is on frontpage.
| Fnoord wrote:
| 1912, the content would fit the term antique. It denotes,
| with proof, how accents evolve. The proof is relatively
| unique for its age. Hence, it is historic, it is history.
| _Relevant_ history, even, given the uniqueness.
|
| For me, personally (YMMV), I am going to link it to my
| mother (born 1951, my father passed away) who has been to
| Paris in the 70s with my father, as well as with me about
| 10 years ago. She's also far better in French than I am.
| I'm curious on her take. Same with my mother-in-law; she
| loves the French language.
|
| Here's another example which shows how society changes. A
| Trip Down Market Street [1], San Francisco a couple of days
| or weeks before the 1906 earthquake. You can take from it
| what you want, what I found interesting I commented on in
| that item [2].
|
| If people upvoted, it was deemed interesting. Regardless,
| you don't have to enjoy it. I know this is primarily a
| native English speaking website, but does that mean
| interesting history from outside of native English speaking
| regions is forbidden?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034871
| Renaud wrote:
| Using the novel technology of the time (gramophone) to
| record hyper-local accents and witness someone discovering
| his own accent, probably one of the first ever to do so.
|
| It's an interesting turning point in the history of modern
| technology, a bit like the first time someone saw himself
| in a picture or in a movie.
| jeanjogr wrote:
| Anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity is on-
| topic here
| _kyran wrote:
| One can read the french language without being french.
| maebert wrote:
| Pro tip: memorize the "stop words" (ie closed word classes:
| prepositions, pronouns, determiner, function words, modal
| verbs) of romance languages and you'll be able to comprehend
| almost all simple text in all of them.
|
| "Trust me, I'm European".
| pelasaco wrote:
| Sure, many Canadians do it everyday ;)
|
| Beside it, there are 300 million French speakers worldwide
| today, up almost 10% since 2014, and a recent survey showed
| that 44% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
|
| By 2050, a full 85% of French speakers could live on the
| continent, according to an estimate by an organisation that
| monitors statistics on who speaks the language.
| dmd wrote:
| I don't know French at all (I'm one of those so-called
| monolinguals, aka 'American'), but I can generally understand
| enough of any romance language to get by, at least if there's
| subtitles.
| entropyie wrote:
| Irish person here, but I speak French. Found the recording
| surprisingly understandable. Of course (French) sub-titles
| help...
| julienchastang wrote:
| Funny to see France Culture (originally just a radio station pre-
| internet) on the top of HackerNews. France Culture was often
| playing in the background when I would go visit my Parisian
| relatives. For those French language speakers, I recommend
| listening to the "La Methode scientifique" science news podcast
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-methode-
| scientifiq...
| bertil wrote:
| It's striking how much he sounds like my grand-mother who was
| born in 1920 about 400 m from there (Luxembourg). Same attention
| to language without being aristocratic or effete; same reluctance
| to sound slow.
| mintmen wrote:
| It's very sing-songey - more ups and downs in the cadence. I
| quite like how easy it was to understand (and slow!), compared to
| modern Parisian French.
| Bayart wrote:
| Early 20th c. Paris accents always bring back memories memories
| of Celine [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb_ZA_ZwRxA
| idoubtit wrote:
| At some point, the interviewer and the interviewee discuss how
| easy it is to tell apart the accents attached to various
| neighbourhoods in Paris. For those interested with the same
| process with the English language, I strongly recommend the film
| Pygmalion (1938) which I enjoyed much more than the later My Fair
| Lady. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(1938_film)
|
| Over the last decades living in France, I've heard several
| friends that lost their accent, notably from Loire and Jura. Of
| course some new French accents may emerge locally or in some
| communities, but the geography plays a lesser role.
| sl120 wrote:
| Incredible to hear this accent but also the fact that it's
| completely clear and comprehensible, if different sounding, than
| the modern Parisian accent!
| julienchastang wrote:
| What I found endearing about the guy being interviewed was that
| he would often start off his sentences with "Ahhhh".
| simias wrote:
| It's amusing hearing them discuss the differences between the
| accents of Montparnasse, Montmartre and La Villette. Who today
| could identify where, _within Paris_ somebody is coming from
| based on accents only? I know I couldn 't. The world was bigger
| back then, a different arrondissement was already a foreign
| place.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I don't disagree. That still exists to some extent. I don't
| think I could tell a Brooklyn accent from a Bronx accent, but i
| think some can? (Can they hear it in 20-year-olds not just
| 60-year-olds? Not sure).
| gecko wrote:
| I can _very_ easily tell Bronx from Brooklyn from Manhattan
| from Queens, in some cases down to specific neighborhoods or
| cultures...but really only in folks 60+, maybe _occasionally_
| in people more in the 40+ range who had fairly isolated
| upbringings, but that 's it. Any younger than that, I often
| can only even tell you're from New York City by word choice
| and slang, not accent. I suspect that's similar to what's
| going on in Paris, albeit I'm in absolutely no position to
| know.
|
| (For context: I did not grow up in NYC, but my family was
| from there, and I lived there for quite awhile myself as
| well. It's entirely possible someone who _did_ grow up in NYC
| can do better than I can, but, at least to my ear, it gets
| very close to just standard American broadcast English the
| younger you go, so I doubt it.)
| jeanjogr wrote:
| The usual caveat about Paris applies: the city of Paris is
| but a tiny core of the larger Paris metropolitan area (Paris:
| 2.1M people, Paris metro: c. 10M). Paris is about one fifth
| of its metro area, a city like NYC is about half.
|
| A closer analogue to being able to distinguish accents from
| Montparnasse, Montmartre and La Villette would be to able to
| distinguish accents from different places in Manhattan.
|
| I think even today there are substantial accent differences
| within the Paris metropolitan area (think Versailles vs le
| Marais vs Aulnay), but within Paris proper not so much.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| An accent is an indication of the extent of communication
| beyond a group.
|
| The world wasn't bigger back then (or even today). People were
| less connected and their speech patterns were not influenced by
| audio-visual media.
| alex_duf wrote:
| See funny thing is as a French person in London.
|
| I don't think I can spot accents from different parts of Paris,
| but I can definitely spot accents from different parts of
| London.
|
| I think there's something else at play, I'm not sure what.
| Maybe how much people have moved in last few decades? Maybe how
| much of a hyper-local life there is in each area?
| vianneychevalie wrote:
| The world is bigger, but not that much. The speech and clothing
| differences between "Paris Ouest" and "Paris Est" are still
| recognizable. While differences are less stark, arrondissements
| still have distinct styles.
|
| The 8th arrondissement at lunch time has a uniform, distinct
| from La Defense's. The 16th's rue de Passy and the 7th's rue
| Cler have clear differences in clothing and speech style on a
| Saturday morning. Le Marais and the 11th have different
| stereotypical accessories.
|
| We'll see what'll be the public opinion about us in 108 years!
| Hoboburger wrote:
| Would love to know more about those differences in dress and
| speech within Paris. I've spent many months in France and
| love the country but spent less than a week total in Paris
| even though its a city that fascinates me.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And the N-E suburbs became the soil for a completely new
| 'banlieue' accent and lingo (blend of gypsy and northern-
| africa).
| rapht wrote:
| As a native French speaker, what most strikes me in this
| recording is actually the contrast between:
|
| - the language level, which is very much higher than what you
| would get recording anyone on the street today, with fairly rich
| grammatical forms, and few of the now common shortcuts or
| mistakes - in a way, a more beautiful and educated French than
| you can find in most of today's France, the kind you'd find only
| in older traditional upper class families
|
| - the accent itself, which has kind of a lower-social-status
| conotation;
|
| - the guy pronouncing everything, who is neither in the highs nor
| in the lows of society, but a middle class small busines owner
| who presumably did not receive higher (nor probably even high
| school) education
|
| Were I not an optimist, I'd say this unfortunately is a sad
| illustration of what has become of education and language in our
| country, and more generally the acceptance by our society of
| everything and anything under the pretext that everyone deserves
| a chance even when they don't match the level previously judged
| as the acceptable minimum.
| fantod wrote:
| Sounds like my grandfather.
| m3at wrote:
| Interesting, while listening it sounded to me like the accent in
| Francois Truffaut's films. Then I realized that those films are
| closer to that recording than current times! (The 400 Blows is
| from 1959)
| jjgreen wrote:
| Unrelated, but the English literal translation of _Les quatre
| cents coups_ is just daft, it should have been "The school of
| hard knocks" or similar.
| norswap wrote:
| I had the same reaction, I heard similar accents in old pieces
| of media - even by some people that are still famous today
| (though mostly dead).
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I suppose accents are changing rapidly everywhere. We recently
| found a recording of my parents talking to me as a baby in the
| late 1970s. They both sounded like the actors from "The Good
| Life".
|
| The question is - is it happening more quickly than before.
| Almost certainly, I'd say, if you listen to examples of London
| accents across the centuries like these:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lXv3Tt4x20
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, radio started flattening them out and ubiquitous video is
| only going to accelerate that process.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| I really noticed this working in a school when I lived in
| Tennessee. A lot of the faculty had fairly heavy southern
| accents, but I don't remember ever noticing it with the
| students. It makes sense though when you realize that a huge
| chunk of the voices the students learned from were on
| YouTube, TV, etc., not just people from their own hometown.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Almost certainly, I'd say, if you listen to examples of
| London accents across the centuries like these
|
| MAJOR caveat there; to a large extent that's presumably based
| on people _guessing_ what a London accent was like 600 years
| ago. There's some evidence, but there certainly aren't
| recordings, and there'd be ~no information on the small
| details.
| herve76 wrote:
| Is this the first podcast in our history?
| isolli wrote:
| Related: I really enjoyed the movie Inglourious Basterds. It was
| especially original and interesting, as it relied heavily on
| languages and accents for the plot.
|
| However, what killed my suspension of disbelief (as a native
| French speaker) was the fact that the French actress spoke with
| an unmistakable early 21st century accent, definitely out of
| place in a second world war movie.
|
| This was a big letdown, considering how much attention had been
| given to accents in the rest of the movie.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| What a great movie! Still my favorite Tarantino film to date. I
| suppose the whole accents thing was directed for the primarily
| Anglophone viewer (since some of it depends on reading the
| subtitles, if you do not understand the language), so perhaps
| we can forgive Melanie Laurent for not bothering with a 1940s
| accent.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| The cookies this site uses to track you is impressive. Roughly 4
| pages of things you have to opt out of just to listen to this.
| severus_snape wrote:
| Arletty's accent[1] in Hotel du Nord (1938) is amazing too!
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYic1U1a6yw
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I don't like it. It sounds like fast bullet sentences
| exagerated for cinematic effects. I appreciate it but I
| associate it with movies from that period, not with how people
| really talked.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Hotel du Nord has been on my watch list for a long time. Thanks
| for the reminder. It looks like the waterway in the background
| is the Canal Saint-Martin. Sometimes people forget there are
| other waterways in Paris besides the Seine :-)
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