Btw, Whisper has no trouble transcribing Euro-English, even with thick accents and very fast (Italian) delivery.
Fruit regulation would typically use a more formal (sub)species nomenclature like 'Ananas comosus'.
Interesting. I am not a native speaker either but I usually find french people the hardest to understand when speaking English. East coast Americans being the easiest.
My friends who learned French had similar struggles in France versus elsewhere.
It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.
Not a different language but a dialect-group within high german called Alemanic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German
Also interesting:
Now try telling Dutch people that they don’t actually have their own language and are all speaking Low Country German and see what happens…
Most distinctions between dialects and languages are socio-political and not linguistic.
There is a similar continuum between North/Low German and Frisian. Yet you cross a border and just like Dutch/Franconian it’s no longer a dialect but a different language.
Except Hungary, Finnland and Estland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages
>>The High German languages (German: hochdeutsche Mundarten, i.e. High German dialects), or simply High German (Hochdeutsch) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German"
The distinction between a language and a dialect is not clear at all. e.g. while it wouldn’t be correct to call Swiss-German a dialect of standard German both languages are German Dialects.
> Quebec French is at most a dialect of French.
Yes it’s a dialect of French, it’s not a dialect or accent of standard French.
There is nothing special about Standard German or French besides the fact that they are dialects which have outcompeted all other dialects of those languages to a less or more successful degree due to entirely political and economical reasons.
I had to study and pass my exams in standard French with a Parisian institution. This is made obligatory by the Quebec government for immigrants if they want to stay and apply for a PR.
Anyways, the insight I want to share here is that Quebecois French is much closer to Austrian or Bavarian German vs Standard German.
Both share a similar trajectory with their standard counterparts, diverging over centuries but in the end remaining more comprehensible compared to Swiss German.
Quebecois, evolving since the 17th century from settlers' French and Austrian/Bavarian dialects, shaped since the 6th century's “Lautverschiebung” are also old but less divergent branches.
Swiss German, though also rooted in the High German shift, has veered more distinctly. Watching Swiss TV (SRF), I only get about 80-90% due to that deeper linguistic forking.
Standard Quebecois has not been much harder for me to understand than standard French. Like in Austrian German there are certain “quirks” but again much easier to parse from context than with Swiss German.
Of course there might be the case where a heavy local dialect becomes even harder to understand than say Swiss German even. German language learners could test their comprehension of Swiss vs going to a pub in Wien Ottakring or into a deep recess of the Tyrollean alps. I’d guess some encounters would be minimum as hard to understand if not harder. Same for rural Quebec etc. Then again the underlying grammar even can be really different in fundamental ways with Swiss German which is not the case for Quebecois.
TL;DR standard Quebecois is easier to understand and much closer to standard French than standard Swiss German is to standard German.
IMHO: France has just been very steadfast about language standardization up to this day and across its zone of influence. E.g. there even is obligatory standard French language learning in Quebec for immigrants and possibly public schools as well. So for some people from France they often don’t have developed the “muscle” for even slight derivations. In addition not much proficiency in “foreign languages” in general especially for older generations.
Of course they are aware of the accents, but you can still have fun and talk to each other. Then, of course, if the French mock them behind their back when they are alone, I will probably never know.
They where having fun of the southern marseillais accent, but also of the northern ch'ti accent, they also had extra fun of African or Quebec's accent indeed.
I, as a child, did imitated those accent for fun. I now regret it, bit it's still in the roots of a lot of people.
I sometimes fear that racism is predominant in french society.
Clarification in case it's needed: I absolutely agree that making fun of someone's accent when they come to you is a best inappropriate, and more often than not utter bigotry. But I'm concerned about criminalising humour. This might not be a widely-shared idea (especially in the anglosaxon world?), but I even believe that racist jokes can be tools against racism, decredibilising racism and not actually oppressing the minority in question. Of course, again, context matters.
(clarification #2: I don't believe "cancel culture" is a thing, if you do racist jokes in the public sphere and someone calls you out for saying something racist, I don't believe anyone has been "cancelled")
- 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 (even more than of their fellow french).
- I've never ever head someone making fun of another non-native french speaker accent. In fact we're happy when someone likes french
Sorry you feel that way.
The English equivalent would be something like a deep Northern England accent which sounds goofy to my N. American ears.
He's Acadian French for those non-Canadian or non-French reading this that's different than Quebec, how? I'm not sure.
But the guy told me the people the people there were amazed by his accent. Apparently it wasn't like Quebec accent it was more old French but I guess not the slang of Quebec French? Not sure but I guess it was a hoot and he had fun.
From what I know Acadians originally emigrated from northern France area. So maybe Acadian French is closer match to Parisian standard French than Quebec French?
The Québécois were about 100 years later, so their French is like the 19th century plus developments.
African French dates from the colonial period, so it sounds more like early 20th century French plus developments.
That’s how I understand it to be.
My favourite anecdotal example (though I couldn't find any proof looking it up) is that "to kill" it's "killer".
When visiting France I had one experience where I felt like I was a zoo animal, like that. Walking around a public site a woman got very excited like she found the answer to a tricky riddle and yelled "Québec, Québec" at me. She was so sweet though and it was harmless so I didn't take it even the slightest bit poorly.
Most people in France knew better than to make a stink about it. I talked with plenty of people and occaisionally it popped up but more as a passing curiosity, I didn't feel like it wasn't outside of natural curiosity. Things like "pas pire" raised eyebrows "stationner mon char" rather than "parker mon auto" sometimes took people a minute to comprehend.
All to say, there are some rude people everywhere, but my own experience in French with a Québec accent was great.
French here, with an anecdote:
More than 20 years ago I visited Montréal. It was difficult to participate in discussions with french-speaking people because I could understand some participants very well and others not at all, just because there are different degrees of accent. In constrast, it was easy to understand any english-speaking person.
> There are so many YouTube videos of French people mocking us. It's not curiosity but a distinctly French superiority complex.
Nope, we also mock our own accents. There are many of them across our country. It's just for fun, we still like you.
Agreed.
In addition, I feel like Americans give out more of an "A for effort" vibe in response, whereas Europeans are more like "nice try n00b".
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.
I'll have my own introspection in order to try to detect/avoid such a behavior if I do have it!
I suspect that French are unfriendly meme has taken life on its own. People complain when the French switches to English for them, they complain when the French speaks more slowly and simplifies the language, they complain when the French does not simplify for them.
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.
I realised the "refusing to understand" attitude in French is not out of malice, but simply because the structure of French as a language is highly dependent on pronunciation. So pronouncing words slightly incorrectly either changes the meaning completely, or creates a situation where multiple different interpretations are possible.
There's a lot of nuance, socialising is a complex mixture of things which varies a lot between and also within country.
People coming with their home expectations and judging others based on it are often just seen as obnoxious and disrespectful from an outside point of view.
As an example, in France it's quite common to tease/gently mock people you're friend with. Some insults can even be used in a friendly way. This is something that doesn't fly AT ALL in a lot of places and, as a french, you have to be really careful with when meeting non-french. If not, you are just being super mean instead of trying to be friendly.
As well, the American way of using a lot of superlatives, being overly excited about things that are not that exciting can been seen as fake and disrespectful, in a lot of other places.
AFAIK being very serious about that was a declared goal historically; nation states in general not that old etc, etc..
So you have lots of people that went through a purposefully rigid process in education and of course with that through greater society. At the end there is maybe not much room / tolerance in handling deviations from the norm?
Despite all of that I’ve also seen this changing though as France / the world has become less insular (learning more foreign languages, etc).
There is no question that a Scottish accent is the most difficult accent to understand.
"Introduced" the Scottish accent via Youtube to some Mexican co-workers who were fluent English speakers and they freaked out. Will never forget one saying "WTF is this?"
It's odd because Dutch itself, being a Germanic language, has a lot of pronunciation commonality with the most conservative of all English accents, Scottish. You can hear it in this video, where a sentence composed of common Germanic words is spoken in every Germanic language:
If it weren't for Trainspotting, which I adore, I'd be utterly useless at understanding Scots accents. As it is, I can just barely manage.
Honestly, I'm regularly surprised by how nice and patient people from everywhere are, paying attention to my words even if my English is not, even today, as good as I would like it to be. Including French people. Including British people.
There's a recurring steotype that the French, and Parisians in particular, are dismissive of foreigners attempts to speak French if they aren't perfect, but it's not been my experience. My French coworkers are all cool of course, but even the poor baristas in Paris trying to understand my broken coffee order just tanked it and made an effort.
I remember talking to a friend in Paris. I was talking in English about a trip to Disneyland I had planned. And this older man who was just passing by came to give me a rant in French of how an American theme park in Paris is just a disgrace and should be forbidden from ruining the superior French culture. Of course, this is just one anecdote, but I've got quite a few of those.
The thing about accents is that they are easy to understand for people coming from languages with the same way or similar of speaking, ie french have an easier time understanding English spoken by a french than if it is spoken by an Indian. What I'm saying is not that one way or the other is superior, but that it is different for different people with different language baggages.
This can be used to make yourself easier to understand - change your accent to match the person you are talking with.
I don't find this to be true at all. Maybe it's not the hardest, but it's certainly not easy for me to understand Indian accents.
As an Indian myself, this has, variously, confused, amused and annoyed Indians speaking English to me. Unfortunately I don't speak a word of any Indian language myself.
There is no universal metric of what makes one accent easier to understand than another.
For years, literally years, I thought my Indian coworkers, generally from Bangalore or Chennai, were using 'devil up' as a turn of phrase that had caught on in India but that I wasn't familiar with. Meaning something like 'come up with'.
Develop. They were saying develop.
A francophone friend of mine from New Brunswick (Quebec's neighbor - sizable Francophone and Franglais population) had a frustrating recent visit to Paris. Many locals switched to English after hearing her speak, and refused to move back to French even after she explained that it is her first language.
The most common reaction I get is people embarresment about not knowing english better, even if they speak fluently.
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** given. We wanted a English speaking technician on site. We got a choice. We can get a person who speaks English or someone with technical skills, but not both. My experience is limited, but I understand where this stereotype is coming from.
That’s what I read and hear everywhere, too. I find it very puzzling. I have visited Paris regularly since more than 20 years, sometimes for several months. I can’t remember even a single incident in all those years when I’ve felt despised or disrespected for my extremely rudimentary French language skills. Communication can be hard sometimes, but people are just as cooperative and helpful as anywhere else in the world.
French people are proud that diverse countries and french dialects exist.
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 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. I think because they pronounce more of the words while native speakers use more contracted form where they don't even pronounce part of some words. The pace isn't a problem, it's really the absence of part of the phrase that is hard for me.
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.