Pronunciation what's yours like in French

We all have accents when speaking English do some of us come across to the French like this?

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I always think I probably sound like the policeman from 'AlloAllo

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I’m a cockney and the French love it-----I think!!!

I am always being told never to lose my accent, when I respond that the only accent I have is Ch’ti, firstly there is disbelief rapidly followed by " quoi"! Then the penny drops :joy:

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Ahhh bienvenue ~. We absolutely loved the Dany Boon film, recommended to us by our daughter - since then we have watched quite a few of his films including one without subtitles which was quite a challenge given our very basic French.

One of my favourites too Mat, biloute! :wink:
I also recommend ( not with Danny) La famille Bélier, made me laugh and cry too …

In case anyone else is interested;

Gr8 film, laugh a minute. :rofl::joy::laughing:

We have many ways of pronouncing words, here are a few more vays, vayos wiis…


lol.

A mix of South West (Aveyron/Tarn with the odd word in patois thrown in), and depending on how tired I am it ranges from swiss/belgian, when on form, to east european when tired but rarely English !
Been told my English is no longer English and that it doesn’t sound right/sounds like a foreigner talking English (Yvonne Moreton) and been complimented on how good my English is when I occasionally use it in my tabac ! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: Sorry just can’t handle the ch’ti accent - all the vowels are wrong and you only prunounce half of what’s written ! :open_mouth: :smiley:
Bienvenue chez les ch’ti and La famille Bélier are both favourites, Louane is a a great singer too :smiley:

Can’t comment on the Ch’ti accent as rarely venture up to the NE corner of France but surely only pronouncing half of what is written is the norm for French?

Our plumber is a ch’ti as is the owner of one of the bars where I deliver the paper each morning so I get to here it quite often.
The norm in northern France, not at all in the south - we even add letters where they don’t exist : un pneu here is a un peneu, you probably say tout de suite in two sylables, the three words are pronounced seperately in the south giving either three or four syllables (the final e being the fourth) maintenant is three syllables here, not two up north, I could go on for ages (studied sociolinguistics as part of my French degree!) but don’t want to bore everyone!

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I accept your argument but raise you the 3rd person plural of pretty much every regular verb (and most of the irregulars).

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It always amuses me when that area is described as the North East, it is so much north and so little east, the point of the hexagon.

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Not sure I agree that prononciation is the same as accent? I pronounce words fine, but do have an accent that is not a french one. OH has now got to the level where people ask him where in France he’s from, I have a way to go yet.

Is Ch’ti just French spoken with a distinctive accent or is ir recognisable through its speaker’s choice of vocabulary and syntax? In Britain most regional accents are a mixture of those things, a dialect not just an accent and a standard English sentence spoken with a Geordie or Cornish accent just won’t sound right.

oui et non… obviously conjugaisons can’t be touched regardless of accent - they carry too much information but if we remain with verbs the differnce exists, irregular verbs too : je sais pas (south) -v- chais pâs (north) with the â pronounced right down the back of the throat as opposed to in the middle of the mouth here in the south. Or je serai là (south) -v- j’s’rai là (north). ils seront -v- ils s’ront, ils seraient -v- ils s’raient et ainsi de suite :wink:

Not denying that there are strong regional accents and variations in pronunciation (but no-one pronounces the “nt” on the end of ils donnent"). I sometimes wonder whether trying to understand my Breton neighbours is akin to a Parisian French speaker trying to make headway in Gwynedd.

No Paul, because that would be grammatically incorrect, you can’t play with the conjugated part but you can with the rest :wink:
One company in the Aveyron, where I used to teach, had another factory in the north and they always said they found it hard understanding what each other were saying! When on holiday in the Haute Loire (not that far north of us) we all had to bring something from our area for the apéro d’accueil and when we explained what it was our accents where immediately commented on as their’s are different and most other people had come on holiday from Paris and northern France!

Most regional dialects in the UK are regularly grammatically incorrect, does all French language follow the rules?