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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 despi

• nicbou 3y ago
  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.
  • carlmr 3y ago
    Quebec French is very different though. It's like Swiss German and German, the Swiss understand the Germans, but not the other way around. It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.
    • Bayart 3y ago
      Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.
      • 4ggr0 3y ago
        As a Swiss who's mother tongue is swiss-german, but also talks french, AND has a French-Canadian co-worker - Disagree.
      • BSDobelix 3y ago
        >Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages Not a different language but a dialect-group within high german called Alemanic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German Also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages
        • ffgjgf1 3y ago
          Based on that definition Dutch also wouldn’t be a different language but a dialect within High German called Franconian. 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.
          • BSDobelix 3y ago
            Let's see what happens if you tell them that we all talk Indo-European ;) Except Hungary, Finnland and Estland
          • acjohnson55 3y ago
            According to Wikipedia, Franconian is split between Low Franconian dialects, including Dutch, and the others, which underwent the same consonant shift as the High German languages. But I agree that the boundaries of languages are not purely linguistic.
        • acjohnson55 3y ago
          I don't think you have that quite right. Alemannic does not include Standard High German. Alemannic is a group of High German dialects in the southwestern German-speaking areas.
    • musha68k 3y ago
      Native German speaker from Austria here who has been living in Quebec for many years. 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.
    • loufe 3y ago
      It's more from ignorance than anything. I speak Quebec French and had little trouble being understood in France in the two times I've visited. I have folks from France, French Africa, and Haïti here at my job. It's more just ignorance about the accent than a lack of actual experience not being able to understand it. It's certainly not analagous Californian English to Shetlandish Scots, far from it.
  • mk89 3y ago
    I am not French but I heard good things from some colleagues from Quebec (exactly like you, surprisingly) that speak French to native French colleagues as soon as they get a chance to, because they like to do so and don't feel mocked at all. 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.
  • n0n0n4t0r 3y ago
    Now that you say it: some decades ago there was a racist tendency in France where people where having fun of others accent. 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.
    • baby 3y ago
      ^ this. French people make fun of every accents. Racism and discrimination is about what society deem acceptable and what minorities or weaker communities we find OK to mistreat. I’d say discrimination in France is much worse than in America.
    • nicoco 3y ago
      Without denying at all that racism exists, I believe it is also possible to imitate accents outside racism. I'm from the south of France, and my accent kicks in when I speak with elderly family members that themselves always have the southern accent when they speak. Despite that, sometimes I make jokes imitating the southern accent, does that make me a "self-racist"? 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")
    • GlobalFrog 3y ago
      Actually, all French speakers for a very long time have mocked other accents, especially from France, therefore they have a kind of specialty of mocking themselves. Parisian have always mocked regional accents, every region was mocking other regional accents, and even accents from two cities 50 km apart are mocked from both sides. Other accents are just mocked the same as french people make fun of other french people regional accents. I would say that the accent mocking in France is less about racism than about the structure of french society, which is extremely centralized historically, and regions have always been very defensive about their specificities, like the local dialects, languages and the accent is part of that. Some regional languages were even forbidden in some places not so long ago. Racism in France being looked by the accent prism is a foreign worlview with a very low relevance level. It avoids the real and problematic issues of racism that exists. But indeed there is a link: racism flourishes when you do not see or hear people different from yourself. This can happen everywhere and mocking other accents is just using one parameter to insulate your own social group from the rest of the world and diminish/blame/mock the others. If you live in a country where regional accents are not a thing, you will find another parameter and anyone can say through the prism of this local parameter that racism is worse in this country compared to another. My point here is that racism can be everywhere, and has first to be fought on its causes, because symptoms can be very different from places to places and fighting them might help, but not solve.
  • palata 3y ago
    I am not French but it is my mothertongue. In my country we just absolutely love the Quebecois accent, it's sounds really really nice and friendly :-).
  • davidguetta 3y ago
    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 (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.
    • red-iron-pine 3y ago
      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.
  • mrfumier 3y ago
    Do you realize that, we are used to hear Quebec french only through singers and comedians you send us to France? Send us serious people instead, and it will stop sounding funny.
  • dghughes 3y ago
    I'm in Canada but English. Years ago a French co-worker from New Brunswick went to northern France on vacation. 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?
    • loufe 3y ago
      I would say Acadian is probably as far from France French as Québecois is, but it certainly has some fascinating qualities. They use old French words there that have changed everywhere else French is spoken (aside maybe Louisianna French). My favourite anecdotal example (though I couldn't find any proof looking it up) is that "to kill" it's "killer".
    • mikrl 3y ago
      Acadians were an earlier emigrant wave from France, so their French sounds like that from the 18th century plus developments. 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.
  • loufe 3y ago
    There are obviously going to be some cases of that. I remember hearing through a friend that their university roommate from France dropped a class at UQAM because they couldn't take their lecturer's accent seriously. You have elitist people elsewhere. 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.
  • JodieBenitez 3y ago
    > They just can't get over the accent 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.
    • allarm 3y ago
      Yeah, I remember how I tried to order coffee in a restaurant in Paris. Even though coffee sounds almost exactly the same both in French and in English the dude refused to understand what I need. Probably it was just for fun, but this type of fun is what stops me from visiting Paris ever again.
  • trgn 3y ago
    It's a european thing, not just french. Same in other languages. People are highly attuned to accents and geographical differences they imply. It's frustrating as a non-native speaker. English is "neutral" ground. Americans too are in general really patient with other people's accents, so just less used to that sort of provincialism.
    • biomcgary 3y ago
      People from the US generally find accents from other English speaking countries fairly charming (source I'm from the US) rather than a source of amusement or derision. I think attitudes about accents from non-English speakers vary more widely and regionally.
      • trgn 3y ago
        > find accents from other English speaking countries fairly charming 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".
• alejoar 3y ago
  > 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. 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.
  • n0n0n4t0r 3y ago
    I think this is because french being my native language, hearing this accent on spoken English kind of fall in my ears naturally.
• PeterStuer 3y ago
  In the EU, especially EU administration, we have evolved a Euro-English dialect. It is mostly English, but with some typical European (French, German, Italian and Greek mostly) pronounciations and phrasings. Btw, Whisper has no trouble transcribing Euro-English, even with thick accents and very fast (Italian) delivery.
  • Tade0 3y ago
    Makes me wonder if the word "ananas" and 24h time was already incorporated to it.
    • PeterStuer 3y ago
      24h definitely. Ananas is not so commonly used, but in informal speech, yes, as pineapple is also ananas in most of the EU languages (not in Spanish). Fruit regulation would typically use a more formal (sub)species nomenclature like 'Ananas comosus'.
      • anthk 3y ago
        Spanish too, just not in Spain.
        • blovescoffee 3y ago
          Only in a few countries representing a minority of speakers.
          • anthk 3y ago
            Bear in mind that it's still a perfectly valid word in Spanish. Such as "babuchas" to say sneakers/trainers in Andalusia.
• kbrkbr 3y ago
  > "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians" 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.
  • n0n0n4t0r 3y ago
    Yes, reading from all the comments here, this seems like a fact! I'll have my own introspection in order to try to detect/avoid such a behavior if I do have it!
    • watwut 3y ago
      For whatever it is worth, I had actually good experiences in France including in Paris. Or, basically normal one, not really different from trying to get around Germany. 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.
      • deleted 3y ago
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• CTDOCodebases 3y ago
  > 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" gets pronouced as din-na.
  • strken 3y ago
    I have a friend who grew up in Australia, who's from a state capital while I'm from the country, and he once said that I sounded "more Australian" on the phone to my family than I do while taking to cosmopolitan Australians. I think a lot of us subconsciously suppress our accents and vocabulary when we're not around the exact dialect we grew up with.
    • CTDOCodebases 3y ago
      I do this too but I think it works a little differently. I would say that we unconsciously tailor the way we talk to align ourselves socially with others.
  • mjan22640 3y ago
    Thats a common misconception among non native speakers, that the letters in the written form have some relation to how the word is pronounced.
• michaelscott 3y ago
  Fwiw my own experience in France, even in Paris, was mixed. A number of people refused to speak French with me (although my French was terrible, it's true), while others were either highly encouraging and complimentary, or were content to at least try and speak with me. I've never encountered anyone overtly rude. 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.
  • baby 3y ago
    I have one theory: Americans are much more social than French people and expect the French to be as receptive as them to small talk with strangers. But we don’t talk to strangers in France. We value our intimacy bubble and when someone talks to us out of nowhere we feel threatened. There are scripted scenarios for when strangers can interact: saying hi in the elevator is one example (and usually it doesn’t go further). Even the language with its formal pronoun is meant to add distance between you and people you don’t know.
    • boudin 3y ago
      I don't think that's true. 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.
  • musha68k 3y ago
    I think it has more to do with the success of the language standardization effort. 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).
• highwayman47 3y ago
  People who lack achievement in life feel joy when it appears as if Europe is being outwitted.
• tkiolp4 3y ago
  As a non native English speaker, the hardest to understand are people from England. The easiest to understand are people from the NL. The most comfortable to work with: germans, italians, spaniards… since they make the same grammar mistakes I make (so we all understand our mistakes)
  • ciberado 3y ago
    A coworker told me some years ago that understanding my broken English was easy for him, as he had worked extensively with other Spaniards and my grammar and pronunciation was just like them :) 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.
  • nervousvarun 3y ago
    American here...always thought the NL/Dutch accent was weirdly the most American-like accent? Which I assume is universally fairly easy to understand because of all the media content? I've been around Dutch natives before where it took surprisingly long before realizing they weren't from the US. In my opinion the Scottish accent is the most difficult accent to understand. "Introduced" the Scottish accent via Youtube to some Mexican co-workers who are fluent English speakers and they freaked out. Will never forget one saying "WTF is this? How can this possibly be real?". Guy generally thought it was some sort of fake prank way of speaking and couldn't grasp that people actually spoke like that.
    • netbioserror 3y ago
      I'm American and concur with this. Aside from some slightly accented tweaks here and there, the Dutch speak a remarkably clear and rhotic English that feels quite comfortable to listen to. 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVG5LHRMJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVG5LHRMJ4
• dukeyukey 3y ago
  So I'm British, work for a half-French company and have been to Paris quite a bit. 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.
• kabes 3y ago
  I live just by the French border in Belgium (the dutch speaking part), I've been together with a girl from Paris for a couple of years and in a past life I was a waterski instructor for club med. So I've met my fair share of French people and I can tell you this is definitely a thing. Parisians even had this reputation amongst other French people. But I feel it's becoming a thing of the past as well. The younger generation seems less chauvinistic and more friendly in this regard. 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.
• pyeri 3y ago
  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.
  • TeMPOraL 3y ago
    There is the Indian English you speak about, which I'm not sure I've experienced, and there's the Indian Helpdesk English that I know of, which is nigh-incomprehensible.
  • clausecker 3y ago
    What makes Indian English stand out is the use of a syllable-timed pronunciation for a language that is usually stress-timed.
  • yxhuvud 3y ago
    No, Indian English is absolutely horrible to understand (for me, Swedish). It just sounds all wrong and you use strange word selections pretty often. 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.
  • lelanthran 3y ago
    > Indian English has to be one of the easiest accent/dialect to understand. 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.
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• NiloCK 3y ago
  Anecdote: 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.
• kraftman 3y ago
  I'm from England and moved to france 3 years ago, I've bought a couple of cars, rented an apartment, gone through the healthcare system, put my kids into school, all while slowly learning french. No one has ever been rude to me about it. The most common reaction I get is people embarresment about not knowing english better, even if they speak fluently.
• ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
  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** 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.
  • red-iron-pine 3y ago
    Similar experiences dealing with Quebec, though there are a lot of legal wranglings there, and it's a lot easier to find bilingual folks.
  • woopwoop24 3y ago
    same experience, absolute ignorance, very annoying
• Oreb 3y ago
  > More precisely, the near 100% percent agreement on "french are despising non native speakers, especially the Parisians". 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.
• retinaros 3y ago
  HNEWS went woke a few years ago. and for the woke hivemind it is ok to be xenophobic toward french or other western nations. but you should treat over countries like you treat children you pretend to care about but in reality you still retain most of the colonial spirit of the left that wanted to go to africa to bring enlightenment to those people. French people are proud that diverse countries and french dialects exist.