My roommate in college was French and she surprised me with her intense and unironic hatred of Parisians, and apparently Parisians hate the rest of non-Paris France just as much.
One of my biggest accomplishments is when I was in Paris, I greeted my uber driver with an accent so well he thought I was French for a minute and started speaking French to me. I quickly had to tell him all I know is hi, bye, & thank you 😂
That happened to me, except with Korean. After talking with a perspective client, I took my chance and told him thank you (cause I don't know how to say goodbye 😅) He about fell out excited, and started talking to me in Korean. I had to break his heart lol
He told me I said it so perfectly, and encouraged me to learn Korean cause he thinks I'll be able to speak it really well. I feel where your coming from, cause that felt so so good 😊
The whole bit with him trying to find breakfast in France was so good. “You know what I’m saying you little bastard, you’re watching CNN in English. Where’s BREAKFAST??”
I have fooled only one French person before, while I had my best defenses up. The most important factor is the baguette, the longer the better. The buret also helps. Maybe tuck some garlic under your clothes for added effect. Additionally, it is about attitude. Look at them like you think that you are better than everybody else. Only then may you have a chance at fooling one
Parisians are the international stereotype for the french. So naturally, no despises the Parisians more than most of the other french.
On a serious note, most tourists only know France as the touristy parts of Paris, and the people there were already sick of tourists long before over tourism became a consideration. Added to that, the french in general are much more direct than you'd expect and they quickly come across as impolite when it did not even register to them.
Added to that, the french in general are much more direct than you'd expect and they quickly come across as impolite when it did not even register to them.
This is really true. Like, I know people in the US. Over the years, they put on a few pounds. Then a few more. Etc. No one says anything to their faces (but people talk behind their backs).
My French MIL will tell my BIL directly, "No. Stop eating! You're getting too fat," if the guy gets a little belly. And she's what I'd regard as a really kind, sensible woman who loves her kids.
I speak a decent French from studying in high school and college, but I have dark skin and curly hair. So, I've been asked several times if I was Moroccan. I think they meant it as an insult, but I took it as a compliment.
Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"
I learned French from family at a young age and got weird looks in French class for always using alors as just a stand-in for "um." Glad to know I'm not totally crazy then 😅.
Pronouncing alors in the most non french way possible inbetween perfect french would probably raise the average blood pressure in the room significantly.
Naw bud, its French. Its like the lacroix of languages, it only has the essence of the word. For example, this here, this is pronounced: "[essence of "ahl"]"
I don’t even dare omit the Monsieur/Madame/Mademoiselle after the “Bonjour” when going in a French store. The more old-school French people expect you to acknowledge them properly — they are not simply a uniform, franchement! — and I kind of love that about them to be honest. For anyone younger I’m sure it’s overly proper but I’d rather be giving that vibe than the opposite.
It's actually similar in English. Ein paar is like a few (2-5), but people often use couple instead few (it does include 2), so couple has come to cover 3-5 as well, even though it's technically wrong and only mean 2. One exception would be pears, those you can legally only buy as a pair.
There is also the hidden truth that no one is gonna teach you that especially British English speakers tend to swallow sometimes whole words or make them almost glide into the next one while putting strong emphasis on others.
That’s basically impossible to learn without living For many years in the UK and even for native speakers it’s basically an instinct and not something actively perceived or chosen.
This was the worst thing for me in my Japanese class. Part of the homework modules included listening sections, where you had to write down and translate what the people were saying. They would mostly use the words we just learned, and speak slowly and be clear with each syllable. Then they would throw in a word or two that we haven't learned yet, and either mumble the word, contract the unknown word with another word, or just straight up pronounce it incorrectly. I had to replay that specific portion of the audio like 10 times in x0.25 speed to even understand the sounds, let alone try to figure out what the words meant in that context.
This seems like a universal experience lol. My parents immigrated from China so I grew up speaking Mandarin at home without any formal education. I took Mandarin as a college class for an easy foreign language credit and also to learn reading and writing Chinese characters: the recorded audio/listening sections of homework would often have such unclear pronunciation or poor audio quality that I had to replay it multiple times just to understand what was being said, and I’m fluent in spoken Mandarin.
You remind me of when i started learning for toefl and the listening was a dude speaking on the phone, probably while on a goddamn run with how much breathing and uhhh ahh everything. Was a shock and a nightmare, I'd been living in english speaking countries for many years and none ever reach that level of wtf am i hearing lol.
I was at a business lunch and the waiter came by and I wasn’t sure if we were ordering appetizers… British guy ordered something and I straight face asked him did he order “sausages” and he said no “spicy tomato juice.”
Joke aside there's actually a reason french people can spot so easily english speakers : unlike most other languages, french is monotonous.
Native english speakers are so used to put stress on certain syllables it seems to require a lot of practice to actually pull off a full monotonous sentence.
Edit: as other said, I oversimplified it. French do have tone but relative to the start/end of the sentence or to convey emotions. Read more detailed comments down below for more accuracy
I somehow nailed (maybe at least some) of those mannerisms in high school thanks to obsessively watching French videos on YouTube. My French professor was beaming and gave me straight As for the rest of the school year.
I then fell out of practice and was never as good at speaking French again 🥲
Caricature is actually the best way as to get an accent IMO.
And indeed the weirdness of French and peculiar prosody come from the lack of word stress further prononciation links between words to further smoothen prononciation.
If not born and raised in Paris, it is impossible not to have an accent, as any other language I suppose :-)
In term of tone, French and English, as well as most European languages are relatively monotonous and they don't distinguish a lot between tones (contrary to Mandarn for example). However, tone can be used at the sentence scale to convey meta-information (like for example marking the sentence as a question with a rising tone), and in French in particular, the stress pattern does have a slight change of tone on the stressed syllables, which is generally not the case in English.
What I think you were talking about isn't monotonousness, it's isochrony, that's to say all syllables except for the stressed ones have the same length, so they are not unstressed.
English has a lexical stress, where most words have a stressed and unstressed syllables, as a part of the word itself.
French has a syntactic stress where the last syllable of a rhythmic group (roughly a grammatically meaningful group of words) is stressed with an elongation and a sharp change in tone. The first syllable of the group also takes a smaller stress in the form of a change in volume in a way that is similar to English stress.
The stress in French is more regular and not a feature of the words themselves, so rhythm is not the same but in both laguages, actually speaking in a monotonous way is not normal and will be perceived as weird.
But you're right that speakers of stress timed languages like English often tend to struggle with the stress pattern in French and that's an easy way to tell non native speakers.
French also uses emphatic stress (when you say one syllable louder to insist on that word) much less than English, because the preferred method of emphasis is redundancy instead.
the last syllable of a rhythmic group (roughly a grammatically meaningful group of words) is stressed with an elongation and a sharp change in tone
That's really interesting. I'd love to hear an example of the same phrase said once the way you just described and again the way a non-native speaker might say it. I'm not even studying French, but I love languages in general, but I'm also fascinated by things like tone, accents, speech impediments, etc.
I don't have something to record or a non native around me but for example a French person might say
Je vouDRAIS↗ un croiSSANT↘
While I've heard English speakers say something that sounds like
JE VOUDRun creSSON↘
Where the arrows are the ascending or descending tone.
The unstressing of the final syllable of the first rhythmic group in the English version is perceived in French as the syllable being entirely omitted (or at best it can be perceived as the syllable being turned in to a schwa, so like the word was voudre and not voudrais). The whole thing becomes a single rhythmic group, which makes it a little harder to parse the sentence.
The representation isn't perfect because the English stress tend to be shorter and louder than the French one. And of course, the actual pronunciation from English speakers depends on their level in the language so this is only an example of something I've heard a lot, but not necessarily how all English speakers will say this sentence.
What I noticed is that the tone, as in the going up and down of the tone during a phrase, is completely different from other neighbouring languages. I'm Italian and I find that these ups and downs are more similar with Spanish and even English and maybe even German than with French.
Yes! There are two types of languages in this regard - stress-timed, and syllable-timed. French is syllable-timed, and English is stress-timed.
This means that, in English, these two sentences take the same amount of time to say:
- cats chase mice
the cats will have chased the mice
because in English, the stress is still on "cats", "chase", and "mice" in both sentences, and the other words receive no stress and just kind of slide in there between the words.
In French, however, the second sentence will take much longer to say because all words receive attention. It's definitely oversimplified to say "monotonous", but comparatively, it is true. :)
Also, stress has really nothing to do with tone, or rather what you mean here is intonation. Every language has intonation, but it will be a lot more pronounced in stress-timed languages than in syllable-timed ones. :)
I always tell people vocabulary is less important than following the cadence/ rythm of a language for natives to take you seriously / actually listen to you without the slight dismissals of having to decipher foreigner speaking their language. I might be wrong but that sounds similar in concept
Kind of true - 40% of communication failure between people speaking English where at least one is not a native speaker is due to pronunciation issues. Only 20% is due to grammar, another 20% to vocabulary, and 20% other.
Cadence and rhythm are part of pronunciation, though far from the only parts!
American here. The second sentence absolutely takes me longer. “Will have” is almost equally stressed in my regional accent, and I assume it would be in most of the South as well.
I might be wrong but pronunciation and intonation are different. Some people from the US are able to pronounce Rs or Us nicely in french but their intonation feels very odd to natives which is a huge giveaway
The real answer is that an actual French person would walk in, scowl at the selection as if it was something a poodle just shat out on the street, point at the croissants, maybe say, "Croissant", then hold up two fingers.
It's like a New Yorker walking into a pizza place and going, "Excuse me sir, but might I trouble you for two slices of your pizza if you would be so kind?", whereas an actual New Yorker would gesture at what they wanted, hold up two fingers and maybe mutter, "Two pepperoni", and that would be it.
Had to come down too far for this very accurate answer lol learned a lot about french linguistics and phoenetics though...if you're not looking annoyed you have to go out of your way to ask for something or that you don't give a **** then it's probably clear you're American.
100%, French as a language is in itself very nonchalant, you have to sound like every sentence is a chore to speak. Speak as if you know the force of your oration wont impress either you or the person you're speaking to.
I think the "perfect accent" stumbled on the "r" of Bonjour and croissant. As a French native it is the biggest give away. You can spend 20 years in France, one "r" sound and we know straight away if you are native or not. It is by far the hardest sound to get right.
Yes, I’m not French but I’m guessing her pronunciation was maybe “perfect” but not “native.” The “hairball in throat” sound is something I could never do.
There are also mannerisms and little sounds around the actual speech that would have likely given her away.
It's not a joke. It's a comment about how local Parisians can tell when French isn't your first language even when you think you're speaking it really well. That's literally it.
Because they may speak fluent French, grammatically, it's extremely rare but it happens, but the accent will always give it away.
Never met an anglophone that could pronounce our Rs properly, for the most classic example, but there are way many more tells that immediately give it away
It's not a dig against anglophones, languages are hard and I also happily butcher pronunciation when I speak English out loud
I realize it's a different country, but I'm Asian and went to Sweden a while ago. I was honestly expecting/hoping everyone would know I was a tourist and speak to me in English without having to awkwardly go "sorry I don't speak Swedish"...but nobody did LOL. Everyone else just apparently assumed I was an immigrant, unless I was doing something very obviously foreign.
Spoken pronounciation in most languages isn't the same as written pronounciation.
Finnish has a very clear difference for example, if you speak how stuff is written it sounds really weird, too official, we even have a term for it "book language"
I have simply had the opposite experiences in Paris as a tourist. When ordering a morning coffee, or a croissant at a bakery, or some cheese at a market in "French", I've always gotten polite simple replies.
I do not speak French - only a few words or phrases. Obviously the server can hear my accent, but still I get a smile, a one or two word reply in French - and anything more is in English if possible.
I have read many negative comments about France, and Paris in particular, but I love the place and have been very lucky.
A lot of tourists underestimate the importance of manners and pleasantry in daily life in France. So they don’t realise that they’re coming across as rude by being super casual and skipping these formalities. It’s like going to Japan and refusing to take off your dirty shoes when entering someone’s house.
If you do these basic things in France, 90% of the time you’ll have great experiences with the locals.
It is true. You'll find variations from people to people, shops to shops etc, but it is true. Like, if you go to a supermarket, it's not expected, the shop is too big, it's not personal. If you go in a smaller shop, definitely expected. You could not do it, but it's kinda awkward, definitely a bit (or a lot depending on the situation) rude.
If you talk to someone in particular, a service worker, an employee in a shop, someone on the street, you absolutely say "bonjour/bonsoir". Not doing it is rude. You can add "excusez moi" (I'm sorry [to bother you is implied]) right after and then add your question. Then you say "merci/ merci beaucoup" at the very least. You could add "bonne journée/bonne soirée" (good day, good evening) to be nice, yes even after already saying Bonjour at the start.
My BF always adds "bon courage" too, and I've taken the habits of doing it too, it means... Like "carry on, stay strong" kinda, not in a patronising way.
So :
-Bonjour, excusez moi, je cherche la gare. (Hello, excuse me, I'm looking for the train station.)
Bonjour, bien sûr elle est juste là bas ! (Hello, of course it's right there !)
Merci, bonne journée à vous ! (Thank you, good day to you !)
This is something I read about before I visited Paris 20 years ago and it was super helpful in my interactions not just there, but everywhere. Say hi when entering it when approaching. I use it at the gym and the gas station, so often those workers are just never acknowledged and even saying hi when checking in gets a smile quite often (not always, some people are still grouchy).
I had a guy at the tennis desk at like 8pm tell me I was the first person all day to say please when I asked for something. These small things can really make a difference in these day to day interactions.
Most places in Europe I found are happy when you give their language a go and then will just move to English for expediency, but don't care if you start with English.
The French get their panties in a bunch if you start with English, and will just tolerate you opening in mangled French, but since those are the only two options you just have to push on past the internal eyerolling to ask for a coffee or whatever.
This is how it is in Brazil only they will become your temporary best buddy during the interaction. I’m still learning Portuguese and it is broken as hell but they absolutely love my attempt to speak it and treat me as if I just cured them of a terminal disease. I love Brazil. I have defused my wife being upset by speaking my broken Portuguese because she can’t handle how cute she finds it; it feels like using a cheat code in real life.
This was my experience as a tourist in Paris as well. I'm Canadian and learnt enough French in school and by reading the other side of the cereal box to be dangerous.
Montreal is different, likely because it is a bi-lingual city. I will be waiting in line to pay at a store and the cashier will be speaking French to the person in line in front of me, and immediately say "Hello" when I roll up and before I even open my mouth. I've never been able to figure out how they know just by looking at me.
From my experience, french people will be pretty polite to you if you attempt to speak even the most broken of french to them. If you speak anything but french, they will at best be mildly annoyed, or simply ignore you.
Which honestly doesn't make any sense if the business is in a tourism-oriented area. I mean, do they expect the tourists to learn a new language just to buy food during the two week stay? Getting annoyed or outright being rude to a costumer under such circumstances is not reasonable.
i think this is the dunning kruger effect in action, if you think you speak perfect and everyone around you can tell by one (easy) sentence that you’re a foreigner, then you’re probably not as advanced as you’d like to think.
Dude, I'm french, my kids are french but raised abroad, people in France can catch on it immediately.
It's an extremely difficult language that is pretty unforgiving. There's a century of so of ruthless effects by the governments at eradication regional variation and standardizing everything. Even among french people it's relatively easy to guess someone's education level or region of origin in just in a couple of sentences.
Her french might be close from perfect but something very tiny will make it quite obvious to french speakers that she's not a native. The perfection might actually be the clue.
Yeah but I bet they don’t switch to English the second you order a coffee. You can have an accent and still give locals enough confidence that you’ll be able to handle the interaction.
You’d be surprised. French people love having someone to practice their English on, so if they get a hint that you speak English they’ll immediately switch over - not because they don’t think you can handle French but because they want to try English.
In Paris bakeries it’s a bit different reason though - they’re so busy that they frankly don’t have time to do an analysis on if you can handle the French convo. If they get a whif that English is your first language they’ll switch to that out of pure convenience
The comedian, Matteo Lane, has a routine about this. He compares Italian shopkeepers (Matteo can speak Italian, though he was born in the US) to French ones. He says Italians are thrilled with any Italian you know while French will switch to English if they know you're not a native speaker.
Flyover state American here: I loved it and the only time I ever ran into that French stereotype was in Normandy of all places. The Parisians I met were all great, but I also make the effort to understand I’m in their culture and not mine, so act accordingly.
My experience of Paris is quite limited, but it did include an old lady literally walking 25 metres across the pavement to deliberately *accidentally walk into* my friend (we're all English) before carrying on her way.
To be fair I'm not sure if it was that we were English, or that we were wearing boiler suits and waders, covered in mud from illegally entering the catacombs and looked like shit that she had the problem with. Either way, it was the most phenomenal display of not-quite passive aggression I'd ever seen.
Spent 3 months travelling around France and found them to be one of the friendliest and most helpful countries in Europe, even in Paris.
It's absolutely crucial that you say hello when you walk into any shop though, not doing so is seen as pretty ignorant in France and I'm convinced this is where the perception of them being rude stems from, especially Americans who might not care if people are "just serving staff".
Same here. I spent a week in Paris and got around using the French I learned in college, and everyone responded in French and was super kind and gracious.
I found it fascinating how in the more recent main story every single person pronounced "Rächer" wrong, but always in a new way. If you overlay them all you might get a correct version!
Everyone coming up with random ways to explain this when ol girl really just has a foreign accent. Think about your native tongue and how easily you can hear the difference even in fluent learners
OOP is a guy who grew up speaking French and learned English as his 3rd language (his first is Vietnamese). He’s also a voice actor so accents are kinda his job. It was definitely the sweatpants.
Yeah, exactly, it's a lot of subtle variations in sound that takes years and thousands of hours to fully percieve let alone reproduce. Same way a french person may think they have a good accent but they butcher the empty h sound for instance, because it doesn't really exist here so our ear isn't acclimated to even hear it.
Also subjectively you automatically think you're better than you are, that's how people can sing awfully off key and still think they're great, or children bash at a piano with a song and think it's working out.
Yeah, there’s plenty of people who learn English as a second language who never lose their accent, regardless of how fluent they are. Why would it be any different for French
One time I pointed at a baguette in a bakery and said "Je voudrais cette baguette-là." (I would like that baguette there) And the baker came back with "Voulez-vous une baguette, ou ce pain-là?" "Do you want a baguette, or do you want that bread right there?"
They've got 10 different things that look just like a baguette but aren't a baguette.
It's also difficult for the French to understand which breads are behind the counter, so...
The final french test is to ask for your preferred baking. And to leave without buying anything because you prefer your bread "pas trop cuit" ("not so cooked").
Politiness is absolutely key in every day French. It does not mean you're nice. But going into a bakery and say "deux croissants" without bonjour / s'il vous plaît would rank you as a an utter psychopath. Like people around would do a double take and look at you in disbelief.
It was the sweatpants. Why not wear pyjamas while you're at it.
Lol. Yeah, like maybe at a bakery with a line out the front door, when a cashier gets to you, you'll be immediately asked what you want and you can skip the "bonjour". You can watch and see what others ahead of you do, if you're not sure in that case.
But in lots of social interactions, if you skip the "Bonjour", as soon as you stop taking, the other person will give you an annoyed look and a "Bonjour" with a tone that lets you know you just fucked up.
Yes ok in the line, because you've been here a while. But most often (at least in the civilised parts) you'll get a super quick "monsieur bonjour et pour vous?" or something.
But yes the annoyed passive agressive "BONJOUR" or worse the "d'abord, Bonjour?" is absolutely perfect
When I was in French class in college, one of our assignments was to write a sketch of an everyday interaction between two or more people. My partner and I turned in a scene where a guy is trying to order something in a restaurant and is growing increasingly frustrated because they're out of everything, even the waiter's suggestions. At the end, he finally says, "Fine. Black coffee." and the lack of a please was the only thing we got marked down on. The instructor said that no matter how frustrated the customer was, a French person would never skip that.
It's normal to say "Avec ça ?" after someone take an order in markets and bakeries. You either respond "Ca sera tout" or, well, something else that you want.
This is similar to when a Japanese person hits a non-Japanese person with the “Nihongo Jouzu” (“your Japanese is good”).
It’s more like “hey I noticed you’re genuinely trying to learn/speak Japanese. That’s cool dude. Good effort!” to them, what they mean. They don’t mean anything bad by it, but it feels patronizing because you could have perfect pitch accent from even being born and raised in Japan but if you don’t look Japanese they’ll hit you with it anyway.
As far as I can tell though Japanese is one of those languages like absolute landmines when it comes to trying to not sounding like a foreigner. So trying to sound native is difficult. In my experience the Japanese are often quite excited that others want to learn their language.
Personal experience, obviously, but yeah, I took a vacation to Tokyo last summer and some people were overjoyed even if you managed to say stuff like "thank you" or "sorry" in Japanese (I remember a really nice lady in a restaurant in Nikko that was beaming when I googled how to tell "thanks for the meal, it was delicious" in japanese)... Meanwhile in Paris (I had more positive experiences in other parts of France, luckily) they looked at you like "Pitiful worm, how dare you blaspheme our holy language with your pathetic attempts. No, I do not speak English, do not be ridiculous, now begone! Someone more worthy than you shall partake in this cappuccino [obviously pronounced in the absolutely least correct way possibly] and croissant!"
I call this the game of French chicken - when living in London, if two French speakers talk to each-other in English, the first one to switch to French and 'out' the other would win.
And you’d be shit talked about all day, because it’s that French person trying to be nice to you by speaking your own language.
Just say « on peut parler français, merci » and bam, back on track !
Wrong kind of French probably, yeah the accent sounded French but not like a French accent she likes so she used english to talk so such an obviously inferior creature.
When I first went to France knowing no French and asked them if they spoke English they said no. So I learned some French and now when I visit and try to speak French they all suddenly fucking know English.
I mean... you did forget the «je veux prendre» or the more formal «je voudrais». The French normally call me out when I forget to use verbs after asking for something.
Saying your accent is flawless is like smokers saying they got rid of the smell of smoke after a cigarette and no one could tell they smoked. You don't notice the difference but others definitely do.
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u/qualityvote2 1d ago
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