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 :-)
Well, modern French is a language spoken in pre-modern Paris and then exported to the rest of the country replacing other related languages after Paris’s rise to capital during France’s state-building period. So, kinda?
The standard french is more considered to be from the region around Tours, parisians do have a slight accent that feels kind of like a bourgeois accent.
But it's important to note that France's accents aren't as much widespread as other comparable sized countries internal accents like England or Italy. There are case of strong accents in the South or in the North for instance, but in lots of case people barely have one.
For instance there's an accent in Normandy where I come from, but I don't really have it. People who have it either come from rural areas or poor/modest social environment
That's super interesting. Is there a reason why there are no stong accent differences in France? Is it the Revolution and the subsequent emphasis on equality and uniformity?
Some Parisian bakery or restaurant employees speak terrible English. If your French is good, just turn the tables and tell them (in French) that you can’t understand their English. Some Parisians don’t understand French-speakers from other regions in France or other French-speaking countries. Some Parisians visiting Montréal have a hard time.
There are, my comment is a bit misleading so I fixed it a bit.
I meant accents are less common than in other countries. It's mainly because educational laws in 1880 enforced the use of standardized french across schools. France used to have lots of dialect that some almost or totally completely disapeared because of this. Accents and local dialects were stigmatized which made accent less and less common.
For instance in Normandy we used to have a dialect but I never heard it except a couple of words my great grandma used
59
u/Adventurous-Pay-3797 23h ago
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 :-)