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Post by lagatta on Mar 12, 2019 12:05:47 GMT
Breeze, I'm listening to the morning show on Radio-Canada and there is no French speaker in Europe or Africa who couldn't understand it. Now, when they do "streeters" it can be another matter. Not to mention the countryside!
A friend originally from Nîmes was wondering why suddenly his daughter sounds more like him than his wife/her mother. There are a great many people from Francophone parts of Africa, north and west, and now a lot of Français pur porc. The population isn't going to sound like folk from Paris ... or Nîmes, but there are definitely accent shifts underway.
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Post by questa on Mar 12, 2019 12:37:37 GMT
I noticed last week while I had a few days in Sydney that the locals were using more Americanisms. Trunk of a car, not boot, elevator for lift and gotten or have gotten now seems to be almost universal
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 12, 2019 13:05:07 GMT
I noticed last week while I had a few days in Sydney that the locals were using more Americanisms. Trunk of a car, not boot, elevator for lift and gotten or have gotten now seems to be almost universal I haven't noticed it in Neighbours. I must listen more closely...
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Post by fumobici on Mar 12, 2019 15:44:45 GMT
Breeze, I'm listening to the morning show on Radio-Canada and there is no French speaker in Europe or Africa who couldn't understand it. Now, when they do "streeters" it can be another matter. Not to mention the countryside! A friend originally from Nîmes was wondering why suddenly his daughter sounds more like him than his wife/her mother. There are a great many people from Francophone parts of Africa, north and west, and now a lot of Français pur porc. The population isn't going to sound like folk from Paris ... or Nîmes, but there are definitely accent shifts underway. Broadcast voices are generally easily understood across various regional dialects. But real people frequently don't speak a dictionary language, but a dialect plus slang/colloquial that isn't codified anywhere. Everyone in Italy can understand dictionary/broadcast Italian but it is so seldom spoken in real life that I'm am almost astonished when I actually hear it in the wild. I was in a small Umbrian town of Trevi earlier this Winter and there was a table of people speaking perfect Italian dining next to me and I *really* wondered where they were from to speak like that.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 12, 2019 17:51:33 GMT
Impact of dialects I would say ? Same here Ith Flemish people whilst not so with frenchspeaking. We have different accents but globally speak the same everywhere.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 13, 2019 0:47:11 GMT
I've never had problems understanding people in Umbria - even non-intellectuals; such as manual workers (including skilled workers who have a hell of a lot of knowledge but aren't required to speak standard Italian), rural people at fairs and farmers' markets etc. But I spent quite a while there acquiring standard, professional Italian (I have always spoken some, but...) I'm in the same category as the newscaster as earlier, I did a lot of conference interpretation. I find that too tiring now - it is an incredibly high-stress profession. But it means having to overarticulate in different languages. It isn't just a matter of Londoners and New Yorkers - many of the people who need interpretation are speaking one of the conference languages as a second or third language.
One of my funniest encounters was with a Polish work partner who spoke Glaswegian...
By the way, I am still a real person.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 13, 2019 12:55:50 GMT
Had to google Glaswegian :-)
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Post by fumobici on Mar 13, 2019 14:55:22 GMT
I've never had problems understanding people in Umbria - even non-intellectuals; such as manual workers (including skilled workers who have a hell of a lot of knowledge but aren't required to speak standard Italian), rural people at fairs and farmers' markets etc. But I spent quite a while there acquiring standard, professional Italian (I have always spoken some, but...) I'm in the same category as the newscaster as earlier, I did a lot of conference interpretation. I find that too tiring now - it is an incredibly high-stress profession. But it means having to overarticulate in different languages. It isn't just a matter of Londoners and New Yorkers - many of the people who need interpretation are speaking one of the conference languages as a second or third language. One of my funniest encounters was with a Polish work partner who spoke Glaswegian... By the way, I am still a real person. Oh, if they realize you aren't a local most will change to Italian to be understood. Then the instant they are talking to anyone else, revert back to regional dialect. In a group setting you will only easily understand the part addressed to you.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 13, 2019 15:26:01 GMT
France still has a surprising number of hard-to-understand accents for such a small country (albeit bigger than Italy). Obviously, television and movies have caused most people to use the same words, but the pronunciations can be wildly divergent between remote areas (mountain villages, remote rural areas) and the cities. It is not at all unusual to ask people from those places to repeat once or twice their statement if you didn't get it the first time. Luckily, this amuses both sides.
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Post by bjd on Mar 13, 2019 15:44:28 GMT
" Luckily, this amuses both sides."
Except when they want to be insulting, like Melanchon a couple of months ago claiming he couldn't understand the reporter from Toulouse because he didn't want to answer her question. That did not go down well here, when he said, "Is there a question from someone who speaks French?"
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Post by lagatta on Mar 13, 2019 17:09:46 GMT
That is ghastly, bjd, and one of the reasons people, who do appreciate his intelligence, find him arrogant and overbearing. Toulouse is both a major university and major hi-tech manufacturing centre, not a two-horse town. And she would obviously be an educated person speaking standard French with a southwestern accent.
Fumobici, I spent quite a while in Perugia and could understand locals speaking to each other. It isn't a particulary difficult dialect; it is central Italian. That is one of the reasons foreign students study there. Try Calabrian! I had to transcribe over 50 interviews with Calabrians, mainly elderly. And people in Udine speak a completely different language, though they will switch to a sort-of-Venetian Italian to speak with folk from away.
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Post by bjd on Mar 13, 2019 17:59:10 GMT
One day I was in my garden and heard the neighbour and her mother speaking. I finally asked what language it was and she said, "Italian." I answered that I had studied Italian and it didn't sound like that. She then told me they were from Venice and it was the Venetian dialect. It really didn't sound like anything I could understand.
Yes, Lagatta. Melanchon can be a real dickhead. Particularly in this case because he got himself elected in Marseille, where the accent is more pronounced than in Toulouse.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 13, 2019 18:13:40 GMT
I am just amused that now he feels the need to attend the football games in Marseille, because he despises the sport.
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Post by mossie on Mar 13, 2019 20:51:35 GMT
When I had my asphalt hat on I once took on a real Glaswegian, a good worker and a real character. It took a few weeks before I could understand him. He was one of your real 'hard cases', and his wife left him. One night he went round to where she was living and set light to her car.
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Post by fumobici on Mar 13, 2019 22:50:53 GMT
Yes, Umbria and Tuscany hew pretty closely to Italian in the more urban parts and Perugia is a cosmopolitan university town, but it can get pretty regional/backwoodsy in the smaller places. I'm just getting used to the Tuscan Anghiarese speech for instance after years of visits. In Anghiari, "buonasera" begins at noon!
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 14, 2019 0:25:25 GMT
One night he went round to where she was living and set light to her car. I did figure that out, but a good example of a perfectly good phrase in one English-speaking country that is not used in another one.
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Post by questa on Mar 14, 2019 3:58:36 GMT
In Oz the phrase would be 'set her car alight' or 'set fire to her car'
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Post by lagatta on Mar 14, 2019 11:28:05 GMT
Pretty scary in any variant!
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 14, 2019 16:16:42 GMT
In an episode of Doc Martin a woman is wearing one of those whiplash collars. I couldn't understand why the doctor kept calling it a "survival collar". Finally I realized he was saying "cervical" collar, but pronouncing cervical as ser vie cal (accent on 2nd syllable), as opposed to ser vi cal.
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Post by bjd on Mar 14, 2019 16:25:14 GMT
In French they are called a "minerve". A Roman goddess must have suffered whiplash in a chariot accident.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 14, 2019 19:26:04 GMT
Mossie it reminds me when I was in the army there was one guy I couldn't understand and neither did he say understand me. Being the only frenchspeaking among Flemish i thought it was my problem until someone told me the guy in question didn't speak Flemish at all. Only dialect. So we had to use a translator.
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Post by questa on Mar 15, 2019 0:03:46 GMT
I toured once with one American and 14 Brits of all ages and occupations. There was one couple from Blackpool. The poor woman spent her time translating for us as NO-ONE could understand a word he was saying. He worked as a taxi driver, but only with locals who could understand his dialect/accent.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 21, 2019 15:40:33 GMT
Where I grew up, Craig rhymes with Greg. But watching Doctor Who, I find that I prefer Craig pronounced the way it is written.
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 12, 2019 19:49:02 GMT
My dear American friends. Is St. Louis the place pronounced with or without the s at the end.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 12, 2019 19:50:37 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 12, 2019 19:52:00 GMT
But in real life, with the S at the end.
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 12, 2019 19:58:05 GMT
Confused.com
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 12, 2019 19:59:14 GMT
Watching a new series if Hairy Bikers on Route 66 and it’s pronounced both ways.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 12, 2019 20:00:57 GMT
Coming as you do from the country that rendered Jerez as "sherry", there's not much you can say about that S in St. Louis. If you think that's bad, you should hear how the Greek muse streets are pronounced in New Orleans.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 12, 2019 20:03:19 GMT
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