Well, my question was more in the sense of "do it apply to Parisian French as well?", but it might be a common feature indeed.
I think I'd read something on this topic, but I can't remember much.
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I think I'd read something on this topic, but I can't remember much.
I still hear some differences in length... Most notable perhaps is the O is chose: definitely long.
Yup. Though I wonder if there aren't other things at play here, such as the rythmic accent. I guess phonetician/acoustician is a real job and it's hard to come up with a good methodology ^^'
I found it in Le Bon Usage.
Elle est déterminée par la nature de la consonne qui suit ; en particulier les voyelles toniques sont longues devant les consonnes continues sonores [v], [z], [3] et [R] non suivies d'une autre consonne : sève [se:v], vise [vi:z], rouge [Ru:3], corps [ko:R], mais morte [moRt].
When reading it, I suddenly thought of Bernard Cerquiglini, a linguist who taught in the college I went to and who had a very short show on TV5 Monde. This is typically the kind of sentences he would have liked I think haha
But damn, if I didn't know you were Belgian, I'm not sure I could have told you were. I do know not all Belgian accents sound like the stereotypical one French people like to make fun of, but still that pretty much sounds like Parisian French, or are my ears tired? ^^'
The length distinctions are much less noticeable to me here than when you read the words in isolation. Again, maybe my ears are tired.
That said, really, most Belgian people we see on TV have a pretty different accent from yours. Those who become TV hosts/actors (e.g. Virginie Effira) usually have a more subtle accent than some but still more noticeable than yours, but for instance most Belgian candidates in e.g. food shows have a much, much more noticeable accent.
Maybe they deliberately select candidates with broad accents to entertain the audience...
Ninja'd
But to take some other examples, I can definitely hear Angèle's or Stromae's accent, even though they're relatively subtle, but yours is even more so I think, based on that short recording and not optimal recording quality.
That said, their accent may be one of the reasons why they're selected. Maybe TV producers want Belgian people who "sound like Belgian people".
But to take some other examples, I can definitely hear Angèle's or Stromae's accent, even though they're relatively subtle, but yours is even more so I think, based on that short recording and not optimal recording quality.
Okay, it's more noticeable in this one. Well, the fact that you use the word "puissance" early on kinda helps
But I can also notice it in your R's. Some of them sound like Parisian R's, but others definitely have that Belgian quality (though not the stereotypical funny Belgian accent-type either). I also seem to notice interesting things going on with the vowels, but it's hard to analyze in real-time.Nice reading by the way!
I agree, they are subtle, but I can hear some of them, at least, and the melody of your speech is not so monotone as a Parisian, at least to my ears.
Thanks.Okay, it's more noticeable in this one. Well, the fact that you use the word "puissance" early on kinda helps
Nice reading by the way!
I'm not sure what you mean about Belgian Rs. But I get rather emphatic at some points in that reading, and that makes my Rs more... well, emphatic as well, I guess? Stronger, longer, harsher, or something like that.
There might be some of that (at least I did notice a change at some point), but I do think it's more generally the Belgian R. In fact, R's are pretty much the main feature French people try to mimick when impersonating Belgians (that, and saying "une foué" a lot). Like I said, yours aren't quite as harsh as the stereotypical ones, but even with emphasis a Parisian wouldn't pronounce them like that.
I was talking about Virginie Effira earlier; her R's are pretty much the only thing that shows she's not from France (or at least Paris; Northern France French varieties tend to have R's that are closer to the Belgian one(s)). Well, maybe some of her vowels and intonations too, but rhotics are the main giveaway usually for me.
I've asked my younger brother about it, because he has a number of features of popular French in his idiolect (but also possibly regionalisms: we moved to a very rural place in Yonne, Burgundy when he was 10, whereas I grew up and went to school in urban Seine-et-Marne, not far from Paris), and while he found "faulait" funny, at first he saw nothing wrong with "que je peuve"; as a matter of fact, that's his preferred way of saying it, even though he would probably use "puisse" in formal writing for instance. And yeah, the more I think about it, the more it feels like I may have understated its prevalence in today's spoken French of France-- bearing in mind that there are social and possibly regional differences. Other French people on this forum might have a better idea of how frequent it is, at least in their own social circles.
I should also add that whether in Seine-et-Marne or Yonne, my idiolect has always been a bit peculiar compared to how people spoke there, including my closest friends or indeed family, so I'm not the best informant for some of these things (as a speaker at least; I do tend to notice and remember a lot of things in other people's speech).
I mean, according to the rule, it should be peuve, except that it isn't. There are a number of irregular verbs in English that are in the process of regularizing or have recently regularized in English, but I still use the older irregular form because of the region I grew up in.
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While we're at it, what would you consider the most common "mistakes" that French people make. In American English, for example, you almost never hear people distinguish lay and lie correctly, and nearly everyone answers the question "How are you?" with "I'm good," rather than "I'm well." It's also really common in my region for people to have different past tense forms of some irregular verbs, something I've noticed in some rural dialects in English as well.