French

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France
To get back to the "mistakes" subject, here are some pronunciation ones:

Etc.: "ecsétéra" instead of "etsétéra" (I use the former)
Dégingandé: "déguingandé" instead of "déjingandé".
Abasourdi: "abassourdi" instead of "abazourdi".
Quelque chose: "quètchoze" instead of "que(l)que choze". I had a philosophy teacher who used it (and he also pronounced bonobo "bonono" which is about the funniest thing I have ever heard given that he was the stereotypical French philosopher type. He also pronounced quelqu'un "quinquin", which is rarer than quètchoze but I've heard it often).

Those mistakes aren't all made by the same people of course; for instance, most people would simply never use "dégingandé" to begin with. So kind of a "learned mistake", whereas "quètchoz" is more on the side of popular French. But like the example of my teacher shows, things can be fluid.
 

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France
Another one, but it tends to be common more among children than adults (although adults can do it too) is to pronounce the syllable "re" as "ro", particularly when it's at the beginning of a word. A somewhat classic case, that was used in an ad years back, is "roblochon" (the cheese reblochon), but things like rogarde or rocopieur are/were pretty common at school. I find it fascinating: a lot of e's get elided, whereas others take the exact opposite route and get strengthened instead by being replaced with a more stable phoneme. Not sure how that works. (I talked about the re>ro phenomenon because it seems the tendency is stronger with this sequence, but it might happen with other consonants as well and at other places than the beginning of a word, I'm not sure)
 

interprete

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Dégingandé: "déguingandé" instead of "déjingandé".
That’s me :eek: :D
Je mourrai moins bête ! I never noticed there was no U in there, and I have never, ever, heard it pronounced right. Not that I hear it every day though...
 

interprete

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

This reminds me of gageure, which I’ve heard pronounced correctly only once in my life, by a high-school French teacher of mine (she basically taught us that word). The few times I’ve heard it ever since, it was pronounced as spelled. But maybe this is a specific case because you can’t guess the proper pronunciation from the spelling, like Laguiole and de Broglie.
 

interprete

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

The "ecsetera" thing is common in English as well. People also say "ecscape."
This reminds me of ’nucelar’ weapons, which I first heard from Bush. It’s funny how it seems to be perfectly accepted.
 

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France
I have never, ever, heard it pronounced right.
I've heard the """correct""" pronunciation a few times, but indeed, most of the time you hear the other one.
This reminds me of gageure, which I’ve heard pronounced correctly only once in my life, by a high-school French teacher of mine (she basically taught us that word). The few times I’ve heard it ever since, it was pronounced as spelled. But maybe this is a specific case because you can’t guess the proper pronunciation from the spelling, like Laguiole and de Broglie.
Ah, gageure, my mom's pet peeve! I could never get it wrong ;)
 

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France
A little off-topic, but this whole discussion about mistakes and "mistakes" is one I find particularly interesting in that I've always liked how on one hand, French is often mentioned as one of the prettiest languages in the world, while on the other hand, its beauty, i.e. in a sense its uniqueness, its difference from other Romance languages, comes in large part from the very fact that we are/were the ones who made the greatest number of mistakes when speaking, or as I like to put it: on parle comme des porcs, and we've been doing so for a few centuries. The linguistics lingo for that is that French is generally regarded as being the most "innovative" Romance language, which in everyday speak pretty much means "people have been making a whole lot of mistakes".

So, let's celebrate the beauty of French -- and our mistakes! :)
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Dégingandé: "déguingandé" instead of "déjingandé".
Abasourdi: "abassourdi" instead of "abazourdi".
I don't think I've ever heard the "correct" pronunciations of those...
 

Quintilianus

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
France
I used to think "regimbe" was pronounced "reguimbe".
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Quintilianus! I was wondering where you had been, thinking you should be here to take part in the Francophone takeover.
 

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France
Too busy pumping, maybe.
(for the fools who don't know the Shadoks/Quintilianus' avatar:
Not that I'm a huge fan of explaining jokes, but that may lead to confusion, particularly on a non-French forum!)
 

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France
Posted this one on one of the game threads, but it has its place here as well, reconstitution of Middle French pronunciation, by linguist A. Z. Foreman:

An even better video from him is this one, different stages of French arranged in chronological order:
11th and 13th centuries kinda make me think of some varieties of Catalan, phonologically-speaking.
 
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Clemens

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

Location:
Maine, United States.
Posted this one on one of the game threads, but it has its place here as well, reconstitution of Middle French pronunciation, by linguist A. Z. Foreman:

An even better video from him is this one, different stages of French arranged in chronological order:
11th and 13th centuries kinda make me think of some varieties of Catalan, phonologically-speaking.
I like the line: Elle nont eskoltet les mals conselliers.

I can make out what Old French means (and Sainte-Eulalie is the among the very oldest), usually, but English of the same period is much harder.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Here's some interesting stuff, which I've shared in other parts of the forum in the past:


 

kizolk

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Bourgogne, France

Clemens

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

Location:
Maine, United States.
Here's a question that will be helpful to me in my work: my students, being all Anglophones, often bring their own idioms into French, so recently, when I was asking them to say things they did at the beach, they were saying things like Je suis allé nager, or Je suis allé faire de la voile, obviously calqued on the English I went swimming and I went sailing. I don't recall ever hearing a native speaker utter sentences like this, so I'm wondering if this is ok in French or sounds like English translated into French, which is my instinct.
 
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