No, Seriously, Pardon My French
July 19, 2013 3:13 PM   Subscribe

Native or longtime speakers of French, as it is spoken in France: How does my spoken noob French come across? Link to embarrassing sound file inside.

Just got back from a trip to France (Paris and Dieppe, *loved it*), and I'm curious as to how my spoken French came across while I was there.

Background: American, took three years of French in high school, which was over 20 years ago, and that's been about the extent of my practice since then. On my trip, I took along a phrase dictionary and a translation app on my tablet for backup.

I got around OK on my trip--I seemed to have been generally understood when asking questions, understood some of what people said back, and overall I found just about everybody there to be gracious with my French (when I apologized for not being great at it, I got a range of responses from the just-being-polite "Oh no, it's very good!" to "Well, I can understand you, so you speak it well enough, right?"). Clearly, though, when I opened my mouth it was obvious I was a non-fluent foreigner, and I noticed several people leaning in to listen closely when I spoke.

So... I'd like to know what the overall impression my speech made. I want to improve for future trips to France, so it'd be helpful to know what to work on in the meantime.

Here's a link to a recording I made of myself speaking a few sentences. More specifically, I'm interested in:

1) Overall, how thick is my foreign accent? Is it distinctly an American accent?
2) Does it sound like I learned ten French words on the plane over, or does it indicate some study and practice on my part? Do I sound more like a four-year-old cave-boy, or like an adult who's just new at the language?
2) Do I place emphasis on the wrong words in my sentences? Do I rush certain words or phrases or speak some too slowly?
3) Does the tone of my voice match what I'm talking about in the sound file? Or does it seem too happy/angry/strange relative to what I'm talking about?
4) Does my vocabulary/speech/pronunciation/sentence structure suggest any particular "version" of French? For example, do I sound particularly formal or informal, or as though I learned "office workplace" French, "formal classroom" French, or some other identifiable type?
5) What stood out to you as particularly needing improvement? What do you recommend I work on most in improving my French?

I'm not looking for any false reassurance here; I really want an honest analysis of the impression I make with my French, so I can improve. Feel free to say "You sound like an idiot," if that's the case. And I know it's difficult to glean much from a short sound file--I'd be happy to put up another recording, or even read aloud something you recommend specifically, if it helps. Merci beaucoup!
posted by Rykey to Writing & Language (12 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Work on your vowel sounds, particularly the mouth shapes that give rise to them. Many sounds (e.g. the "ah" in "place", the "en" in prendre) require you to do things with your mouth that never occur in English. Prendre is much more nasal than you're making it.

I am not a native French speaker, but my mother is, and I spent a lot of time in French-speaking countries as a child.
posted by phrontist at 3:52 PM on July 19, 2013


1) Overall, how thick is my foreign accent? Is it distinctly an American accent?

Quite thick, typical for a native speaker of English (from a French POV anyway). Still mostly understandable.

2) Does it sound like I learned ten French words on the plane over, or does it indicate some study and practice on my part? Do I sound more like a four-year-old cave-boy, or like an adult who's just new at the language?

Like an adult new at the language and who made some solid efforts to learn it.

2) Do I place emphasis on the wrong words in my sentences? Do I rush certain words or phrases or speak some too slowly? 3) Does the tone of my voice match what I'm talking about in the sound file? Or does it seem too happy/angry/strange relative to what I'm talking about?

Actually it sounds like you're reading a text so it comes off a little flat. Each language has its own prosody and it's very difficult to get right (particularly since the "music" is regional). In any case, the same text read by a native French speaker would be much faster (no pause for instance between un train and à Lyon).

4) Does my vocabulary/speech/pronunciation/sentence structure suggest any particular "version" of French? For example, do I sound particularly formal or informal, or as though I learned "office workplace" French, "formal classroom" French, or some other identifiable type?

There's a few obvious mistakes so it's "intermediate level" French: Nous voudrons acheter instead of Nous voudrions acheter or the less formal On voudrait acheter; J'irai au gare et prendrai un train à Lyon instead of J'irai à la gare prendre le/un train pour Lyon; Visiter toutes les places instead of Visiter tous les endroits or simply Tout visiter (place exists in French but it's not used in this context). The bit that starts with Il n'y pas trop [?] de temps was somehow garbled though the general meaning was clear.

5) What stood out to you as particularly needing improvement? What do you recommend I work on most in improving my French?

For a foreigner who speaks French, it's really OK. I'm less bothered than phrontist by your vowels actually. Your French speech mostly lacks fluency and rhythm. Try to find the soundtrack from a recent French movie and mimic what your hear (I am not a language teacher though, so perhaps that's terrible advice). Good luck!
posted by elgilito at 5:23 PM on July 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Try to find the soundtrack from a recent French movie and mimic what your hear (I am not a language teacher though, so perhaps that's terrible advice)

I was a language teacher, and it's excellent advice. Getting the hang of a second language's rhythm and word/sentence stress patterns is key to sounding closer to native speech. Mimicking movies and TV is a good way to do it.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:29 PM on July 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


My college French prof, who openly disliked me, memorably told me I had unusually good pronunciation for a student (memorably because it was one of the few nice things he ever said to me). I thought this was especially funny, because I basically just swallowed or slurred or breathed over every sound I wasn't sure about. For whatever that's worth. (Probably just a laugh.) Although, come to think of it, I probably did have some sense of what the most common words were supposed to sound like from watching so many New Wave films in high school. It's certainly an enjoyable enough way to tune your ear, and it can't hurt.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:36 PM on July 19, 2013


I mean, there is a LOT of talking in some of those films.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:41 PM on July 19, 2013


I was a language teacher, and it's excellent advice. Getting the hang of a second language's rhythm and word/sentence stress patterns is key to sounding closer to native speech. Mimicking movies and TV is a good way to do it.

Absolutely. In an ESL teaching programme, one of my fellow students once observed that the rhythms of any language work a certain way and that non-native speakers often give themselves away on this, even when pronunciation and syntax are excellent. The example she used was a series of variations on a single sentence. To a native English speaker, those stresses are like tent poles holding up the rest of the sentence in each permutation.

The sentence and its variants: mice eat cheese / the mice eat the cheese / the mice have eaten the cheese / the mice will have eaten the cheese (and so on). You can hear the shape of each one and its similarities to the next one. French is no different from English in this regard -- the rhythm is not the same, of course, but once you hear it you are halfway home.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:23 PM on July 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Hi - I am a Brit living in France since 2011. I speak perhaps just a little better than you. In general I don't think you sound bad - I would be able to guess that you were a foreigner but not that you were an American. Of course one can speak French with a thick American accent and sound endearingly like Blossom Dearie - (this clip sounds how an American speaker of French might be depicted on a French TV program for example).

Probably the most important thing is that you appear to have attained the level of French were most people will be happy to talk with you in that language rather than switching to English. For what its worth my own current resources for trying to improve my accent and grammar are:
1. Ultralinguaga French/English dictionary as an app
2. Doulingo - for grammar at an intuitive level
3. About French for more grammar rules
4. Coffeebreak French for spoken language
5. Youtube for examples of native speakers talking about things - recipes for example.
6. French TV - hard to access if not in France - although Captvity may work.
7. Meetup groups for those local to you who may be interested in talking to you in French.
posted by rongorongo at 4:42 AM on July 20, 2013 [9 favorites]


Oh - and the reasons why I would conclude you were not a native speaker are nothing to do with your phrasing or your errors: I would simply notice that you were speaking rather slowly and that I could understand suspiciously much of what you were saying: ie that your constructions were more simple than those a native speaker would employ.
posted by rongorongo at 5:18 AM on July 20, 2013


I live in a french-speaking place, and you sound like someone whose first language is english and has spent some time studying French french. It's quite understandable. I don't think you sound particularly American.

I think you should just practice speaking French more, really! You're speaking pretty slowly and the rhythm is not quite right.
posted by oranger at 7:10 AM on July 20, 2013


1) Overall, how thick is my foreign accent? Is it distinctly an American accent?
Noticeably foreign, but not noticeably American in the way that makes me cringe and hide and want to prove that some Americans can actually speak understandable French. I hear those a lot, as I work in a French company with many Americans, and I live in Paris around a lot of tourists. I am a little bit dense about identifying foreign accents in French, but it seems like other posters agree with me.

2) Does it sound like I learned ten French words on the plane over, or does it indicate some study and practice on my part? Do I sound more like a four-year-old cave-boy, or like an adult who's just new at the language?
An adult who has spent some time studying and practicing. If you learned ten words on the plane over, you could not construct the sentences or conjugate the verbs you did (even with the little errors/idiosyncrasies that have been pointed out). A lot more of the meaning would depend on pointing and questioning your listener if they understood.

2) Do I place emphasis on the wrong words in my sentences? Do I rush certain words or phrases or speak some too slowly?
The speed is understandable, and there are French people who speak slowly. What is missing is the "song" as identified above. Have you ever used a phone service, say to reserve a taxi, or listened in the airport, and heard it repeat numbers back to you individually? They make sense together but don't have the exact rhythm needed to make one complete, uninterrupted song. It makes a HUGE difference in comprehension. Others above recommended movies, I also suggest finding songs you like and singing along because they force you to emote.

3) Does the tone of my voice match what I'm talking about in the sound file? Or does it seem too happy/angry/strange relative to what I'm talking about?
With the answer above, you are lacking the song and with it some of the emotion. Someone above said flat, I was going to say robotic, and it matches the comparison to the airport announcements! You're probably so busy pronouncing and identifying what comes next that it's a lot of extra work to put in the extra emotion. It's worth the effort!

4) Does my vocabulary/speech/pronunciation/sentence structure suggest any particular "version" of French? For example, do I sound particularly formal or informal, or as though I learned "office workplace" French, "formal classroom" French, or some other identifiable type?
You sound like you are studying, so probably learning from a book. There's nothing informal or slangy or idiomatic to it, so it would suggest to me you are not learning "on the streets" or "between the sheets." After three years here (I learned before moving) I still speak like I learned at university because I can communicate without all of this slang. Very professional sounding, but my friends probably think I am a bore.

5) What stood out to you as particularly needing improvement? What do you recommend I work on most in improving my French?
The rhythm! The correct rhythm will let you spill out the emotions and people will understand your words better. Get some music. In real life or movies, pay attention to the filler phrases (ehhh not umm) and the semi-verbal and non-verbal expressions (ahh pfft, bah ouais) that fill in the conversation. You can still make stupid mistakes in conjugation and gender and people will largely understand you. I'm proof!

Background: American, more-or-less fluent in French, 3 years in Paris and counting.
posted by whatzit at 8:36 AM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


Background: I am a native French speaker and I teach college-level French.

The sample is short so it's hard to really identify your skills and weaknesses. Also, your little statement doesn't really fit any real context since you slip from asking to buy tickets to talking about what you are going to do after the film, so that the slightly robotic intonation you use is fine for talking to a ticket seller, but rather odd if you are discussing your vacation plans.

That said, I agree with the majority of other posters. Your accent is actually quite good. I have no issue with your vowels, and your "r"s are well rolled. Your intonation is also correct (you go up in the middle of a sentence, and come down at the end), but it lacks the music that breathes life into the language.

You sound like someone who is studying French and who has a good grasp of the structures you use: the future, the preposition "à" (à + city) and even the contraction "à+le", the feminine "toute"... I would say that if you were at the end of my elementary French I class, you would be among the top students.

(A dead giveaway that you are a French student is the sentence "c'est dommage," which French people do use, but nowhere near as much as Beginning French students use it!)

Your structures and vocabulary are however simple and sometimes wrong - as someone else mentioned, you should have used the conditional for your first verb; when talking about vacation plans, it's more idiomatic to use the futur proche. "Place" is an anglicism (you should say "endroit"). You make a gender error, but really, who doesn't? Even near-native French speakers miss the gender of things once in a while.

If you studied French for 3 years 20 years ago and then just picked up a phrase book, you clearly have a feel for the language. I would say all you need to do is get back into the saddle and be disciplined about it. As the people you met told you: your French is not bad at all, and you were able to communicate your ideas effectively with some errors that only sometimes impede comprehension. That's a high 3 on the AP (maybe even a 4 if the grader is generous!)!

To echo most of the advice already given, if learning French is a goal, flood your life with it. Change your facebook into French, pick French at the ATM, watch a lot of French movies, read French books, listen to French music, and then speak it. This last point is perhaps the most important part. You must move from passive to active learning - find someone who will speak French with you, talk to yourself in French, OUT LOUD. Memorize little bits of French movie dialogues and perform them. Write you own movie dialogue in French and perform it!

Here are two excellent resources for listening comprehension:
RFI (this provides you with simplified news bulletins, listening exercises, vocab exercises, etc.)
TV5 Monde (click on LANGUE FRANCAISE - same thing, news, activities, all geared for listening comprehension)

I would recommend listening/watching the news (JT) everyday on TV5 Monde (or other French news channels - TF1, Canalplus, etc.)

If speaking is your main goal, I would stick to reading things that don't use the literary past (passé simple), which really eliminates a lot of literature, and even children's fiction. Read French blogs, newspaper and magazine articles. If you are interested in reading fiction, be aware of this issue. An easy read that is geared for children and FSL students are the short stories of Le Petit Nicolas. Otherwise, famously, Camus' The Stranger was written in the passé composé.

Good luck!
posted by microcarpetus at 1:56 PM on July 20, 2013 [3 favorites]


More on improving prosody: Years ago I read an article by an American professor who wanted to improve his French while living in France--he was technically proficient but knew he didn't sound like a native French speaker. He describes an experience where he begins imitating Maurice Chevalier's French-accented English after watching the movie Gigi, and then realizes that when he does this, his mouth and tongue positions are automatically in the correct positions for proper French pronunciation. He calls it "reverse accent mimicry." I've used this technique with my second-language students and tried it myself when learning another language, and I was surprised at just how well it works.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:09 PM on July 20, 2013 [3 favorites]


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