Can An Italian Understand French? France, Paris
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Welcome to episode 5! How much French can I understand as a native Italian speaker?
Links to the original creators! Check them out!
• What Parisians like an...
• dernière semaine au bu...
• On Teste 50 Mythes Ext...
French (français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛz]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl-languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.
French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents,[2] most of which are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 84 countries which share the official use or teaching of French. French is also one of six official languages used in the United Nations.[3] It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick, as well as other Francophone regions); Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont); Monaco; the Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere.[4]
In 2015, approximately 40% of the francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania.[5] French is the second-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.[6] Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as a second language.[7] French is the second-most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German; in certain institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union).[8] French is also the 18th most natively spoken language in the world, fifth most spoken language by total number of speakers and the second or third most studied language worldwide (with about 120 million learners as of 2017).[9] As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast.[10]
French is estimated to have about 76 million native speakers; about 235 million daily, fluent speakers;[11][1][12] and another 77-110 million secondary speakers who speak it as a second language to varying degrees of proficiency, mainly in Africa.[13] According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language",[14] without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses.[15] According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, the total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050.[16] OIF estimates 700 million by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa.[5]
French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization, the International Olympic Committee, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese
The older guy at 5:08 actually has the real accent of Paris, specifically the popular areas of Belleville and Ménilmontant.
The younger folk speak a with a gentrified accent heavy with a final "schwa" that tends to be considered very grating and vapid by the rest of France.
To give you an equivalent, they all sound (and often think) like Valley Californians.
Oh, no, not the Valley! 😅
Fascinating!
Exactly.
Haha I was about to comment more or less the same thing 😄
If by "Valley Californians" you mean...wealthy, spoiled individuals, who live in a southern region of their nation, spend their day complaining about their lives as they do nothing but spend ridiculous amounts of money on clothes, food, cars, and other frivolous things, while spending way too much time at the beach? Then...they are not Valley Californians, they are Tropéziens from Saint-Tropez. ;o)
Hi Metratron !
I'm almost a native speaker since I'm from Gabon. And 95% of my generation speak French, even at home. I too thought that she pronounced PariSS the first time, as per your remark. But the 2nd time, I understood why "you" are hearing an "S" there.
She's not actually saying PariSS. What's happening is, since the "R" is articulated with the throat in French (so the tongue almost stays flat) the stream of air vocalising the i, after freely passing the through the palet and the tongue almost hits the teeth, which are very close when you say Paris. That's what produces an involontary sibilant-like sound. It's more of of a "ich" sound, as a German would say it. That's what a foreign hear could hear, and interpret as an S, doubly mislead by the literal S which ends the word. I too hear it, but no way as an S. Being a native, I don't even think of it, but if pointed I know it just to be the result of pronoucing "RI" in Paris too strongly, à la française, and without deliberatly putting a sort of glottal stop at the end to prevent the false "sh" sound from occurring. I'm not a linguist though, but this how I understand the situation.
Keep up the good work. I'm a huge fan. Hi from Morocco !
Mbolo. That's exactly what happens here with the pronounciation of Paris.
Perfect and clear explanation
Very Interesting theory. This is indeed not a S, but a "breathing sound" that has either an anatomic reason as you pointed out, or is simply a pronunciation that many French people adopted unconsciously.
No she said an s we heard and s. At 1:50 she does not say an s when she says paris
@@thato596 You are obviously not French, no French person pronounce the "S" of Paris and she obviously makes a sound which isn't how we pronounce a "S".
Don't worry, there is a reason why you hear an S at the end of "Paris" in the first video!
It's a very common feature of colloquial speech, especially among younger people.
We tend to add an S or an H sound when the sentence ends with a vowel. So, for example, I might say "Bonne nuit-hhh" [bɔn nɥih] instead of "bonne nuit" [bɔn nɥi] :)
But the "s" is very very light
@@9grand Well, I'm french and I don't hear the "s"...
@@norbertlauret8119 yep same
It's just at the end of the exhalation, we drop a very slight [h] sound if there's a vowel at the end. It can be tricky for French learners sometimes
@@norbertlauret8119parce que t'es habitué, c'est plus l'accent parisien ça
Native Spanish speaker here, French is phonetically impenetrable to me ☺️
Skill issue
As a French native speaker, Spanish was totally impenetrable to me originally as well, until I learned it. Same for Catalan and Italian. We do share a lot though, it's just that we struggle to recognize our similarities because of phonology 😉
@@Gelu345 the goose sound?
Don’t worry, some French person will take offense and bed you, making you very penetrable 😂
As a French speaker myself, I find reading Spanish very easy sometimes despite never learning the language, but understanding what is said orally is just impossible...
I am really enjoying this series. Really fun and interesting.
I always thought that the French were weird, complicating themselves with 70 = soixante-dix, 80 = quatre-vingt, 90 = quatre--vingt-dix. In most cantons of Switzerland, 70 is septante, 80 is huitante, and 90 is nonante, much easier than the French French, with Geneva, being an exception, who still uses quatre-vingt for 80.
I'm curious to see what other languages, or dialects you'll try to gauge how much you understand the spoken and the written of that chosen language or dialect.
Anyway, thanks from a French-speaking Swiss, may you, your family, friends and also those who read this, have a good day, and bless you all noble ones.
If you're wondering about the numbers, it's because of the Gauls, that used a vigesimal system instead of a decimal system. 0-69 we use a decimal system. 80-99 we use a vigesimal system. 70-79 is the mutant inbred baby of both systems.
I think Neuchâtel and Jura also use "Quatre-vingts"
I believe what makes you think the woman is saying the S in Paris is "devoicing": she's actually pronouncig Paris as /paˈɾiç/ instead of the standard /paˈɾi/
As a native speaker I think this phenomenon is a lot more common with the word "oui" which is often pronounced /wiç/ instead of /wi/. I'm no linguist btw, it's from my experience
I think that's about right.
As an English speaker I wouldn't even have noticed the "s" (I had to go back to listen for it after he mentioned it) because in english we'd use a very deliberate "s" at the end. "par-iS". In Italian so many words end in a very strong vowel sound (and, if anything, it's likely to be stressed more at the end of a sentence) so he's expecting "par-IIIII". But she doesn't linger on that final vowel. As you said, you often hear the same thing when "Oui" is said by itself -- the final vowel stops as soon as it starts.
It's that new fangled annoying "hhh" sound that younger women add to the final i of the word, like Paris. They do it in Quebec also, now. 🙄
The "R" in French is an uvular fricative ([χ] / [ʁ]) though, not a dental tap ([ɾ]).
I was in France during the late 1980s, and I heard middle-aged French people saying “oui” with the German “ Ich” sound at the end.
As italian living in Paris I can write that understand french is pretty easy.
For sure the closest idiom to italian.
Corso é mais próximo ao italiano
Your french accent is flawless. I'm impressed !
I really appreciate this channel a lot. It became a part of my morning routing to watch the new video you uploaded.
Tibi gratiam debeo, magister
about the word "voiture", it is actualy quite generic in french, it means passenger vehicule. For instance, a horse puled cart with comfy seat and roof is a "voiture", or if in a train, you have a seat in a passenger wagon number N, you search for "la voiture n°N", "wagon" being for cargo only.
In the customary comparison of common words between two languages, we often overlook the fact that the most crucial, frequently used, and briefest words do not share any resemblance. And even if there is a resemblance, it often leads to significant ambiguity.
French is an "odd man out" of the Romance languages. Main culprits are differences in phonology and some vocabulary twists. Someone who learns Italian would not have that much problem with understanding and learning from the scratch Spanish and vice versa. Learning French while knowing Italian or Spanish only is more difficult.
In the second example (the woman in the car), she speaks fast and uses anglicisms (turnover), some of them gallicised (bruncher: to have a brunch. A very common phenomenon in French to make a new verb out of an English noun. Typically, the new verb belongs to the first group, the easiest and most regular to conjugate). So good luck understanding that.
For the written text: soit is the subjunctive present of etre (to be) in the third person of singular. So "que ce soit" translates as "whether it be" or rather simply "be it". "Depuis l'époque sumérienne" means "Since the sumerian era".
For the numbers, we have to thank the Celts. That said, when I hear "quatre-vingt-dix", I hear a single word and don't decompose it. It is just a long and complicated way of saying ninety.
Remnants of the vigesimal system. Look it up. Also used in Breton language.
You should try to see if you can understand some of the other Oïl languages like Norman, Picard, and Walloon.
As a French speaker it's kind of funny that the comments Metatron makes about understanding French are the ones I would make about understanding Italian : to me it feels like Italians are speaking too fast and the language becomes much easier to understand when people speak a little slower and articulate more. I could even relate about the comments regarding vocabulary such as voiture and machina... Which I would understand as a French speaker because it sounds like "machine", which is the generic term for any kind of mechanical equipment. Two remarks, "le Marais" in the first video is the name of an area in Paris, it means marshland/swamp and is connex to the Italian 'mare' but very different from the Italian word.
Oh and the woman in the second video spoke too fast, used passably correct turns of phrases and generally speaking was difficult to understand even for the native speaker that I am.
The Italian intonation is very different from standard French but quite similar to that one if the south of France where I am from... Lastly I think Italian is a beautiful very melodic language!
Italian : " E constipato e non puo sciare"
What a French hears : "il est constipé et ne peut pas chier " (he is constipated and cannot shit)
The real French translation : " il est enrhumé et ne peut pas skier" (he caught a cold and cannot go skiing)
As French, I understand around 60% sir it's said slowly and that's enough to try to imagine the lack of words that I don't understand but it's still hard to understand.
May I correct some points, which you misunderstood (I'm Italian and French)? I correct only the mean misunderstandings. At 3'09": she doesn't say: "sarti" (or whatever), she says: "c'est parti" (but she pronounces it very quickly!) which means, as you said, "let's go" (actually sort of "it's started"). At 3'24" she says "Paris" with the correct pronunciation, which is without "s" ("Parì"). What you listen to, which seems to be an "s", it's just her air exhalation, typical of french pronunciation (an other strange exemple is saying "oui" by inhaling! And only women pronounce it this way! Weird!). The "Marais" is one of the most fancy neighborhood of Paris. 10'36" she doesn't say "sept ET quarante" (like in Italian "sette E quaranta"), but "Sept HEURES quarante":it's the way to indicate the time in French (ex: "il est 10 heures trente" etc.). It is written in this way: 7h40 (where "h" means "heures"). Anyway: the girl in the car speaks really super fast, it's difficult to understand her without knowing French really well
Mec, tu t'es bien démerdé à l'oral et à la lecture ! Bravo 👍
Speaking English as my first language I had a difficult time studying french although I studied it from the last year of primary school to fourth year of high school...hated it
It's not really an "s" for Paris, but now that you're saying it there's indeed a weird sound she makes when she ends her sentences sometimes. Anyway you're right you normally pronounce it "pari".
The ‘s’ you’re hearing is actually more of a lightly aspirated ‘h’ sound. It’s a common speech pattern in French that you hear when a word ends in i. For example you’ll hear it a lot after “merci”.
About the first video, it might be confusing but the girl is actually not pronouncing the S in "Paris". The reason you hear a "s" or a "sh" sound is because she's not closing her sentences clearly or properly. She has arrived at the end of her sentence but she is still producing sound, therefore her "i" sound turns into a "sh" sound . For this reason, you have this impression she's pronouncing the lettre s in "Paris" . That's why in the beginning of the video she said "Paris" normally in the middle of her sentence.
It's the same reason why there's a lot of french people saying "euh". That's because they're looking for their words. Since their sentence is not finished, they're still producing sound while their mouth is in a neutral state should I say.
All in all, what are the languages easier to understand for Italians?
4:30 Le marais is a very nice district in Paris. Where you can shop for cloth and eat jewish or Lebanese food.
As a french that never learned italian, I don’t think I would understand it unless the person speaking spoke very slowly with simple words.
Interesting. As a complete anglophone with little facility for languages I also had an easier time reading French. Only studied it for a year in school, but reading was much easier for me.
I have read that in Belgian or Swiss French (but I am not 100% certain on thi they say "septante," "huitante" and "nonante" instead of "souxante-dix," "quatre-vingt" and "quatre-vingt-dix," respectively.
If he thinks the French number system is difficult, don't ever try the Danish one.
Ut to twenty, the system is kind of comprehensible (although the very early base 12 can be seen in that the "ten" suufix only starts at 13).
From 21 and 49 [both included] the smallest value eis mentioned first: four-and-twenty.
Then the real fun begins.
The short from of 50 is halvtreds - long form halvtredsindtyve, literallty hafl-third times twenty: that is, three times twenty MINUS half of twenty times tewnty [ten, obviously]: 3*20 - ½*20: 60-10.
60 is just Treds(indstyve): three times twenty.
70 is halvfjerds(indstyve), ie. 4*20 - ½*20;
80 is thus fjerds(indstyve)
90 is halvfems(indstyve), 5*20 - ½-*20
But there is no fems, that's called "hundrede" (a hundred)
496 = fire huindrede og seks og halffems.
In french we don't pronounce the s at the end of some words but at some we do, it depends on the context and the word, for exemple we don't pronounce it for Paris, Blois, and some other words but we do it for bus, penis and pubis(some french don't for this two last) it can vary from individuals and from region...
Graffiti in a street of Montreal: "Pas de riches dans mon quartier, pas de quartier pour les riches !"
Animation here probably does mostly just mean a lively atmosphere. It can also sometimes refer to entertainment.
7:13 She isn't pronouncing the s at the end of Paris. Rather, she is squeezing off the airflow at the end of the i, by pushing the back of the tongue upward a bit, resulting in a kind of hissing sound that is almost a whistle. It's a peculiar way of finishing final vowels that I've heard some French speakers do and some not as much, not sure if this is a general French thing or maybe part of a specific accent.
Mince mois qui pensait que j'allais tout comprendre pour une fois, car tu parle en français. ps : On dit effectivement Paris without the "s"
French is the hardest of the Latin languages for me as a natural English speaker. Its ironic since English and French are basically mirrors of each other w/English being Germanic w/Latin influence and French being Latin w/Germanic influence. I understood car lady a bit more than you but certain words I was unsure of like luna. Not sure if it meant crazy or Monday (Lunes)
Here Luna is the first name of somebody, finishing her work-study job in September and Mathilde who is coming back in the same time.
Luna is NOT a french name. Still it could exist (cause of globalization) but still very uncommon and mainly from people with immigrant backgroud. But very very uncommon.
@@pierreriviere9158 in most Latin based languages Luna their derivative means Moon. but it could also mean crazy i.e. Lunatic. But in either event, they are cognates.
I absolutly agree. Just saying that the french word for moon is also very close to luna you're right but strictly it is "lune" (with an "e") in french language. @@MrRabiddogg
@@pierreriviere9158 I wonder what she said then. it sounded like Luna to me. or is this one of those cases where the e can sometimes sound close to an a?
I told you in my previous answer what she said :)@@MrRabiddogg
No reason to say the s, croissant and pain au chocolat are differents, le marais is a district in paris
those are parisians. They don't speack french, they speak parisian. We can spot them milles away. Come here in Anjou ob the Loire, very different accent, very different pronounciation, quite a lot of different words too.
Très vrai 😂
I am French, I can "guess" some Italian word but not everything 😅
Just as an aside, I find that Europe fixates on the U.S. as if it will be the cash crop for ever but forgets that from a marketing point of view the U.S. has only little more than 4% of the world's population, couple that with the fact that there are a majority of countries that would appriciate Italy's culture more and would have a better trade and tourism bond than the U.S.. This is where Italy could really help the world with it's culture, its history and its trade. 4% is negligible.
it would be interesting to see some videos like this on some of the languages similar to English maybe like
German, Icelandic, Norwegian, or Afrikaans,
Or Frisian
Or Yiddish.
Bro you should listen to the northern accent you'll be lost lmao, as a french speaker i tried to learn italian and its quite easy when your contry speak a latin language
Manca solo "Can an Italian understand Italian?", perché davvero alle volte si direbbe proprio di no 😂
3:22 En réalité, elle n'a pas prononcé le -s de Paris. Elle a prononcé le -i et a ensuite arrêté de faire vibrer ses cordes vocales. Le son que l'on entend est en fait comme un -i chuchoté.
3:06 she actually said "c'est parti" which means let's go, but she was so fast, so all you hear is: sparti 😂
She never says pariS she justs breathes at the end ahahahahaha
I mean im an english person but from the history i know behinnd paris there used to be a gaulish tribe called the pari and from the english i know mixed with pronounciations its probably called paris cause of english pronounciation to maybe i didnt say im right but its possibly true
She's not pronouncing the s in Paris, she's saying 'Parì'.
French is tough for Italian speakers, it's spoken very quickly, and the pronunciation is very different to its Latin roots.
Because s is silent
I'm not hearing an actual s at the end of the Paris when the main host says it. It's an artefact of her Parisian accent and maybe some elocution idiosyncrasy. But I'm positive it's not an intentional s sound.
You didn’t butcher the imitation of the moustache guy. I think his 'very French' way of speaking would be typically parisien (but I live in Nice, not Paris).
The French of Québec is amazing, it's like 1500's french, with a lot of church words to swear, and I think we (Quebec french) talk a bit slower. I do have some difficulties at first glance to understand french from France with their accents and the quick speech.
If you'd like a live conversation, hit me up. (I'm way better in French than in english xD)
Paris is pronounced without the S... it's like the word "parie" without pronouncing the e... maybe she has another accent.
Il y a, tu y as, il/elle y a, nous y avons, vous y avez, ils/elles y ont.
To be honest many of those speakers made it very hard for you because they didn't articulate at all. I believe parisians tend to speak like that, they omit a lot of important vowels to shorten words (like p'tit instead of petit). Also i noticed that for some reason many people in those Easy Language street interviews tend to speak really fast and unclearly, doesn't matter which language, no idea why. Maybe because they're shy?
I guess French is a bit like Romanian, the non Latin influences and later shifts in pronunciation makes it very different to Italian or Spanish.
You pronounced heaume wrong, it sounded like homme when the o should be like home.
she's not really saying "pariS", she's pronouncing "paree" just like every french person does, but as it's the last word, she adds a little breathing sound, most likely without noticing. not sure if this could be a dialectal/sociolectal thing, but yeah, the normal pronounciation is "paree", indeed
the cliché about (upper class) parisian french is rather adding a final "(h)an" sound (\ɑ̃\)
alors voilà dans l'ordre:
c'est parti ! ..
la vie de quartier
Le marais is a district in Paris ( Paris 4è )
LGBTQ ..
(the old man has a typical parisian accent)
c'est pain au chocolat, pas croissant au chocolat
un truc ( a thing ) qu'on a pas beaucoup dans les autres pays ..
sinon ( otherwise ) il y a ...( there is .. )
où je vais vous embarquer un peu partout ( where i am going to bring you with me .. )
( allex, fléchis les bras ! = come'on stretch your arms !) .. aujourd'hui on va voir lesquels de ces 50 vids de jeux videos sont vrais
la glissade sur la rampe = the slide on the ramp
elle est vraiment inclinée celle-là, elle est vraiment raide hein !
etc ..
courage ! tout va bien se passer : ) 😘
If an italian has never studied French , how much would the average Italian understand French percentage wise ?
"A Frenchman is an Italian in a [permanent] bad mood." Jean Cau (I think)
Jean Cocteau 😉
Merci@@heliedecastanet1882
She's not putting S at the end of her words, that's just a bad habit for some french people to let a shush go after the sound "i" or "ee" like "Paris" when they exhale at the end of their sentence. No one would pronounce the S at the end or Paris, she's just letting this shush sound go out, which is so irritating in my opinion 😅
If you count on french people to watch this series (I am french btw) you should have in mind that for instance marseille's french is ALOT different from parisian french as quebec or swiss french is.
More content here that you may have thought
I'm glad you said France French when you were talking about numbers. It reminds me when I was in Switzerland and they were using septant, huitante and nonante even though they knew my tour group were all learning metropolitan...and our tour guide was from Paris and said something like please say it so they can understand it, and the lady said, "we don't have time for your silly number games." I still laugh about it.
Oh those numbers.I remember it well.
I grew up in the states when i was younger but moved abroad later on. My mother is french educated and she says i speak French like they do in Quebec. They apparently use the same style as the swiss when it comes to numbers.
These numbers are so dumb. In Switzerland (and Belgium) we kept the logical numbers. And that's more understandable for other people.
Danish uses a similar system to French - based around 20. They say things like ”halvtreds” - Think of a clock. Half to 3. ((3 - 0.5) * 20) which means 50. Not ”femti(o)” - ”five tens”.
But lets face it: It is still decimal - just that they are using the terms from the older system.
They don’t think in 20’s. So memorize words - which is hard to someone used to terms reflecting the decimal system.
France should honestly just switch over to huitante etc. Why not
As a francophone, I can understand some Italian when it is spoken slowly. If I look at a text in Italian I can understand between 80% and 95%. But I also studied Spanish and Portuguese.
Exactly the same for me. as a French I was so surprised that I could read Italian newspaper and understand 80% without never learned it.
@@waxflow
je pense que vous exagérez, car, moi, issu de famille italienne, l'ayant entendu pendant mon enfance et l'ayant même étudié scolairement, je ne comprends rien à l'italien, car il y a beaucoup de faux amis, énormément même, et la plupart des mots clés dans une phrase sont précisément ceux qui ne ressemblent pas au français
c'est optimiste !
@@recorr après les Langues c'est un peu subjectif, car chaque personnes est différentes sur la compréhension des Langues étrangères
@@Loktane
Oui, en fait je ne mets pas en doute la bonne foi du commentaire de waxflow, mais je pense que l'on peut avoir l'impression de comprendre mais rater l'essentiel sans s'en rendre compte.
C'est le 80% que je mets en doute, car même si 80% des mots du dico ont les mêmes racines entre les deux langues, je pense que 80% des mots dans des phrases n'ont pas les mêmes racines. (Les phrases étant principalement faites de petits mots clés, des conjonctions, des auxiliaires conjugués...)
Surtout au vu de la vidéo sous laquelle nous commentons qui démontre bien ce que je dis.
Your ability to understand English also makes it easier for you to understand French since so many English words are actually derived from French.
His hability to understand french definitly helped him too tho ahah
The words introduced by middle age French into English are coming from Latin, therefore they sound a lot like Italian, more than it does to French. Amd I say it as Italian native. Also, by personal experience, when speaking English, I sometimes do remove the final vowel spoken of advanced/technical/difficult concepts of italian words and anglicize it when I'm missing the English counterpart of Germanic root, and I sound just very educated for and English native.
Small examples of advanced English words of Latin root with Italian counterpart: transpose/trasporre, origin/origine, originate, originare, elaborate/elaborare, declension/declinazione, marginal/marginale
@@TheACSB010 They came from some form of langue d'oïl, which is not latin and pretty different from the occitan dialects already, but even more removed from any italian dialect. They might sound italian to you, but they're definitely more french, as the french that influenced it was already way different from latin.
You might have gotten this impression from the fact french is very close to italian lexically.
Also regarding your last point, you can see the link between language in a funny way : english people talking 'posh', very eloquently will often use more french originated word than your random english conversation. Likewise in french, as I said closest to italian lexically, the same mechanic kind of apply. Sometimes to find the meaning of a word, we can just search for a synonym that is more 'eloquent', or old timey, such as ones you'd find in old novels, but that arent used anymore. And using those when talking or even at work can sometimes sound weird, arrogant, sometimes 'posh' or classy.
And England is France's first colony, never forget that truth. 2066 Franco-Italian alliance, we can bring them the much needed 40% of their vocabulary that's not french/latin based yet. And make England perfect, the finished product.
@@TheACSB010 No. 28% of English comes from Old French due to the Norman Invasion in 1066 AD. French was spoken for a couple hundred years in England (although not by the large majority of people of course). But that's where it was introduced and influenced the English language. Old English is vastly different than English in the Middle Ages and practically unrecognizable to Modern English speakers because of how much it was changed by Old French.
E vero
It’s funny because the opposite way, trying to understand Italian when you are French, is (for me at least) way easier. Seems like the roots of words that we have in common are more obvious for us than the other way around. It’s like if a French tries to imagine how Italians would say this word, 90% of the time you’ll come up with something not that far off from the actual Italian word. It would be worth experimenting, but I think that a French speaking in a fake, totally made up Italian translation would actually be surprisingly somewhat understandable to a native Italian speaker. So oddly enough, it seems that Italian sounds closer from French than French sounds to Italian. It may also come from the fact that French may be slightly more used to ear Spanish and Italian than the other way around. There are lots of references to our Mediterranean neighbors in my country, but it seems to me that French references in Italy and Spain pop culture are not so common (not 100% sure, so correct me if I’m wrong).
What is challenging though with this type of exercise is what we call the « faux amis » (literally translated to false/ fake friends) which are words that exist in the other language, sound very similar to a word of your own vocabulary and may even use the same Roman root but have totally different meaning. Those or particularly confusing because somehow the rest of the vocabulary is very similar to your native language.
I’d say that Italian is more accessible to a French speaker than Spanish. For the anecdote, we used to have a quite offensive saying when talking about people that speak a very bad French : « parler français comme une vache espagnole » which translates to « speaking French like a Spanish cow » (told you it was offensive, I do hope that Spanish people have sayings to come back at us on this one).
Oh, and that moustached bloke in the street interview definitely speaks the Frenchiest French I’ve ever heard, apart from the movies made until the 70’s.
It's because French underwent a more severe vowel and consonant reduction than Italian and Spanish, the former being the most conservative of the three. For example, a French will understand what acqua is because of the word aquatique in French, but an Italian would not understand what eau is without ever studying French. French lost the Q and rearranged all the vowels in water, introducing some new vowels too. Ironically eau uses every vowel except the one that it actually looks like it sounds O.
Le Marais is a neighborhood (or quartier in French) in Paris...Very trendy, one of the oldest in Paris. Otherwise, the word marais means swamp in English.
Cognate with "marsh".
More specifically it's one of the architecturally oldest in Paris, since the older bits of the right bank got completely redeveloped by Haussmann 150 years ago.
And Le Marais is well known for being the “gay” area in Paris, although she uses the more modern and less specific “LGBTQ” word.
Now do Quebec French.
Cajun French from Louisiana could be interesting.
@VoodooAngel63 it's literally french pronounced as if it was English
Or Belgian french
Swiss French? He did Swiss Italian already
Omg, HECK YES! Quebec french can be overlooked or sometimes made fun of.
I didn't of that until he mentioned it in the video, but doing Quebec french is such a good idea
As a native English speaker, listening to French is almost impossible. Reading it is an entirely different story. Reading the article about shields, I understood about 30-40 percent.
I'm French and, working in an international environment, I've see many foreigners learning French. And I've realized that a major difficulty of my mother tongue indeed is: written French and spoken French often seem to be two different languages... largely due to the "liaisons" between words and the silent letters.
@@jfrancobelge Also, pronouncing
+ spelling offer more problems
1) many silent letters, even whole syllables in 3rd person plural of verbs
2) several spellings for each nasal vowel
To learn standardized Intl Phonetic
Alphabet!s letters for French can help.
One problem is that I can read a French sentence and understand 80% or 90% of the words and still not understand it, or only half understand it, as all it takes is one or two unknown words or strange idioms to throw me.
At 3:22 She didn't pronounce the S in Paris, what's happening here is actually called 'final vowel devoicing ' where the 'eee' sound is finished with a breath straight after, similar to the german ch sound in 'ich' . It's actually a weird phenomenon that french people (from paris in my experience) often don't realise they're doing and they don't always do it! It seems to happen for emphasis on a final word of a sentence or a word that's emphasised on its own.
I've noticed that too and I hate it tbh
Maybe you wanna say "She did pronounce the S ..." because you can clearly hear the S in Paris....
@@johndoes7569 Jesus you're dense
French here, Paris is actually pronounced 'Pari'. No devoicing whatsoever, just a mute final consonant
@@OBIDU13 ok
I loved this video. I was born in the US to an Italian father and Italian was my first language together with English. I moved to France 15 years ago. Although I speak fluently, it's funny but when I am in doubt I go for an Italian term and *usually* it works. That said, it still drives me crazy how the French change genders all of the time on words!! La valeur, la couleur and many others. That is a major pain in the behind for Italian speakers! And it took me several years to be comfortable with saying 73 or 98 (soixante-treize or quatre-vingt-dix-huit instead of settantatre and novantotto).
You can use septante-trois and nonante-huit. Only, you may then sound like a Belgian or a Swiss.
i don t think it s a drama for us (italians) if you study french you know that often words that end with -eur that in italian are masculine, in french are feminine.. so it's not a problem..
@@eviljoy8426 exactly. What is difficult I think for Italian speakers is understanding and the pronunciation.
Ma... ma e stato voi a cambiare il genere delle cose! Un fior! Come qualcosa cosi piccolo e carino non potrebbe essere femminile?? :-)
@@teebo_fr_en_it non so se intendevi me o qualcun'altro ma sono d'accordo. A volte faccio fatica con i generi (la couleur, la valeur, ecc ecc) che sono l'opposto rispetto all'italiano. Ho imparato sbagliandomi.
For those who are confused about the French accent: It has nothing to do with the Gauls or Franks. French pronucniation used to be much more like the written language, i.e. they proncounced their words fully like they were written. It only started changing a few centuries ago. I suppose this had something to do with the way the influence of the court of the obsolutist monarch and later (19th century) the bourgeois state.
French before that time wasn't that different from Italian. Listen here to an example ruclips.net/video/LOoPhuPiv_k/видео.html, it's a scene from a Molière play in the original language.
Sometimes, sometimes not. Typically diphthongs were pronounced (eau, chevaux, maître), but letters were also added later to recall latin etymology and those were never pronounced (ex : doigt instead of doi)
To enlight your thoughts about the french accent and especially why is there too many silent letters in written french it came simply from "l'académie française" that decided to create general spelling rules in 18th century because as you said with the example of Molière at his time written french didn't had rules and was written as it sounded like but 17th century french was way more different than latin in the prononciation that's why "l'académie française" added silent letters in words to show the latin roots of french language
I once read something to that effect. That’s why French spelling is so unphonetic. English spelling is just as bad, but since England never had anything equivalent to the French language academy, I don’t know why so many letters were retained that were pronounced in Old and Middle English, but are now silent. Does anyone else know?
I think you are wrong on cause and effect.
In past French didn’t pronounce like they were written, they written like they pronounce…
It is spoken language before to become written language.
That is why you have multiple way of writing in 16/17th century, close to pronouncing.
Then, some people decide to have “rules” in writing, and we are stoked with old rules that are not link to how people talk.
We should made our written closer to the spoken language… but…
Yea she doesn't pronounce the S. She just spews air on her palate at the end of the word. She just talks like that.
you should do Corsican.
Hey Metatron :D
French native here, following what you've been doing for a while and an episode dedicated to it sounds fun :P a few notes :
- The intro was perfect ;)
- 2:20 We have another word close to "città" or "ciudad" which is "cité", but it's considered to be an old fashioned word :o you're spot on afterwards though, "villaggio" we have "village" too and "ville" comes from it, just a different word to signify it's bigger I guess :p
- 3:28 You're right, the "s" is silent, she doesn't really say it but I can understand the confusion since her "i" lingers a little
- 5:16 Spot on hahaha 5:30 "historique" you're right ! "caractère historique" basically means he feels like the city has an "historical mood", I don't know how to translate that better haha
- 6:00 It was really perfect don't worry haha and you're right again about what he meant with "animation", he likes that it's lively :p
- 6:40 HAHAHA but parisians aren't going to say that, you can get them everywhere hahaha, also "croissant" on its own was right already :p might have mixed it with "pain au chocolat" which is a different pastry :p
- 9:20 & 9:40 Spot on once again ! A little difference with the Italian version it seems is the "de" became "à", as we say "beaucoup de choses à faire", but otherwise yes :o
For the other videos I was writing down the sentences because I thought it would be easier to pick up the similar words if they were written down but you actually read some stuff at the end so it was pointless haha
Very entertaining and interesting still ! Makes me wonder how I would do if the roles were reversed.. maybe i'll try it out :p
Modern French speakers, especially the younger generations, tend to devocalize closed/high vowels (i, u, é) at the end of utterances. This phenomenon is called "vowel devoicing"
So Paris can sound as /pariç/
Merci as /meʁsiç/
Voulu as /vulyç/
Parlé as /paʁleç/
Modern French speakers seem unable to clearly hear this sound as it is not perceived as a consonant but rather as an allophone
There are mainly three factors that influence the pronunciation of the French language (on a short scale of time) : regional accents, generational drift and immigrants influences.
Hey Metatron! Long time viewer, both main channel and this one. just wanted to say that you have inspired me to take the leap and learn another language! Just so happens that I chose French, lol. Anyways, thank you for all you do, and you have done more for us than you could ever imagine. Keep up the good work!❤
As an anglophone french isn't to difficult to read.( thank you William). However the spoken language definitely takes work.
have you noticed that Portuguese has liaison QUITE EXACTLY like in French? I'm very surprised no one ever says about liaison in Portuguese, this is usually a "trademark" of French. liaison and nasals make Portuguese more similar to French in phonetics, while Spanish is more similar to Italian: open vowels with no contraction/liaison.
An Italian cementing french language in English is a hard stuff kudos for you.
Ciao dalla Francia.
"bouclier" is tricky. We have another word for it from the same root as "scutum"/"scudo" which is "écu" (scuderia => écurie), meaning specifically a medieval knight's shield (also the name of an old currency, as is found in several languages) but it's not transparent either
when she says Paris she pronounces it with a sh sound, and not with a s sound. I'm in South East France, near Marseille, we often use a kinda shwa sound at the end of words, PAriE, or sounds like ing, bread du paing, wine du ving. Croissant au beurre (butter) ou pain au chocolat, Croissants au chocolat are not real. Ciao dalla Francia, ci sone molti Italiani che vengono vistare a la mia citta Aix-en-Provence.
Pain au chocolat is definitely more famous and eaten than croissants au chocolat, but those definitely exist as well
She says Pari, not Parisss. You’re just hearing the end “sh…” she puts at the end as a way of speaking, I guess…. That’s just the way she speaks. But you’re absolutely correct, we say PARI, not PARISSSS”. The “s” is silent.
Next try Quebecois and Acadian French. Acadian even people from Quebec have trouble understanding.
Omg, heck yes!
I speak French, we do have another word for city… cité…. But ville is most common.
Merci!
And how is villa in french?
@@NoName-yw1pt In French, “villa” is “villa”, a feminine noun. E.g. Une villa à la campagne. A villa in the countryside. 😄
@@matf5593Merci 😁
Yes, cité is used only for very big cities like Paris. Cité has a magnificence, grandiose, beauty aspect to it where Ville is your average town. You will also see it used for naming some parts within a city or its suburbs, as a kind of try to make the neighborhood sound better. So paradoxically, if you see a neighborhood named « cité de… », most of the time it’s a part of the city that really sucks…
So to sum it up : Cités (big cities) > Villes (cities & towns) > Villages (very small towns & villages)
@@yannsalmon2988Ouais! E.g. Cité de Vanier (Ottawa au Canada). Not the greatest réputation....
I am Italian born in Switzerland so I speak french and italian so I can see all the similarities.
And for the numbers, every time I talk to a French I say that in Switzerland, we count numbers correctly, and not base 10 at first and then base 20 after sixty.
Septante ( settanta, seventy), huitante (ottanta, eighty) et nonante (novanta, ninety)
Saluti dalla Svizzera!
They did have that system in France, too, but the Academie Française changed it back/or standardized it to the base 20 system, which, I believe, was used up to 120 at least into the 18th century.
70, 80 e 90 da Suíça é muito melhor que a aberração francesa 60+10, 4x20 e 4x20+10!
There's a reciprocity between Italian understanding French and French understanding Italian.
As a French if an Italian speaks slowly I understand between 70 to 80% of words depending on the regional accent of that Italian, a Roman Italian I understand 80%, Turin Italian also, Napoli 80%, But for example Friuli region, Sicilia, Venetia I have really hard time.
Would really love to see you do an episode on Langue d'Oc / Occitan! Probably the closest to Italian, or at least to Genovese or Piemontese.
Any Italian with average/good education can understand French written easily; spoken? It's different (unless the words are slowly articulated, in that case the vocabulary is so similar that you can really understand a lot).
My family is from Piemonte, so growing up I was used to the local dialect that belongs to the galloromance family and has a lot of similarity with French. Making this premise because I believe it is what plays a big role in me understanding reasonably decently not only written but also spoken French despite no formal study - of course provided they don't mumble too much or/and speak 70 words per minute.
Well, it's not that she pronounces the s in Paris, it's a kind of Ch (almost like the German in ich), a wrong pronunciation that became kind of posh at first, and now you hear it everywhere in French (more and more in Swiss French even). It's a shame, really, because it sounds like people putting ghost letters as an ending and it confuses non French speakers. It seems it started about 50 years ago!
Thanks Pia. I was always wondering about this phenomenon. I commented above that I first noticed it on posh sounding French pronouncing „oui“ as „ouiche“.
@@charlesmartel5495 Yes, it happens also to past participles, finich, alléch, as you know.
I must live in a parallel universe because as a 24 year old French guy, I have never heard anyone who sounded like that. Like really.
Occitan should be much easier for you.
5:12That guy isn't "so french" he just has the traditional parisian accent, there's various accents in France, the southern ones influenced by Occitan for example are very different
True! But then again, I feel like it’s a bit normal since Parisian culture is the most popular of the French cultures
Learning French is so hard cuz they seem to pronounce only a quarter of the letters in a word.
That’s true. Absoluement!
French is the hardest of the Romance languages (and Romanian too), atleast to me...
Spanish is the easiest to me (I'm from Portugal, so I understand Spanish to an extent), I understand a little bit of Italian (might take some classes, it’s a beautiful language)
I disagree with you, the easiest one for a Portuguese speaker isn't Spanish, it's Galician.
There are several French words in Sicilianu language. Even in English there are many French words. Grazie pi lu video, Saluta!
Portuguese from Portugal has many words that were influenced by French. Thanks for the video, Metatron.
More so than Brazilian Portuguese? Random anecdote, once had a Portuguese guy correcting me when I used the word abajur. "Chama-se luminária. Abajur é francês.".
@@Gab8riel Yes, because Brazil didn't get invaded by the French. Also, Brazil wasn't as involved in European culture as mainland Portugal (almost all the fashion and novelties for 150 years came straight from France, and we took lots of new words from there). And the Portuguese guy that 'corrected' you was completely wrong. The Portuguese word for 'Abat-jour' is 'Abajur', and there is no other variant. In the early 70s, an alternative was proposed, and it was "quebra-luz". Nobody cared, and that alternative didn't gain traction. For this story, just google 'abajur abat-jour' and pick the result from the site 'Ciberdúvidas da língua portuguesa'.
Brazilian portuguese also has most of those words
@@KnightofAges Napoleon's invasion had nothing to do with that influence. Portuguese wasn't even influenced by French, it was influenced by Occitan.
@@tcbbctagain572 Portuguese was formed by Occitan clerics that came to Coimbra in the 11th century. That said, we were talking about exactly how much French words are used, and we got tons of French words put in from all the French stuff that came here since the early 1800s into well the 1960s. Hence the word 'abajur'. This is not a talk about the medieval origin of the language, rather about new words introduced in the last two centuries.
I find that I understand quite a lot of written French but it is more difficult to understand the spoken word with my knowledge of Spanish. I would not say I am fluent in Spanish but probably conversant. I did learn a bit of French, about the equivalent of 1 year high school French, as a young child and then took a year of French in high school.
it is always the case for Romance languages, I think a French speaker can understand enough if reading a book in Italian, but certainly not spoken Italian.
Occitan would be cool to do
You have a great understanding of knowledge in general, and I am confident to say within few months you can learn conversational skills in Romanian language, as well as many other romance languages and other languages apart from romance group of languages. I have emphasized my native language because I am fluent, regarding written different complex concepts, not only conversational.
Thanks so much 🙏for your content on social media! Appreciate you! 👌
For Metatron who likes latin.
In French the word on comes from homo hominis in latin. (homo means human in Latin, man is vir in Latin)
So, the expression `on vient` means human(someone) is coming
homo at nominative became on (we say cas sujet for Old French) and homo at accusative became homme (we say cas regime in Old French)
French lost its declension very lately 16th-ish, (Spanish around the 2nd century and Italian around the 8th) and there are a lot of doublets in French from cas sujet/regime, (gas, garçon, pute, putain, col, cou, etc...)
I think Maison comes from Maneo,es, manere (to stay in Latin) maison is where one stays
Casa gave case in French and Chaise in Occitan (a town is called la chaise-dieu) and also CHEZ in Genitive form. "Chez moi" a sort of in "my casa's" if that makes sense.
Aujourd'hui , d'hui comes from hic, haec hoc in genitive form huius, Aujourd'hui means this day of today. (yes, it is cumbersome)
By the huius also gives oui.
Merci pour tes vidéos.
Interesting, I've heard of french having declensions in the past but not of italian and spanish
@@KertPerteson the proto-Indo European had declensions, I think 8 cases.
So, all the proto-Indo European languages have or had declensions in their history.
In English, only the genitive barely survives nowadays. (the 's at the end for the possession)
Classical Latin had 6 cases of declensions. (1 was lost, the instrumental and one was almost dead the locative save some expressions) but already the vulgar latin (the colloquial language spoken by everyone) was already much poorer in declensions. the wikipedia page is very interesting about it, roman languages are definitely coming from that vulgar latin.
French kept far longer its declension because French had more germanic influence and German has still its declension (4 cases left)
Romanian still has its declensions, I would assume it may be the result of the influence of the slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish.._ They all have declensions.
She said "C'est parti" not "sarti". Parisians talks fast....
Ciao Metatron prova con il Corso ,non il cane lol