Quote:
Originally Posted by balok
I think you're right about French people sounding silly when speaking English, especially the French from France. I know of no other nationality that has more trouble pronouncing foreign words. This French buddy of mine, he was arguing with me about how to pronounce an English word. We asked a native English speaker, who confirmed my version. The French guy turns around and says it's the way the (English) word is pronounced in France, that is in "French" English, as if there were a particular dialect of English spoken in France, like US English or British English. He was serious, but I just laughed at him of course. Then I though about it, and you know what, I think he's on to something. Have you noticed how the French say "zee" instead of "the"? Well, say you were going to pronounce the word "the" in French. The regular way to pronounce it would sound something like "tuh" or "duh". Where do they get the z sound? They learned to pronounce it that way at school, from a non-native English speaker, who himself learned to pronounce it that way from another non-native English speaker... and this has become generalized in France. Only in France could this be possible, because only the French are proud and chauvenistic enough to think that their pronunciation of a foreign language is as valid as any other.
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personally, i think anglophones sound silly when they try to speak french... and even sillier, when they *pretend* to try to speak french.
i do think french people sound ridiculous when they pepper their speech with random english words (*why* ??) but more because it's pretentious and stupid.
however, i agree, France can be very arrogant when it comes to other languages ; the best example being, the creation of new french forms of
proper nouns. A friend of mine who has family in Belgium tells the story of the first time she went to visit them. "Here is your ticket for the train," her mother told her ; "remember, you get off at
Anvers." well, at every station she looked for Anvers, and she was still looking when the train came to the end of the line, because Anvers is actually named
Antwerpen. i don't know if other languages do this as well but i think it's really confusing and in fact it seems a bit disrespectful to me.