Why French sounds so unlike other Romance languages
Sound changes left French unlike Latin, Italian, Spanish or Romanian. How? Here's the recipe.
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~ Briefly ~
Follow my animated recipe for a taste of how sound shifts changed French pronunciation throughout the ages: Latin, Gaulish and Frankish influence, an early Romance era of Oïl vs Oc, Old French, Middle French, the Renaissance, all the way to Modern and then Contemporary French.
Yes, it's a recipe! I originally wrote this as a more direct history. After much tinkering I wanted to recreate the story of the sounds of French as a pastry.
~ Credits ~
Art, narration, animation and some of the music by Josh from NativLang
Sources for claims made, and credits for most of the music, fonts, sfx:
docs.google.com/document/d/1l...
Licensed Music:
Laid Back Guitars by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Danse Macabre - Sad Part - no violin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Sardana by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
March of the Spoons by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Village Consort by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Suonatore di Liuto by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
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Heavy Heart by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Silver Flame by Kevin MacLeod
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Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod
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Duet Musette by Kevin MacLeod
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Sneaky Snooper by Jason Shaw
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A link to my sources document, also linked in the description: docs.google.com/document/d/1lo0bvzhli24783Ox5_THM3rHHe4lNV-7iO2jpqS3UF8/ After months of creating and recreating this anim, I'm still unsure what to think. I hope you enjoy. Thank you for watching!
It was a great video! If you consider doing more videos like this in the future (I think we’d all love to see one about English), I personally prefer the style of your video about the history of Danish phonology to this one about French; this one seemed a bit too fast-paced, although I understand that with the complexity of French phonology, it’s hard not to make it fast-paced. That’s just my opinion, and I still really enjoyed this!
Any thoughts on the history or organization of sino-tibetan language families? I have studied a bit of chinese and tibetan and dont see much connection in their modern languages.
@@rubeusignis1293 right
Very informative! I've always wondered about this. The only question I'm left with is "Why?" What made it so much more 'malleable' than others? Does culture play a role?
Just waht I was curious. How does the amount of change in French compare to the other European languages?
I'm convinced french people will just be communicating with short exasperated whistles by the end of this century.
kzhead.info/sun/h8qAp6qFcF-teaM/bejne.html Do you think we will speak like that 😂
am french, can confirm
😂😭🤣
Maybe 😂 but Swedish too they say ''Ö'' for island and ''Å'' for river.
No, the French in France at least will be communicating in some form of Arabic.
French : Here is the rule. World : Ok ... French : *And here are the exceptions to the rule (1/6558809)*
Exactement
C'est tellement ça. :D La pire des phrases à l'école étant "Ça s'écrit comme ça se prononce.". Well... most of the time, just nope.
English: There is no Rule :)
Try to find a rule in french that has no exception, it will be the exception that confirms the rule that every rules in french has an exception that confirms it. 😂
@@gaspardcaux5294 Damn... As a French, I think you might be right. xD There is a saying in French with this idea : "This is the exception that confirm the rule.". We have some humor. ^^
I've always wondered why Spanish and Italian sound so similar while there is simultaneously an entire france between them.
Goes back to the fall of the Roman empire and how Latin became mixed with the languages of the conquering groups, such as the Muslims in Spain, the Franks in France and Goths and Visgoths in Italy as well as many other groups during the course of several centuries.
@@mauricioramirez9744 well then those franks mustve REALLY gone overboard with it because of how different French is
@@Tbug20 Precisely and over many many centuries. Just look in America how different American english would sound compared to how it was spoken in colonial times, or even in the last 50 years. In another 100 to 200 years from now what will be spoken may be a completely different dialect.
It's because Standard french spoke today is the parisian dialect of the oil language in France. In the south of france they used to speak occitan which is way more similar to italian and spanish
Between Spain and italy is southern France where until modern French crept in, varieties of Occitan were widely spoken. Its closest relative is Catalan. Occitan sounds closer to Spanish and Italian, and of course, Catalan, than it does to French, I believe. The "Latin Arch" stretching from southern Spain to Calabria in southern Italy is so called due to geographical and linguistic connections of the lands and their people.
I am a French person who studied old French and the origins of French and I must say I am FLABBERGASTED at your PERFECT accentuation and pronunciation of old French (like "lait, cerise, etc")
Agreed. As a speaker of several languages, I'm in awe of this guy. He's a sort of language demi-god. I can imagine him chatting away with an Egyptian from 500 BC or a Gaul from 100 AD. His voice is timeless. What makes it stranger still is that his default accent is American.
@@TheJusio Can’t be american because he pronounces h as “haytch”. My guess is Canadian
@@LordAus123 I'd say the same, he sounds Canadian though his French accent does not sound "Québécois" ( the accent of the Quebec region) what a mystery!!
@@ameliebabin3202 AFAIK most Canadians from outside of Quebec are taught Parisian French.
@@vaynomblenner Anglophone Canadian here. This is correct. You only really learn Quebecois french if you live there. The big difference between anglophone Canadians and Americans linguistically speaking is knowing how to sound like you're pronouncing French words correctly..
I always thought of French as the most germanicized romance language, while English would be the most romanized germanic language.
And you would be right in both cases.
English's syntaxe and vocabulary are closer to French than to german. Not true for american english
And then Romanian is the most slavic romance language.
@@la537eme The Bringlish exited just in time to preserve certain language ossifyings and have been carrying on with their own borrowed words and pronunciations and some minor spelling changes of English. The grammar remained the same for the most part. 😜
@@Needlestitch english grammar is realy poor tbh. The only part that is truly german is english poetry. And what a beauty
French in 2500: Every single word is just a diphthong and a hissing sound.
Ha ! And you Brits were impressed by Harry Potter talking with snakes...
@@Biouke Fan theory: parselmouths are time traveling french
So French in 2500 is English today ?
Haha chui d panam grav centre dla galaxy big respe de couzin 4 x vingt + onz 91 pour Lè migran
@@justmerc1642 I think in a classic German KZhead parody they actually made him speak "Parisian" with the snakes. Very eloquent snakes.
Although French is often considered a nightmare for foreign speakers, I think it must be a real pleasure for linguists who can clearly see all the evolutions and the remains of old versions of the language.
French is a nightmare for French people ,many orthographic faults in the comments by natives...russian is very difficult for foreign speakers, because of its morphology, but natives write russian very correctly without fault, about french language, it is the opposite...
Native French speakers had no trouble whatsoever writing the language a few decades ago. They were smarter then, I guess.@@jeanlaureaudoynaud4776
I’m learning French, it makes more sense than English tbh
After all, English’s #1 rule is ‘there are no rules’.
When I started reading the poetry of Guillaume de Machaut, I was astonished and pleased by how much of the Middle French I could understand, and how quickly learned what changed between that and modern French.
Ok I'm french and the "breathy sound" in the end of words like "oui" ( 11:15 ) shocked me. I do it but I never even realized it was a thing until now. Accents and pronunciation are really something complex and I didn't know this in particular was characteristic of french.
Omg I took me a video to realize it too lmfao
Same, I gasped out loud!
To me, it sounds more exasperated with the "breathy sound". A "oui" can also be quick and short, without this breathy sound.
That's probably because you're a Parisian.
@@leoelamri4054 well... you got me 🤣
Let’s just appreciate how water in French is written with 3 vowels, but it doesn’t sound like any of those 3 vowels EAU = O
There is something like 13 different ways of writing the sound O in French. I think eault and aux are tied for my favourites!
Wait until you learn about "Oiseaux" (Birds) in which none of the letters are pronounced the way they usually are : we say \wa.zo\
En effet haha
@@mathisfortune6382 so it's not Wiseau?
It's just a combination of letters
Spanish: Everything is pronounce as written German: Everything is pronounce as written, but with some extra rules French: Everything is pronounce as written, but with one thousand of rules and exceptions
Portuguese: Everything is written as Spanish, but pronounced with a heavy Russian accent
@@danielimmortuos666 only in europe
As a French Canadian with German ancestry trying to learn Spanish, I can confirm
@toaritok grammar police commenter be like:
@toaritok bruh english spelling makes more sense than french, maybe Nativlang should next make a french orthography video
French is called the language of love because just like love relationships it strived to make itself nice and comfortable but ended up to be too complicated
You've being going through some things
Grammar + vocabulary seem.similar. but French spelling + pronouncing has too many peculiar letters /1 sound.
Is the language of love bc you share more saliva when trying to talk it than when you kiss someone
Nonsense. Its the language of writers
Sounds more like the language of a sinus infection, rather than love.
Quebecer here. Yes, we do have a lot of old archaic French words from late Middle French and Renaissance French. The reason why our French did not continue evolving much is because of the British conquest of 1759.
Un petit bonjour à mes cousins d'outre Atlantique. Et vive les CowBoy Fringants ! kzhead.info/sun/mc6DmpSEjmeYeo0/bejne.html Patience, patience, patience, bientôt vous reviendrez dans le Royaume de France et la Fleur de Lys illuminera la métropole. Vive le Québec libre ! Vous gagnerez le Match retour, pendant ce temps, protégez bien la fleur de Lys car ici seul les blasons anciens l'affiche, comme celui du bourbonnais. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duch%C3%A9_de_Bourbon
L'indépendance n'arrivera pas. Ce n'est plus du tout d'actualité@@allen3444
Let's be honest here, the French just change their language every time they feel like too many foreigners can understand them. "Quick Jean-Pierre, the peasants are figuring out we are mocking them again. Release a bunch of new letters with funny little hats and let's stop pronouncing five old ones."
LMAO Noble Russians made french the most spoken language for highborn families for that exact reason, for commoners not to understand them
Maybe you think this is a joke... well we've been using "verlan" and inverting the syllables of some words for a while now, first prisoners so guards wouldn't understand them, then people in the suburbs, for the same reason... now it's used everywhere, at least in Belgium and France. Literally new words coming from people who didn't want other French people to understand them.
not me reading that in a french accent
ahahahahahaha
The fact that its actually true..
I'm so glad I was born french. Otherwise I would never have the patience to learn that crazy shit.
You have no respect for your language and your culture!
@@thomasharter8161 I have way too much and that's why. Loving your own culture and language doesn't mean you must necessarily turn a blind eye over its flaws.
Same...
@@thomasharter8161 You have no french irony :)
Fact af
For those who don’t know, linguistic researchers claims that 41% (25,000 words) of the english words come from the old Norman-French language. During the medieval age, since the invasion of England by Guillaume Le Conquérant (William The Conqueror) in 1066, the Norman-French was imposed at the court of England and all its institutions. Then for 300 years, England was ruled by the French house of Plantagenet coming from Anjou in France. Therefore, French became the official language of England. However because of the tough rivalry between France and England, the latter has always refused to admit this heritage especially after loosing the One Hundred Years war. If you still have doubt just read what is written on the symbol of the England monarchy « Dieu et mon Droit » which is in French. It is obvious that there are many English words that come from French because they don’t exist in any other languages and adopt the same spelling. Example: « table » in french is « table », « village » in french is « village », « lion » in french is « lion », “centre” in french is “centre” “immense” comes from the french word “immense”, “monumental” from the french word “monumental”, “budget” from “budget” in french. Then you have some words originated from French which were a bit transformed in English because they are difficult to pronounce. Usually English just reversed the last 2 letters, removed the accents or replaced a letter « mute » comes from « muet » in french, theatre » from « théâtre » in French, “people” comes from the french word “peuple”… to that you maybe know “carte blanche”, “rendez-vous”, “cliché”… It’s not surprising as France and England are neighbors and have a common history.
There's a TON of military words. Like army, artillery, battalion, brigade, camouflage, carabineer, cavalry, cordon, corps, corvette, dragoon, espionage, esprit de corps, grenadier, and guard to name a few.
However, vocabulary is the most superficial aspect when you look at a language. Spain share with Arabic even a higher percentage of lexicon due to our Islamic heritage, but Spanish and Arabic are not even close as languages.
@@93kifi yes but in that case, this is obvious and proven that the words are taken from french.
Yes, and most of them are "faux amis", which makes them even more tricky to learn for French people... While the daily words tend to be originals, as for every language I know
Many of these words are uses in german to.. u can find other words for the french loan words.. like for people you can take folks..but you cant from a setence without the germanic words!
Man it is incredible how languages evolve over time. It seems like an impossible task and yet it just happens
I think about this like all the time
French in the future be like: "A" "What did you say about ma mére?!"
"Qu'est-ce que t'as dit à propos d'ma daronne wesh ?"
this would be "Qu'as-tu dit à propos de ma mère?" in french.
@@kiyomi_kamimoto ou plutôt "t'as dit wak d'ma reum?" 😅
@@HeleneEXOL-1485 mdrrr oui 😂
@Faith Roscoe ça c'est à l'écrit, personne parle comme ça
Alternate title for this video: “Why I took 4 years of Spanish classes, but quit French after 1 semester.”
Where I went to school the choice was between French and German (some schools offered Spanish, but not many), and any brief look at the case system in German will make you very rapidly forgive all of French' foibles...
I found French to be very easy after taking 6 years of Spanish. Sure, there were definitely pronunciation differences, but once you find the pattern, it became easy to figure out the similarities (written, not spoken) between Spanish and French, and you see there is a lot of similarities, both being formerly spoken Latin. There are some dialect of Spanish I cannot understand, no matter how many times I hear it. Mexican, Cuban, and some South American dialects can be difficult. Some of the patterns in French and their correspondence in Spanish; Where there's a V, in many words there's a B in Spanish (Savoir-Saber) J/Ch (chef-jefe) Ch/C/G (chat/gato, chemin/camino) There are many more once you pick up on this you'll start see how close these languages are than at first glance.
Alternate title: Why French is not a Romance langauge A Romance language Novela. * with a plot twist at the end . It would be like a Novella , la Ursurpadora , where Spanish,Italian and Portugese at the end are like ' Pooooor QUE!!!' are all staring at eachother when the truth is revealed about ursurpadura France. and France takes off its mask revealing that its German con artist, but that it was abondened by its Celtic mother when it was 5 and taken hostage by Latin where it learned to speak like Spanish& Italian. Then French dissapeared with the Germans and got indoctirnated. French returns with the Romance langauges but is different now and is sort of like in a coma and the other romanc langauges can't understand what it says but they hope he recovers. Then English comes in like a BBC miniseries , and returns for French like ' France, . I .. I... I am you're BROTHER! We've been looking for you for 10 years. It's time to return home France with me, dutch and German'. France is like " NOooooooO! (prounounced Nnnn uuuuuhhh ooooooh*weird french noices). THen its revealed that ROMANIAN was actually Spanish, Portugals and Italys long lost brother who was raised elsewhere. They suffered some head trauma too and forget where its history but in similar sittuation like France and the romance brothers, romanian was raised by the Slavic Brothers. Romanian and French were switched at birth(sort of like Man in Iron Mask- oh the irony). Mid season France plots against Romania as it cozies to the other europeans , but Romania is unaware of the truth that it switched at birth. But learns of it in the season finale. Russia is saddened when Romania is leaving the Slavic brothers to join Europe and the romances. Russ is saddened because at one time Russ tried to join the Romances in its teen years, when Papa Rome had found refuge at his parents house. . However English still wants to bond w/ France but France wan'ts nothing to do with the Germanics. Germanics make every case to bring back France but France pretends it still suffers from amnesia. Then the truth about France is discovered by Spain and Italy when they encounter Romania and notice the abormalities of France. Then English confirms the truth and the question is to the Romances... Who's it going to be Romance languages..?? French or Romanian... EN EL PROXIMO CAPITOLO de la URSURPADURA. ... Espana discrube la verdad de Tariq ib Rahim, y su pasado Arabe ( ! **gasps ** Dios Mio!) Italia discubre que tambien fue hijo de los alemanes (10%). Portugal se enamora con Frances en Rio. Espanol Mexicano se confunde cuando encuentra muchas similaridadees con Italia mas que el Castellano. Infidelidad? (**gasps** No me digas!) Y Switzerland ... Switzerland todavia no sabe que hacer.
THIS!
@@chibiromano5631 French and Romanian are considered Latin languages. What are you saying?
Thanks for incorporating other french countries' promunciations also. Born and raised in Québec, I've grown in a culture with the false belief that our "joual" was a "bastardization" of France's french. Then I found out that we actually often use more ancient promunciations and vocabulary. All languages are equaly good and there is no such thing as talking without an accent. I love the diversity of language, I love the mamy regional accents of Québec, l'Acadie, and everywhere else (although I think the french spoken on Les Îles de la Madeleine's Havre au maisons may be my favorite way to have french sound.
As a French speaker who's learning Spanish, this is super interesting. I'm so happy I don't remember learning French because I would have given up.
Even though French is not my native language and I'm still not adept at it, I'm very happy now that in Flanders we start learning it at a young age. I can read words and letters in the French way quite naturally, but damn if you'd have to start learning that as an adult ... French is insane with all those silent letters.
I'm the contrary and I learned french very fast
I am really fluent in English and I also understand and speak a lot of french. I love the language, the gastronomy,the country the mentality and the french documentaries and programes.
🎶La pitwa he he ho la patri te grat te gret ina te hoajk wen te ide blod la prench la pitwa te grat te gret patria liberte la le liberte la republique🎶
@@mad_fleming Which are "silent letters" in French ? For me, they are not...
You just answered almost all of the questions I had about why french the way is that it is.
Which questions did you have that weren't answered?
I saw what you did there.
@@theMuBot I didn't wanna say "all" in case something came to my mind later.
@@IrizarryBrandon I don't :D
@@gingerbreadgirrl Because you said "the way is that it is" (perhaps more French-influenced, so you were punning on the subject of the video?) instead of simply "the way it is." Then again, to be honest, I hardly know any French so I could just be sorely in random territory here. Sorry if that's the case. :)
Every body is talking about how french is weird and stuff, but really we need to speak more about the quality and complexity of this video ! There is so much work on this to the point it's completely fluid with the topic ! Nice video, deserve more congrats :)
No Congrats Are Not Cool And Are Completely Useless Here
Make A Comment That Isn't About Congratulating Instead
Yes! Even the subtitles are well done - definitely congrats to the team for a great production!
amazing vid I agree
Yea man, I think this is one of the most deep and professional content I ever see in youtube.
Having learnt four romance languages, i feel the phonetic complex rules, the liaisons, and syllable diminutions etc., these stuffs in french do make speaking quite more efficiently than speaking other romance languages while it's surely not the case for writing. I'm just weirdly addicted to this insane and attractive language lol
@369tayaholic5. Not insane but attractive…
@@ac8907 have you seen the hot vs crazy chart? the two dimensions are directly proportional LUL
Same here! 🙋🏻♀️😅
me too! Idk why but french sound and pronunciations of words really satisfied me. just say leon to "le-ong" made me nuts.
I'm working on learning French over again. I speak Spanish but interact with Italians in Spanish but would love to learn Italian someday. 😊
Both entertaining and educational. As a second generation Italian-Canadian, who speaks Italian, I always struggled learning French in elementary school. Later in life, I learned enough conversational Spanish to communicate. It was far easier learning Spanish than French. 🇮🇹🇨🇦
I know French is not easy, but I'm so in love with it! lol
I'm actually impressed at how this man is able to pronounce so many different phonetics that sound so similar, and tell the difference
I edit videos with subtitles in 3 different languages for old songs of different nations. You are also invited... :) kzhead.info/sun/i8ibpMuXo2uZdWw/bejne.html
Impress , French term , term , French term , pronounce , French term , different , French term , phonetics ( and the 17 domains of the linguistic ) French terms , sound , French term , similar , French term , difference , already said .... vocabulary .... French term ... English speakers that can not understand what mean langu and the suffix age in the word language have to stop to give ridiculous lecons ( ridiculous , lecons , French terms ) English is not a Germanic language , and the germain disappears 2000 years ago , the deutch ( German) and French are terrified ( French term )when they are hearding you calling the allemanic civilisation German... you are the only slaves in this world with a complet ( French term ) fake propagande ( French term ) at the place ( fr term) of the history ( fr term ) .....
This video is full of ridiculous informations and complet disinformations , and a lot of confortable invertions ... the English speakers slaves have not to know .... we understood don t worry ...
The peoples of Europe all have common ancestors in prehistory, why should brothers quibble over trivialities rather then marvel at the beautiful tree of languages handed down to us all?
@@lilidesbelons4093 c'est un bot?
Louisiana French speaker here, love how much light this shines on North American French dialects
you're being sarcastic right?
@@charles1413 ?
Do people still speak french there ? Where are they ?
@@la537eme quebec, louisiana, new-brunswick (peninsule acadienne), many more places. Theres french comunities spread out in north america pretty much everywhere tho those i mentioned are where we are in more density From a french canadian, we do exist
@@mouche2565 i know french Canadian, i wanted to know where in Louisiane there was any french community
This is just amazing ! I am french and I studied Medieval litterature and langage. So this are not totally new concepts for me, but it had never been so well explained to me, nor in a so fluent manner. Congratulation for this wonderful "exposé" :-)
Est-ce que vous connaissez des ressources pour apprendre le moyen français? Je voudrais mieux comprendre la langue de Guillaume de Machaut.
Bonjour, Je ne m'attendais pas à trouver une question à la suite de mon commentaire, mais c'est une bonne surprise et j'espère pouvoir vous répondre sans dire trop de bêtise, même si ma vie de médiéviste est maintenant assez lointaine ! Normalement, la langue du XIV° est encore assez transparente pour nous autres, à la différence des siècles précédents. Si vous m'aviez parlé de vous plonger dans la littérature du XIIeme ou XIIIeme, ma réponse n'aurait pas été la même. Mais pour Guillaume de Machaut, qui couvre surtout le XIV, vous devriez pouvoir aborder les textes uniquement avec un bon lexique. La structure des phrases commence à devenir proche des nôtres (puisque l'on perd progressivement des cas nominatifs et accusatifs et qu'il faut compenser en ayant une place plus ou moins assignée dans la phrase, à la différence du latin où l'on peut mettre tous les mots dans n'importe quel ordre, par exemple). Larousse a sorti un dictionnaire de l'ancien français qui va jusqu'à la moitié du XIV qui, d'après mes souvenirs, était bien. Il y a aussi des lexiques (lexiques de l'ancien français de Frédéreic Godefroy). La seule chose à garder en tête pour l'usage de ces lexiques, c'est que l'orthographe n'est pas encore fixe à cette époque. Si vous ne trouverez pas un mot avec une certaine orthographe, il faut le chercher avec une autre entrée, similaire à l'oreille. Et si vous vous passionnez vraiment, eh bien... il sera toujours temps d'ajouter un livre d'initiation, type "l'initiation à l'ancien français de sylvie bazin Tachella" éventuellement, la petite grammaire de l'ancien français (Bonnard Régnier)... Mais croyez moi, pour Guillaume de Machaut, le lexique surtout ! 🙂Bonne découverte !
@@krystalcamprubi3728 Merci infiniment pour votre aide !
@@Musicienne-DAB1995 Tout le plaisir est pour moi :-)
This is a phenomenal piece of work. So well done plus engaging and memorable. You deserve some kind of award for this! 🏆 💯
Conclusion: It's a mess. Well done with the baking theme. I can see so much effort that went into this story
And the theme it very much fits in with French culture.
I’m learning French (early stage) and I have to practice how to pronounce words so long that it’s rained on my English speech
Or as my Quebecois friend would say; "Tabarnak! Mais quelle abomination!"
He even tell to let the mess be at the end 🤣😭
English is worse in that regard...
as an Italian, French is so easy to read, but so hard to listen to
Same for us ! With Spanish too
I can only understand spoken French when I have French subtitles on and I can see the secret second half of each word.
Same for swedes and Danish. Or really any of the nordic langueges and Danish. I could probably read a danish text, even course literature for univeristy type level, without too much trouble. But I can't undestand even 1/4 as much while hearing someone talk danish. I just can't hear what the sounds they are making is supposed to correlate to what words. They drop so many letters and all the sounds are basically just the same and very different from the other nordic languages. While Norwegian and Swedish is like Spanish and Italian to eachother (i know a bit of spanish), if awedish and norwegian aren't even more close to eachother. I can watch tv-shows in norwegian without subtitles, and be fine. Maybe not getting a word once in a while.
Yes, some interesting parallels between Danish and French: that weakening of final consonants, making the distinctions between some pairs of related words subtle or nonexistent. I'm fine with French because I learned it young, but I found Danish very difficult when I tried to pick some up for a work trip.
It is the opposite for me, as a Mauritian we speak Creole which is a mixed mainly with French and other languages.
I've learned many things about my language. Thank you for the quality of your work !
Merci beaucoup pour cette vidéo. Le format est super ! J'ai appris pas mal de choses sur l'histoire de ma langue natale. 😅
I'm convinced no one in France actually knows what anyone is saying, and the entire society happens entirely by accident.
based and breadpilled
As a french, I agree
At work and personal life miscommunication is a real issue, and often the cause of many mishaps. But try to speak chinese (i did)...
I'm french and it's true
We understand each others but we are constantly fighting about how we should pronounce stuff. Or how we should write it. Or if we have the right to use this word in this context. And the funny part is that often the people who say to others that they are not speaking right are also wrong.
Oh no, I'd forgotten about the initial "h" mess! The horror!
Not to mention that some words that never had an 'h' can have the preceding word pronounced as if they did: le onze.
Honestly as a native french, I forgot too, I thought all h don't stick...and I make them stick anyway XD
L'horreur!
@@pierreabbat6157 Ungary got its name like this. We will be hungry forever.
Heart of Darkness
Bravo ! Fantastic job ! Astounding. You managed to keep it so detailed and still so pleasant ! All my respect and thank you!
Wonderful video that has so many hours of work in it. Thanks! Subbed one minute in. My darling’s mom always refers to French as “how the Franks thought Latin is spoken”. While it’s slightly more complicated, this video also shows that it’s a legit summary. … and when you listen to Germans or French trying to speak any other language, you get a feel for this process.
As a native Louisianian I have absorbed French all my life. In the 70s a group of kids from a college in Canada came to our town in Lafourche Parish to study how French was spoken. They said that it was closer to 18th century French. Makes sense because Cajun French was a oral language which changed from place to place.
you are from Louisianne, surely people call you Madame Victorine Dvoraque.
@@PHlophe Alors, non! Malheureuse!
C'est chou, pourtant ! -:))
@@PHlophe Oh oui! Tres'!!
I've been told that, as a French Canadian (who isn't from Québec), my french has words used that are medieval sounding to European French speakers. Plus they poked fun at my accent too (it's cool, I poked fun at theirs). Some sounds I simply can't pronounce, like anything ending in "eur/euse". I can't quite get the European pronunciation...ah well
Forget his knowledge of languages, this editing is an absolute masterpiece
This dude explained some stuff I had no idea and I've been speaking french for quite a while omg (that final "shh" at the end of words ??? omg. he's right.)
@@ink3539 i have next to no real knowledge of the language, but the history behind it fascinates me. Absolutely wild to see the changes a language can go through
Why would we have to give up the content in favor of the form?
But it would be better if he knew something about languages...
@@rjpena4258 I don't know THAT much but I think he's being extremely accurate, French evolved in such a way that in the later parts of history, the langue d'oïl has been artificially pushed forward was a way of unifying the country under one language - the langue d'oc and other reginional languages have been pushed back and called "dialects" - forbidden to be taught in schools and unrecognized. The topic of schools working entirely in breton for examples are highly controversial even if said school has excellent results. Entire regions have entirely lost their "patois". In here only the old people kept their accent and now they're pretty much all dead. (we're considered as the region where "basic french" is from. now im sad) The académie française still stunts the evolution of French up to this day lmao, they're like a bunch of old people saying "this isn't a word we won't put it in the dictionnary !" (thankfully the get a dictionnary out once every four century).
This was really well done. Bravo! Loved the in-depth familiarity the author has with languages displayed in this analysis. Good stuff here and illuminating.
That was freaking amazing! A video almost written and spelled as a poem, an ambiguous ode and a travel to some strange languages, mixing and shifting old sonorities to make even familiar musics sounding as exotic notes. Grand merci, que ton écriture jamais ne tarisse, et souvent encore berce nos esprits vers d'aussi enthousiastes récits
Guys learning french is super easy, i did it when i was a just a baby 😌
This is one of my favourite jokes. I tell people that Finnish is easy - if even I could learn it as a baby, anybody can do it.
@@oz_jones . See there, I Finnished immediately. Not so hard after all.
Because you were French-born, right?
Why did you bring them up? You also fail at punctuation/capitalization.
@@oz_jones Did you know that mortal kombat came from finland folklore? It's a finnish hymne
French is to the Latin languages what Danish is to the Germanics. Speak as quickly as possible, sound out as few syllables as possible, be as flat as you can be, and stray as far from your written languages as you can, with as many grammar exceptions as possible.
French is not spoken quickly compared to Italian or Spanish
😂 danish might be for me then!
most of those grammar exceptions are either of Gaulic or Frankish origin, in those languages they are the rule and not the exception.
so true hahaha
To me English is the weird Germanic relative, both French and English has had so much influence from Celts, Germanic, Latin and more, French with Gaullish and Frankish and English with Latin, Greek, Old Norse, Celtic and Norman French
Great video! And thanks a lot for providing this document as well, I'll gladly learn even more on this topic. You've prepared it in a very professional way, love it. :)
Epic explanation. Thanks for this!
"Hallo? Ja, it's the Franks." fucking slayed me.
@@israel.s.garcia Now, absolutely don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that modern Standard Dutch is primarily based on the Hollandic dialect, which apparently got many of its characteristic traits fairly recently. Frankish or Old Dutch _might_ have sounded a lot more like modern German. My intuitive guess would be that Flemish or Brabrantish might be the closest modern dialect to the old language.
@@israel.s.garcia Besides the fact that this is a joke and now you ruined let’s talk about it. Old Dutch is only one dialect of what was believed to be Frankisch but Luxemburgish, Pälzisch and other dialects of the Germanic continuum are equally decedents of Frankisch Also, Ja“ and „Hallo“ are pronounced the same in High German and Dutch (less used). So you should have cringed at all.
@@djaevlenselv You are wrong in saying that it would have sounded more like modern German. Modern High German is very distinct from older Germanic languages, and especially from Low Franconian languages like Dutch and Frankish. The High German dialects have undergone a whole mess of sound changes that Dutch did not, so Dutch in many ways is a more archaic language than modern standard German, at least when it comes to sound. And standard German also mashed together elements from many different Germanic dialects because it was deliberately designed as a common literary language rather than organically evolved over time. Standard German was never spoken until the 19th century. Now, like all standard languages, modern standard Dutch originates in much the same way, but it was created a few centuries earlier than standard German (reflecting the fact that the feudal territories which formed the Netherlands unified earlier than those which would form Germany). It was indeed based chiefly on the Hollandic dialects but the Hollandic dialects themselves were thoroughly influenced by those of Flanders (due to emigration) and as a standard language also incorporated elements from dialects across the northern Netherlands, which is why modern standard Dutch also has some Ingvaeonic characteristics derived from Saxon and even Frisian dialects. But overall the dialects that standard Dutch was based on are a lot more conservative than those standard German was based on, not to mention that they were closer to Frankish in the first place. The Salian Franks after all were based in the Low Countries, and while standard Dutch incorporated Saxon and Frisian elements, it was most heavily influenced by the Low Franconian dialects of Holland and Flanders. So while both modern standard Dutch and modern standard German are highly distinct from what Old Frankish would have sounded like, Old Frankish is definitely closer to the first than to the latter. Standard Dutch is directly descended from Old Frankish, Standard German is descended from languages that were closely related to but distinct from Frankish (such as Alemannic and Swabian) and have undergone significant sound shifts that Frankish and its descendants did not. The Low Franconian dialects of Flanders and Western Germany might very well be the closest in sound to Frankish, but don't quote me on that. In general however the Low Franconian dialects are the most conservative ones, which is what sets them apart from Middle and East Franconian dialects that were more influenced by Allemannic and Swabian and underwent the same sound changes those languages did.
I have a feeling there will be history memes made from this (if it isn't already)...
@@djaevlenselv Some of old Dutch is preserved in Afrikaans because it developed in Africa after the Dutch first came here in 1652. When I go to the Netherlands and I speak Afrikaans people tell me it is old Dutch.
My favorite part of French spelling is "comment" = "how." It's very similar to the Spanish "como" (except nasalized at the end) but almost twice as many letters.
When I was a freshman in high school and was deciding whether to study French or Spanish, I did some research. To me, it was obvious that Spanish, at least, had much easier spelling and pronunciation than French. Of course, both had gendered nouns and common use of the various types of subjunctive, all huge challenges for me, but that's another story.
there's actually a nasal A, not O, at the end of 'comment' in French
@@libatonvhs The nasal vowel at the end of 'comment' is very similar to the o at the end of 'como.'
@@rmdodsonbills Their point is that French "comment" is pronounced more like Spanish "coma" than "como" - it's still a pretty similar sound but a lot of English speakers learning French get the "en/an" and the "on" vowels confused or even don't realize there's a difference, which I think is why they figured it was worth pointing out
👀
Merci beaucoup for such another awesome video! Please keep on doing them :)
I’m a month into French on Duolingo and feel like I’m starting to start to feel like I’m getting kinda comfortable with it. Between my mouth having a hard time forming the noises and my brain not being able to sort the gender specifics, I’m having a great time!
This app is fantastic. But I recommend some grammar learning besides it.
J'espère que tu continues et que tu prends toujours autant de plaisir 👍
Does Duolingo have some verlan exercices ? ^^
@@BZValoche I had to Google Verlan. I don’t think so, it’s primarily used for common conversations; at least that’s my take after 120+ days. My hope is, for me, that it starts as a foundation and then I’ll take some proper courses to learn the actual syntax.
"feel like I’m starting to start to feel"
I have never seen a foreigner so on point in terms of the french accent in french. The amount of work you've put in there is palpable. You blew my mind with this video and taught me a lot about my own main language. Have a virtual café-croissant on me!
Ah, le fameux café-croissant virtuel... Une institution de la France moderne 😂
I edit videos with subtitles in 3 different languages for old songs of different nations. You are also invited... :) kzhead.info/sun/i8ibpMuXo2uZdWw/bejne.html
It's because languages are almost always taught wrong. They try to shoehorn the sounds of the target language into the sounds of the native language of the learner. "This letter is pronounced sorta like such and such but different" then they expect you to figure out how to perfect it by listening to native speakers and figure it out on your own. The best approach is to teach some basic phonology first and teach what your mouth is actually doing when you articulate these new sounds. Learning a language on its own terms. I think the owner of this channel is smart about that kind of thing.
@@odysseus231 it’s so cute how, despite being Italian, I understood everything you said as it was written in my own language ahah
@@angelicart.6 The same thing as I am a Brazilian.
"romance language not spelt the way it is spoken can't hurt you, it isn't real" French: 👁👄👁
So that's how the French ruined English spelling rules.
@@stuartdparnell The English continued that trend long after we were gone, bumping the absurdity up to eleven XD
Yes, because every language has the same spelling rules, of course. Btw, I think English is even worse in that matter. "rough, through, though"
@@stuartdparnell English also has the problem of spelling a word from one source but using pronunciation from a different source (dialect) i.e. "busy".
@@hailredlamp True! "CREEK/crick" (although both pronunciations permeate the US), colonel/"kernel" pronunciation, then the British "leftenant" pronunciation for lieutenant, and on and on.
I absolutely love that you tackled French from outside of France too! I must say that your québécois accent is on point especially the words "Québec" and "bête", I seriously recognized my accent in those, kisses from Québec 💝
This was a lot ! I had to pause and rewind a few times. Extremely interesting as a French to track down some of our weirdest features all the way back to latin. Thanks !
French is different from other Latin languages because the Franks in northern France learned to speak the Romance language with their Germanic accent. the result is that elements of Germanic pronunciation entered the French language. Subsequently the King of France François 1st imposed French from northern France to other French regions in administrative acts .... We must not forget that French was not the only language spoken in France ... There was Flemish, Alsatian, Mosellan, Breton, Corsican and all the Occitan dialects of the south of France.
I can't help but feel--with no data to back me up--that historical linguists may have managed to downplay Celtic elements in the pronunciation of French even in the bad Latin phase, and into the mediaeval and even the modern phase, not just directly but negatively, as a reaction to elements perceived as uncouth. Prestige--or lack of it--can wreak huge changes across even a generation or two. just a thought.
@@TheJohnblyth There are still words of Celtic origin in the French language as well as place names on French territory.
@@TheJohnblyth more than that: pronunciation can vary in a single decade on individuals because of social pressure. For example this was the case for the disappearance of the trilled R in the Montréal area.
Occitan is a language.
@@jto2161 There is not an Occitan language ... There are Occitan dialects: Provençal, Limousin, Nizard, Catalan etc .... Most of these dialects are spoken only marginally ...
As an Italian, I find french the easiest language to understand when written (among latin ones), but simultaneously hard to understand when spoken; tho not as hard as Portuguese and Romanian, which to me sound like non-Latin languages at all
Apparently, Portuguese sounds like Polish. There's a video on the Langfocus channel in that. And Romanian has Slavic in it, so ...
I think the words in Italian and French are very close because we basically borrowed from each other in both directions basically continuously for the last 500 years, so the words converged even if the pronunciation became incredibly different. I would guess a French person who speaks no Italian would still be able to understand like 60-70% of a text in Italian but still not understand the spoken language, because while of course there are differences those differences are very systematic and predictable. Learning Italian I was like "oh this grammar thing is exactly like French but normal" (like the rules for when you inflect participles - it's like you take the Italian rules, then add 50 exceptions for no reason other than the Academy wanted to jack themselves off)
@@Matthy63 precisely, I agree with you completely. France and Italy have been influencing one another in several aspects of culture - language included; if I'm not mistaken, French and Italian share over 90% of lexicon, whereas Italian and Spanishonly share less than 75% of lexicon. I'm Italian and I've never studied French, tho I often read french books fairly easily with the occasional help of a dictionary. This does not happen with Portuguese or Spanish, which have a lot of very different lexicon.
I would say that it depends if you are talking about Brazilian Portuguese or European Portuguese As a Brazilian, when I was traveling in Europe I could easily communicate with Italians even though we didn't spoke the same language (specially in Naples and others regions in south Italy where no one speaks English) But European Portuguese is different. It sounds like a completely random language if I'm not concentrate even if theoretically it's my mother language
@@pedrorvd1 it could be'...tho the reason why you easily understood South Italian languages and dialects is because they come from a sub-group of latin languages different from the one of North Italian languages, and closer to spanish and Portuguese (because South Italy has been under the Spanish empire for many centuries)
This is actually very helpful for spelling and memorizing vocabulary! I'll look into the resource to see more words!
I really enjoyed this lesson! Merci bien 🫶🏼
So, growing up in Quebec, as an Italian native speaker, I could never get the R-sound right. I also understand, now, why some of my friends get a kick out of my "archaic" [r].
Well, if you live in Montréal, practically everyone was merrily rolling their R's 50 years ago.
@@Xerxes2005 They still do a lot more than metropolitan France. And you can find a lot of old people still rolling their R in rural area. (funny as Belgian also have particular way of saying their R.)
@@Aaronit0 You should look up Louisianan French then. Imagine a person rolling their r's on top of having a southern accent. Oh, and some English words.
@@Odinsday Yup I do know it ! I love languages, and especially mine (French) and its history, so I already looked up almost everything about it and I still find it so fascinating. I love how some American are trying to keep Acadien alive. And I'm also looking into patois and currently learning Occitan. (from 11 to 13 centuries) still talked and understood by a lot of people (from 1 to 4 millions estimated), specially old people that learned it from their grand parents 😊 Hopefully I could keep a piece of this culture alive with me. And fun fact about it : Catalans, Spanish and Italian understand it quite easily (better than French) and vice versa. So it'll be quite funny talking Occitan there during vacations ! 😁
It was weird and interesting to listen to when I first heard someone speaking Louisiana creole. I’d taken a year of French with mostly Paris and Quebec in mind, so the sound of southern creole was _interesting,_ to say the least. I could barely parse words though, let alone understand a few scattered phrases I might’ve been able to for a Québécois. Parisian Liaison scares me, but contractions in the south… I know how it goes in English, I’d be screwed as a French speaker.
Didn't realize just how many of our pronunciations here in QC are actually just pronunciations from earlier versions of French. I knew about some, but this was really eye-opening! :)
Oui, les dialectes québécois, acadiens et réunionnais sont souvent vus comme les plus conservateurs.
Just look at char
Le français canadien a aussi des évolutions qui lui sont spécifique, comme la palatalisation des /t/ et /d/ en [ts] et [dz] devant /i/ et /y/, ou la diphtongisation des anciennes voyelles longues dans les syllabes fermées (ex : = [faɪ̯ʁ])
Reminds me of a 70 year old Louisiana man I met at a retirement home and he talked about how his father spoke such an old French dialect that they got mocked when they visited France.
This is also true for some aspects of Canadian/American English compared to contemporary British English.
Great video. I come back to watch it again and again to understand it better. So interesting the journey languages go through, and french's is extra bumpy!
Absolutely brilliant , thank you for this demonstration
As a French Canadian (Acadian), your pronunciation is very good! I've also noticed that Middle French sounds like a very accented Canadian accent. I've been told that Canadian French is more identical to 1700s French than French from France. Your description of contemporary French seems similar to what I've heard.
The phonetic writing system is a blessing. If you know the sound the symbols make, you can pronounce pretty much anything correctly.
I think the French that evolved in North America was based primarily on the spoken dialects of north-western port cities such as Nantes (itself originally Breton-speaking).
@@kenster8270 I don't think Nantes was ever Breton-speaking? It was traditionally Gallo-speaking I believe, one of the Oïl languages.
That's supposed to be that way, that said the accent from Quebec sounds like it's been slightly influenced by the english language. Words sound more "round"-ish and there are more variations in the tone of french canadian.
I think it's the same for American English compared to British English. I believe it's due to the relative isolation of colonial settlers: small groups spread in much larger areas.
I'm a former French teacher. I find this video wonderfully interesting and informative. It's also beautifully made.
Lynda, did you give up teaching or you simply retired
Why would give up, when she appreciated this video and found it informative.
I edit videos with subtitles in 3 different languages for old songs of different nations. You are also invited... :) kzhead.info/sun/i8ibpMuXo2uZdWw/bejne.html
@@HB-mn8lh I’m pretty sure they meant what they commented because in Lyndas post they stated that they were a “former French teacher” which implies that Lynda has since resigned which is why @Lechiffresix asked how they stopped teaching. Hope that helps you understand the comment Take care 🎀❤️
This is a charming and fascinating presentation. Thank you.
Wow! Quel beau travail! Original et instructif. Beaucoup de efforts, j'en suis sûr.
As an Italian having studied and speaking basic French I fully agree, grasping French pronunciation and how it differs from the written form is hard in the beginning, but doable in the end :D PS Salut à nos cousins Français ici :D
Italian is the closest language to French (If we exclude the other 2 langage of the Gallo-Romance family ,aka Occitan and Franco-Provençal), with 89% of lexical similarities ,Spain and Portuguese are 2nd ,both having 75% of lexical similarities with French ,English is 4th ,with 70% of lexical similarities ,German is 5th ,Romanian and Dutch are 6th-7th (I forgot which one is 6th) . A French can completely comprehend Written Italian (Without ever learning Italian) ,Corsican ,Occitan and Franco-Provençal (+ their dialects) ,and can do the same with Spanish and Portuguese (But have to atleast know the basics of those language) .
👀
Lol the French are neither Germanic nor Italic, just because it’s called “France” doesn’t make them descended of Franks. The real descendants of Franks are the Dutch, and just because French is an Italic language doesn’t make them relatives of ours either. DNA tests showed the french have Celtic haplogroups revealing their gaulish heritage. The french are the same celts from 2000 years ago and their brethren are the Scots, Irish, Welsh and Cornish.
@@KingMacuilmiquiztli Well I've never said that. Modern French language has obvious roots in Latin, and French ethnicity is obviously different from the Italian one, there's a reason why we call each other cousins instead of brothers ;)
@@KingMacuilmiquiztli I'm not sure that Spanish and Portuguese share a common DNA with us, ethnically are Hispano-Iberic group, different from Gallo-Celtic group and from the Italic group. There are cultural affinities due to the language, more than with the French, yes.
As a native Spanish and English speaker, now that I've begun taking French lessons it absolutely baffled me how French got this different from the rest of the branch. Now I know, France is an absolute mess like English
As a Portuguese, English and Spanish speaker: I concur. Funny how even Italian is far more understandable than French is.
As a Spanish, English and French speaker I also concur
Crazy how "vez" and "fois" both originate from the Latin word "vicis"
i still believe that there are more french words of germanic and gaulish origin than the french linguists and historians say lol. Latin is somewhat fancy but gaulish and frankish are'nt... the word "route" for example shall be derived from "via rupta". Now it looks a lot like english "road" but with a d->t-consonant-shift, also take a look at french word "rue"
And half of the mess in English is due to French 😂
That's a hell of a job. Congrats for the effort and thanks you for sharing this with us all.
Mate, your video is so well done. It's very creative and amusing. I enjoyed it a lot
Remember to save some of your Old French for future English recipes.
Sourdough starter! 😆
Well. As a person that has studied French linguistics and literature in University, this video is literally my semester of "Phonétique historique du français", but very condensed. Which is honestly funny. You pronounciation for a non-native is also very good! Of course, the modern French you've explained seems to be the one in Paris, so definitely not the pronounciation everywhere even in France. I'm Belgian, so of course the accents here are also different. A lot of regions have kept the difference in pronounciation between [œ̃] (ex: brun) and [ɛ̃] (ex: brin), for example. I personally barely differenciate them because I am from a town that's close to the French border, so apparently I sound more French than Belgian. Geographical variations in languages is very fun too. When it comes to pronounciation and vocabulary too!
There is also the [é] \ [è] merger that he didn’t talk about.
@@benne4252 Yep! That's true. I hadn't thought about that. Even though I don't do the difference in "les" or "lait", and my partner likes to nag at me because of that, hahaha!
@@nimedhel09 I would nag at you too haha
@@sunsundks3891 Hahaha! Well, I can't help it, it's my natural accent. Just like my partner can't help changing the [b] and [d] sounds to their closed counterpart [p] and [t]. It's his accent too (although I also nag at him a lot about that hahaha)
@@benne4252 would it not be only for specific instances of [è]?
So fun I learn more on my own language history here! Great job, fascinating 😁 And good luck for the equivalent grammar part 😅
Super interesting etymology lesson! Thank you!
as an italian i can understand french only a little when i hear it but when i read it it is quite easy to understand. the latin root is much clearer when written
Agreed. It seems that written French is a wonderful language, but then the French speak it, and suddenly it becomes soup…
That’s so interesting, as a French speaker I can understand some Italian when I read it, too. When I listen though, that’s a different story 😭🤣
Italian is the closest language to French (If we exclude the other 2 langage of the Gallo-Romance family ,aka Occitan and Franco-Provençal), with 89% of lexical similarities ,Spain and Portuguese are 2nd ,both having 75% of lexical similarities with French ,English is 4th ,with 70% of lexical similarities ,German is 5th ,Romanian and Dutch are 6th-7th (I forgot which one is 6th) . A French can completely comprehend Written Italian (Without ever learning Italian) ,Corsican ,Occitan and Franco-Provençal (+ their dialects) ,and can do the same with Spanish and Portuguese (But have to atleast know the basics of those language) .
“Why does French sound so different to other Romance languages?” Romanian: ;)
I was wondering about that
Your language is romance?: Da! :)
Romanian sounds a little similar to Italian
Well I don't speak Romanian at all, but this afternoon I overheard a guy on the mobile and could immediately tell it was a Romance language, and after hearing a couple of "ul"s I was pretty sure it was Romanian. I doubt I could identify French as easily if I hadn't taken it some years in high school (and forgot almost all of it). I'd probably localise it somewhere in West Africa.
French sounds the most different from the Romance languages, followed by Portuguese. Romanian sounds much closer to Latin than either of the two.
Very interessant and instructive video !! Thank you ! Cheers from France
This was so extremely well done and super super interesting!! Wow!!! What a video...
j"ai bien aimé, ou comme on dit chez moi : /ʒbɛ̃nəme/
Comment on prononce ça ? Monté toujours présent ça fait plaiz'
J'bein eumé ?
@@jinmu4591 Tu parles de de Linguisticae ? Si oui t'as pas un lien je vois pas de quoi tu parle.
@@jinmu4591 ???
c'est quoi ça, un crossover?
The last part with the weird breathy sound at then of words made me chuckle. The French don’t know they’re doing it. At least my French teacher didn’t. He denied it. 😂
You want to know a good one? We don't say it in Quebec but when we hear a French person say it we don't notice it either. At least it took me 5 times to get what this French learner was trying to say about a "bonne nuit" video.
Same here hahaha That breathy sound is for me the most annoying feature of current French and I too think they’re totally oblivious of it
@@LucasLassance as a French I hate this sound, it irritates my ears
How recent is this? I studied French until about 13 years ago and don't remember or pronounce it that way.
@@fernandobanda5734 it's at least from the mid 20th century and probably earlier. It's not done everywhere but is a feature of the Parisian accent. The English term is "devoicing" (en fra nçais ça s'appelle desonorisation)
Love this video! Extremely well done!!!! Please do the rest of the romance languages because they've also changed.
This is amazingly well made. Tres bien!
He gave the origin of "frette" as we say it in Québec. Respect for that.
Perdu, perdu, perdu à Chibougamau, oh-oh-oh L'hiver comme un lavabo Frette et blanc, frette et blanc Glace mon dos Frette et blanc, frette et blanc C'est pas un cadeau, oh-oh Dolorès, ô toi ma douloureuse Perdu à Chibougamau, oh-oh-oh L'hiver frette et blanc, frette et blanc Comme un lavabo Frette et blanc, frette et blanc Glace mon dos Frette et blanc, frette et C'est pas un cadeau R. Charlebois ( Dolores )
Also the moé/toé origin, pas pire pantoute mon esti
aweille
That's exactly what I was just saying to my SO sitting next to me, except I'm in southern New Brunswick. "J'ai frette."
does "frette" mean "froid" then ?
Impeccable mastery of the nasal vowels. Impressive. I'm French from Québec and lived 4 years in Paris and had ample time to reflect on the changes in accents and I can say you're good. Except in Québec, we've stuck with some sounds for the last 400 years or so and changed some others. It would be interesting to see a video about the gradual split between France and Québec French along the centuries.
Or changes between local dialects. Or maybe how much stanradizion because of mass media.
You people are neither Germanic nor Italic, just because it’s called “France” doesn’t make you descended of Franks. The real descendants of Franks are the Dutch, and just because French is an Italic language doesn’t make you relatives of ours either. DNA tests showed the french have Celtic haplogroups revealing their gaulish heritage. The french are the same celts from 2000 years ago your brethren are the Scots, Irish, Welsh and Cornish.
'פ
@@KingMacuilmiquiztli who hurt you man. like they weren’t even talking about that?
@@KingMacuilmiquiztli Is that what explains our mutual distaste for the english ?
Thank you so much. Great refresher 🐼
The work that went into this video is absolument incroyable! Congratulations
We DID take "chandele" from French though. A candlemaker is called a chandler, which eventually became obsolete but remained as a surname.
Not to mention "chandelier" to hold all those candles
@@bj.bruner Kandelier
"Merci pour l'apero, mais je rentre parce que il va faire noir bientot". "T'as pas de chandelle?". My elderly bretonne neighbour calls a torch/flashlight a candle. Once, to my bewilderment, she asked me to buy her "un livre de beurre". A book of butter? No a pound. I got her 500 grams, which is about right , but she didnt do metric for butter or bread.
And ships' chandlers businesses
In England we still have 'ship's chandlers' selling marine stuff so not obsolete quite yet.
As a Spanish speaker thank god we write as we pronounce
if only english did the same thing
@Ir liz ssss
@Ir liz i mean, I'm not saying it's perfect but spelling is comparatively easier than most other languages
And yet there are so many Spanish speakers who can’t spell basic words
@@minim6981 ez qhe ezto ezta mui komplikado :P
Fascinating documentary of how a language evolves over the centuries. You have clearly explained how agua has contracted to eau...but much more..I am in awe of the detail and animation. It is a master piece. I hope you get the recognition you deserve.
Très intéressant merci !
"To make this uniquely French dish, start with slightly rotten ingredients..." Sounds about right.
American I guess?
French is the black sheep of European languages.
@@Shawouin Of course, we'd never dream of serving rotten food -- we just load it with enough fat and sugar to make it impossible to tell anyway.
@@the11382 Nah, that would be Hungarian which is distinct from Europe's 3 main language groups - Romance, Germanic, Slavic.
@@GTAVictor9128 Or Basque, which isn't Indo-European or Finno-Ugric or Turkic or Semitic. It may or may not be related to Etruscan.
Taking French helped me better understand my mother tongue of English...parts of speech and spelling. Then getting to live in France for a bit was lovely.
Poppycock
I’m French and when I started speaking english, I realized by „englishizing“ my French, I was offen understood to my great surprises. Many common french words (put with an english tone) are in fact upper english words (ex: procrastination ! ). By doing so, developed over the years a very large vocabulary, to the point of now being bilingual. I wish I had managed this with the other languages I learnt, i.e. Spanish, Italian, Dutch and German
I think the entire world finds it lovely to live in France and speak French.... except the French. 😂 (plz don't take this too seriously)
Merci beaucoup pour cette excellente vidéo!
Merci beaucoup for this story behind french language & très belle video, bonne continuation !
I laughed when you said we needed to start off with Latin, but make sure to let it go bad.
We call this: latin vulgaire in france and i think its beautifull
I've seen a text by some people intending to demonstrate that Latin as the origin of romance language is a lie ; at the end he was just compiling a list of words originated from Vulgar Latin. That palmface moment of thinking how could he possibly have spent so much time on this and never have heard of Vulgar Latin.
@@jmdespok so this is stupidity
Interestingly, Middle French sounds a lot like the Québéquois. I would love to see a video on Romanian, though the sources are much less reliable.
Români pe aici? 🇹🇩
well, Québéquois originate from the peoples who moved there very early on, when the French language wasn't unified and modernized... so probably a lot of old words coming from local "patois", from the region where the settlers came from in majority.
m'ah t'dire, moé j'ai ben frette en hiver icitte
Many of the current pronunciations of French geographical and street names along the historic French Mississippi River settlements will annoy French majors, but supposedly they still reflect the old proper pronunciation. And don't forget Paw Paw French.
It does. Actually the France’s French and the Québec’s split about at this time more or less.
I always wondered this to be honest. Im about to see the video, thanks!
Thank you for another fascinating video.
5:35 “England will borrow Norman candele not chandele.” Didn’t we borrow both? I mean… candles are made by a chandler…
chandler comes from "chandelier", wich is the object that bears chandelles in french.
@gipcambero yes, to hunt in italian = cacciare /katˈtʃare/ to hunt in spanish = cazar /kɑˈθaɾ/ to hunt in french = chasser /ʃase/
@@MrGustavier And English we chase something so we can catch it.
@@MrGustavier hunt in norman : cachi (it has other meanings in norman though)
@@MrBigfabe how do you pronounce it ?
Considering my Louisiana French is an older form or French that evolved in its own way, similar to Canadian French dialects, the history of the language is very interesting to me
I would even bet that Spanish and the ancient Houma language influenced some of our vowels as well.
Louisiana French! Don't be so ridiculous. French died out in Louisiana about 150 years ago. Just Americans who live in Louisiana trying to pretend they are more 'exotic' than they really are by taking French lessons, finding some tenuous link to something Frenchie, and then constructing some 'romantic' origin story for oneself. "Yes, I am part Cherokee-French, 100% French native speaker, with also part Italian, Irish, German, Czech, Swedish, Russian, Martian, etc. ad nauseum, ancestry".
@@leod-sigefast Don't try and delegitimize our people, our language, our culture because of your insecurities. I speaking French with my grandma right now!!!! In 1960, we had over 1,000,000 French native speakers, and we are returning in numbers once again! kzhead.info/sun/ZZeukcqvfZ53dqs/bejne.html
@@leod-sigefast Bonjour ! Sorry, you're wrong (but actually admitting you were wrong makes you a better "knower" ;-) ). It's after World War II that the numerous French-speaking people in Louisiana (mostly the Cajuns, the descents of French Acadians deported by the English in the XVIIIth century) were forced to speak only in English : at school, above all. kzhead.info/sun/krKhZ8WLnpt7hWg/bejne.html kzhead.info/sun/ZLZulLSva6WPpX0/bejne.html kzhead.info/sun/ldqsk69-jYCVgHA/bejne.html
@@leod-sigefast i actually know Louisianan who speak French and or creole Yes back in time they were more numerous but they really have schools and associations to preserve their language and I hope they be more numerous like they should be
Merci mon gars, super travail 🎉