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.

@waxflow

9 ай бұрын

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.

@recorr

9 ай бұрын

@@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

@MultiVaevictis

9 ай бұрын

c'est optimiste !

@Loktane

9 ай бұрын

@@recorr après les Langues c'est un peu subjectif, car chaque personnes est différentes sur la compréhension des Langues étrangères

@recorr

9 ай бұрын

@@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.

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 !

@galier2

10 ай бұрын

Mbolo. That's exactly what happens here with the pronounciation of Paris.

@Codd_rnw

10 ай бұрын

Perfect and clear explanation

@shakya00

10 ай бұрын

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.

@thato596

10 ай бұрын

No she said an s we heard and s. At 1:50 she does not say an s when she says paris

@shakya00

10 ай бұрын

@@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".

Your ability to understand English also makes it easier for you to understand French since so many English words are actually derived from French.

@LesangdesdieuX

10 ай бұрын

His hability to understand french definitly helped him too tho ahah

@TheACSB010

10 ай бұрын

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

@_Ottho

10 ай бұрын

@@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.

@gaston6800

10 ай бұрын

@@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.

@ailleurd

10 ай бұрын

E vero

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.

@domrogg4362

10 ай бұрын

Oh, no, not the Valley! 😅

@gazlator

10 ай бұрын

Fascinating!

@galier2

10 ай бұрын

Exactly.

@Nanarachouilla

10 ай бұрын

Haha I was about to comment more or less the same thing 😄

@unarealtaragionevole

10 ай бұрын

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)

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.

@patricialavery8270

10 ай бұрын

Oh those numbers.I remember it well.

@massey81

10 ай бұрын

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.

@divicospower9112

10 ай бұрын

These numbers are so dumb. In Switzerland (and Belgium) we kept the logical numbers. And that's more understandable for other people.

@marna_li

10 ай бұрын

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.

@Le_Trouvere

10 ай бұрын

France should honestly just switch over to huitante etc. Why not

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.

@jacobbaker5442

10 ай бұрын

I've noticed that too and I hate it tbh

@johndoes7569

10 ай бұрын

Maybe you wanna say "She did pronounce the S ..." because you can clearly hear the S in Paris....

@jacobbaker5442

10 ай бұрын

@@johndoes7569 Jesus you're dense

@OBIDU13

10 ай бұрын

French here, Paris is actually pronounced 'Pari'. No devoicing whatsoever, just a mute final consonant

@jacobbaker5442

10 ай бұрын

@@OBIDU13 ok

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.

@lissandrafreljord7913

10 ай бұрын

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.

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] :)

@9grand

10 ай бұрын

But the "s" is very very light

@norbertlauret8119

10 ай бұрын

@@9grand Well, I'm french and I don't hear the "s"...

@spoutnik7703

10 ай бұрын

@@norbertlauret8119 yep same

@akenow.

10 ай бұрын

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

@sebastiencostalima9521

10 ай бұрын

​@@norbertlauret8119parce que t'es habitué, c'est plus l'accent parisien ça

Native Spanish speaker here, French is phonetically impenetrable to me ☺️

@jacobbaker5442

10 ай бұрын

Skill issue

@MatthieuPiquemal

10 ай бұрын

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 😉

@MatthieuPiquemal

10 ай бұрын

@@Gelu345 the goose sound?

@PossibleBat

10 ай бұрын

Don’t worry, some French person will take offense and bed you, making you very penetrable 😂

@roidrannoc1691

10 ай бұрын

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...

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.

@mitchblank

10 ай бұрын

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.

@Sxilder1k

9 ай бұрын

And Le Marais is well known for being the “gay” area in Paris, although she uses the more modern and less specific “LGBTQ” word.

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.

@jfrancobelge

10 ай бұрын

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.

@tymanung6382

9 ай бұрын

@@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.

@fuckdefed

9 ай бұрын

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.

An Italian cementing french language in English is a hard stuff kudos for you. Ciao dalla Francia.

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!

@eivindkaisen6838

15 күн бұрын

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.

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

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).

@galier2

10 ай бұрын

You can use septante-trois and nonante-huit. Only, you may then sound like a Belgian or a Swiss.

@eviljoy8426

10 ай бұрын

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..

@paestum70

10 ай бұрын

@@eviljoy8426 exactly. What is difficult I think for Italian speakers is understanding and the pronunciation.

@teebo_fr_en_it

10 ай бұрын

Ma... ma e stato voi a cambiare il genere delle cose! Un fior! Come qualcosa cosi piccolo e carino non potrebbe essere femminile?? :-)

@paestum70

10 ай бұрын

@@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 kzread.info/dash/bejne/foOjssqugMzcj84.html, it's a scene from a Molière play in the original language.

@xouxoful

10 ай бұрын

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)

@maku4210

9 ай бұрын

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

@valerietaylor9615

9 ай бұрын

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?

@alexd6393

9 ай бұрын

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…

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

@pierreriviere9158

10 ай бұрын

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.

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.

you should do Corsican.

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

@mitchblank

10 ай бұрын

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.

@paull6449

10 ай бұрын

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. 🙄

@remilenoir1271

10 ай бұрын

The "R" in French is an uvular fricative ([χ] / [ʁ]) though, not a dental tap ([ɾ]).

@valerietaylor9615

9 ай бұрын

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.

"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

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.

@roidrannoc1691

10 ай бұрын

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.

@daxamgh6126

10 ай бұрын

I think Neuchâtel and Jura also use "Quatre-vingts"

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

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.

Merci, je te suis depuis longtemps. C'est toujours intéressant.

I speak French, we do have another word for city… cité…. But ville is most common. Merci!

@NoName-yw1pt

10 ай бұрын

And how is villa in french?

@matf5593

10 ай бұрын

@@NoName-yw1pt In French, “villa” is “villa”, a feminine noun. E.g. Une villa à la campagne. A villa in the countryside. 😄

@NoName-yw1pt

10 ай бұрын

@@matf5593Merci 😁

@yannsalmon2988

10 ай бұрын

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)

@matf5593

10 ай бұрын

@@yannsalmon2988Ouais! E.g. Cité de Vanier (Ottawa au Canada). Not the greatest réputation....

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! 👌

Now do Quebec French.

@VoodooAngel63

10 ай бұрын

Cajun French from Louisiana could be interesting.

@jacobbaker5442

10 ай бұрын

​@VoodooAngel63 it's literally french pronounced as if it was English

@jacobbaker5442

10 ай бұрын

Or Belgian french

@ImaginatorJoren

10 ай бұрын

Swiss French? He did Swiss Italian already

@andraflorescu

10 ай бұрын

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

Occitan would be cool to do

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.

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

@mayu2242

10 ай бұрын

True! But then again, I feel like it’s a bit normal since Parisian culture is the most popular of the French cultures

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.

Oh I'm so glad you finally tackled my mother tongue 🤗🇫🇷

Really interesting video! I recently discovered your channel and I have really enjoyed your content. As a languages enthusiast it has been a nice finding. Keep with the great content Metatron!

Very informative and interesting series.

As italian living in Paris I can write that understand french is pretty easy. For sure the closest idiom to italian.

Actually motivates me to learn italian someday :D thank you for your videos. And your accent is actually very good!

Buongiorno Signore Metatron! I am new to your channel and do enjoy the language comparisons to Italian. Simply having a wonderful time viewing your videos. As we say at home: " i ragazzi nella mia famiglia sono alti e Biondi." 😊 Ciao!

There are several French words in Sicilianu language. Even in English there are many French words. Grazie pi lu video, Saluta!

First thing, she says "C'est parti" (something like "let's go!") not "Sorti". And later she does say "Paris" with a little air at the end of the word, which can sometimes sound like "sh" or "ss", it's a common phenomenon, especially in Paris, for words ending in a vowel. You can often hear them say "ouich" instead of "oui" because there is too much tension in their mouth.

This video I've been waiting for

Your french accent is flawless. I'm impressed !

Bravo pour votre idée originale. Et surtout hyper bien traité.

Bonjour de Bretagne!! J adore t es videos (more video on Celts please)

@mayu2242

10 ай бұрын

Ce serai cool qui fasse aussi des vidéos sur d’autres régions avec d’autre accent et voc très différent (Bretagne, Picardie, le Midi)

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.

Like 👍 Number 825. American here 🇺🇸. I learned Spanish 🇪🇸 as a 2nd language. I used it to learn Spanish. This helped in reading 📚 and comprehension. 😃😃 Pronunciation? Only 1/2. The mute words were the hard parts: goes opposite Spanish, where the speaker pronounces virtually every letter in a word. Good 👍 video 📹. Suggested next language: Chavacano. It is a Spanish creole from The Philippines 🇵🇭

Portuguese from Portugal has many words that were influenced by French. Thanks for the video, Metatron.

@Gab8riel

10 ай бұрын

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.".

@KnightofAges

10 ай бұрын

​@@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'.

@tcbbctagain572

10 ай бұрын

Brazilian portuguese also has most of those words

@tcbbctagain572

10 ай бұрын

​@@KnightofAges Napoleon's invasion had nothing to do with that influence. Portuguese wasn't even influenced by French, it was influenced by Occitan.

@KnightofAges

10 ай бұрын

@@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.

As some suggested, you should do one with Québec French! It has a lot of similarities with other romance languages that France French doesn't have, like saying nous-autres/vous-autres (nosotros and vosotros from Spanish), or also the infamous ``Quessé ça`` a slang for ``Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça (what is that)`` which sounds exactly like the Spanish Que es eso. Also, in Québécois when we say « sur le (on the) » it becomes ``sul`` like in Italian. « La télécommande est sul' (sur le) sofa » We kept older words like « drette » (right) but we also say the modern form which is «droite». The older form « Drette » is just like the catalan word « Dreta ». We sometimes pronounce the final consonnant of some words like « Nuit » (night). Finally, the Québec diphtongues. Québec kept a lot of diphtongues, making it the romance language that sounds the most like portuguese when it comes to such sounds. The « Non » sounds a bit like the Portugese « Nao » (though it will sound like that rather when the Québécois that says it is mad or acting childlike). Words like « Reine » (queen) will sound like « rène » in France French (no diphtongues) but in Québec you'll hear the i « rè-i-ne » Anyway here's a video where we can hear different Québécois speaking kzread.info/dash/bejne/n5Z_mNWJp6nZpZM.html&ab_channel=Mat%C3%A9oDumontier

@CaptainBiceps

9 ай бұрын

"nous-autres/vous-autres" existe en Français de France ça n'a pas encore disparu en tout cas.

@fs400ion

9 ай бұрын

@@CaptainBiceps Mais beaucoup moins répandu. Au Québec c'est du vocabulaire courant

@CaptainBiceps

9 ай бұрын

@@fs400ion c'est peut-être "moins répandu" mais ça reste assez courant en France. Bon c'est sûr qu'un mec peu éduqué ou un adolescent ne s'en servira jamais en France mais je l'ai toujours entendu perso depuis tout petit.

As a French speaker, this was a really fun video! At 3:20 and 7:13 the girl doesn't pronounce the s in Paris. What you really hear is a phenomenon of Paris regional accent: when a word ends with a vowel in which the tongue is moved near the palate (meaning either I or U), we oftentimes push a little air afterwards, that air passes between our tongue and our palate and makes a sound that sorta resembles a mix between a h and a sh sound. I believe that's why you thought she pronounced the S in Paris

Funny thing is, you've got the "jump" right, but recognized the wrong word. The word he used was "saut", which at the time, when Normans brought French to England, was still "sault" (assault/summersault) and there we are already close to "salto". It is by the way quite a common shift to be found: salvo-sauf/alto-haut/caldo-chaud

Mec, tu t'es bien démerdé à l'oral et à la lecture ! Bravo 👍

I don't mind this series, but I wouldn't mind if you slowed down just a little bit. I like your other videos from this channel, and I don't expect them to go away, but I'm starting to miss those other kinds of videos. With that being said, I have two suggestions: Cajun French and Rio Platense Spanish (Argentina and Uruguay). Rio Platense Spanish is considered to be a difficult accent to understand, but it is influenced by Italian, due to immigration. I would be interested in both of those specifically.

Cool video. It is funny to hear an Italian saying that our language sounds lovely when I do feel, as a Frenchman, that our language just sounds normal (especially Parisian French) and it's Italian that sounds like singing. About the Paris-sss, I don't think she is trying to say it with a final s (as in English), it is more like she was about to start another word and stopped, or like the "euhhh" that we may mutter after a sentence, to avoid stopping it abruptly.

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.

At 4:15 Le Marais is a neighborhood in Paris. It’s also mean a swamp. From the 9th century, following a drying up of the land, many inhabitants settled. To live sustainably, they cultivated agricultural products. Thus, from a swamp, the Marais has become a vast market garden.

@Chiamami_Capo

9 ай бұрын

Now it's 🏳️‍🌈🐀🐀

Hey Metatron, great video. I have a small correction to make, though. You said something like "two different kinds of Spanish" during the intro and I feel the need to point out that Catalan is a separate language. It is spoken in Spain, but also in southern France and Alghero, Italy. It isn't a "kind of Spanish". I look forward to more videos in this series. Keep up the good work

Hi ! French from the south here. In the south, we have a lot of expressions, words, that are closer to italian. If someone still uses a bit of Patois, Provençal or Occitan, you may be able to understand better (also with the accent). I think that coming from French to italian is easier, because of the following thing : some words like Hôpital have had their pronunciation transformed, and deviated sometimes quite a lot from the original word in pronunciation. However, we still have adjectives that have the same meaning, same ethymology, but remained closer to the originial spelling. exemple : hospitalier is the adjective for "related to hospital world", so if you have good vocabulary, you might be able to find a lot of italian words like that, while the italian speaker can't use french adjectives. I agree with the written thing, I have never studied italian or Spanish, and I can read it (and hear it when spoken slowly and clearly), and still pick up the important informations of texts, while although I live in Flanders and speak german, it's super hard for me to understand the flemish (it's getting better now).

@holygooff

10 ай бұрын

I live in the Flemish region. ALmost everyone speaks a sort of patois here. It's not Dutch, it's not German, it's something else. But we gave up on our own standard language as well.

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.

@KertPerteson

10 ай бұрын

Interesting, I've heard of french having declensions in the past but not of italian and spanish

@bjbjboxford

10 ай бұрын

​@@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.

It's amazing because even if you don't understand what you read you still say it pretty good.👍.

i think the other reason you might had less problem is that you also know english and english do loan and use a lot of french word in their language, like materials and matériaux being the same

@thebenis3157

10 ай бұрын

The French loanwords in English usually have equivalent words in Italian that are almost the same. Surely there can be some instances where knowing English might help, but they're definitely very few

She doesn't pronounce the "s" at the end of Paris. She actually does a sort of breath at the end of her sentences like a "shh" (to mark the question I guess). It's interesting that you can hear a "s" because as a french person myself I could never hear it, it's pretty common to do these kind of noises while we are speaking I guess.

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).

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.

@ViciousDoormat

10 ай бұрын

Pain au chocolat is definitely more famous and eaten than croissants au chocolat, but those definitely exist as well

Bravo pour ton accent 😊

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.

In French we also say "cité" wich is synonim of "ville". "Cita" > "cité" > "city" Parisian French, is in fact neutral French, but the real Parisian accent sounds like this guy at 5:07 there's about a dozen different accents in France, some of wich sound very specific, and pretty hard to follow for non used ears. If you listen to a Parisian and a guy from Marseille, you'll notice it clearly.

@romain6275

9 ай бұрын

12 accents seulement ? Rien qu'en Lorraine, j'en compte au moins trois.

In the second one she says she's doing her vlog in the car on a Monday morning because everyone was sleeping at home and she talks about the week coming up. She says at work at lot of people are off, on holiday. She talks about 2 people called Luna, one who has left and the other who is working with them until September and who looks after cracotte (it means biscuit, maybe it's her dog), and she says her best friend Mathilde who she has known for years is coming back from holiday and she is doing some shopping and they are going to bruncher - have brunch .

Regarding "ville" we also have the word "cité" but it refers more to an old, medieval-style city ; or in the modern sense to a (usually pretty poor) housing block.

I’m French, from Paris. She didn’t say “SARTI”, but she actually said very quickly “s’parti”, which is “c’est parti”, “let’s go”. Le Marais is a “quartier” à Paris, also referred as “Le Quartier Latin”, where the original Sorbonne is. You can look it up.

@Shin69290

9 ай бұрын

Le Marais a quarter on the right bank (north) of the Seine River (around the Hôtel de Ville/City Hall). The Quartier Latin on the left bank (south), around the Sorbonne.

@SteveAaron

9 ай бұрын

@Shin69290 They are almost indistinguishable when you live here. The names are pretty much interchangeable.

@Sxilder1k

9 ай бұрын

Nope, the Marais and the Quartier Latin are two different areas, and not even on the same bank of the Seine river!

@Sxilder1k

9 ай бұрын

@@SteveAaron no no no no no!

@SteveAaron

9 ай бұрын

@@Sxilder1k Now you want to teach me where I live? I actually live there!

If one is Piemonteis, French is relatively easy ( both Pronunciation and Vocab)...at my HighSchool Finals in French, the Prof. Of Faculty at Univ. Commented on my diction...I replied, " Pourquoi je suis Piemonteis! Madame la Professeuse."

@lissandrafreljord7913

10 ай бұрын

Is that why Carla Bruni is so good at French?

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.

bravo, tu es trop fort

You should try to see if you can understand some of the other Oïl languages like Norman, Picard, and Walloon.

Hey ! Nice video ! Just for you to know, she doesn't say the "s" at the end of Paris, she elongate the "i" and her tongue slightly touvh her palate, producing a slighlty wisthling sound that can ressemble an 's' or a 'sh'. ;)

Another thing to add for maybe another video: french language on french teritory change with your location. While parisian french is the most knowed for foreigner, the way to speak, the word in usage, the tone and the body language have subtle or big difference between french region. You should also try it in corsica, belfort, lyon, marseille ans other big city in the western coastline to have a real global understanging of what france french is really (while also not forgetting the island all around the world who have huge difference compare to continental french)

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!

In France (in the "standard metropolitan" dialect), there is a fairly recent tendency for people who finish a sentence ending in an "i" sound to add a slight hissing sound quite similar to the German "ich". We do not use that sound in French Canada, BTW.) It's not an "s" sound and would not usually arise in the middle of a fluidly spoken sentence.

@zaringers

10 ай бұрын

It’s true that it’s more like a german "Ich" and definitely not an s, but it is because when you pronounce i "ee", you have your mouth contracted and your vocal cords vibrate (vocalize), and the hissing sound is simply the some air that goes through the mouth still contracted to pronounce the i, but when you are not vocalizing (you don’t make your vocal cords vibrate) anymore. You can here it in the end of sentence because there is no more words to pronounce, so the mouth stays in this position and we naturally don’t contract the throat to stop the air, because we don’t pay attention to it anyway (and nor are we conscious that this happens). I wonder if here people notice it because there is famously a mute s at this end of "Paris" when pronounced in French and that the hissing sound kinda looks like an s..? It doesn’t only happen with i that some air goes through the mouth, but with other vowels it looks more like an "h" sound I would say? Like if I were saying "Alors là.." in a way that mean "I can’t trust this", you could definitely hear an h at the end.

@valerietaylor9615

9 ай бұрын

I heard French speakers adding the German “ Ich” sound at the end of words back in the late 1980s.

@PeloquinDavid

9 ай бұрын

@@valerietaylor9615 At my age, the late 80s ARE recent... 😉

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.

When asking the reverse, if a French can understand italian, we seem to be at an advantage as italian retained more of latin than french did (that notably had a significant gallic influence). I never had any course in italian (except if counting some of your videos) but can understand a decent amount of written italian, more than the other main romance languages. Of course spoken italian is spoken, a northern pronunciation (and slowed down over normal speed) makes a lot of difference.

Merci.

“U” Is fiendishly difficult for English-speakers as well. Counting in twenties might be borrowed from Gallic? I think in “aujourd’hui” just the “hui” is cognate with “oggi” - since “jour” means “day” it originally meant “On the day of this day”.

@mattiamele3015

10 ай бұрын

Yes. In Italian “al giorno d’oggi” means “today” as in “nowadays, in this day and age”.

Do Rumantsch next🎉🎉

ooohhh do the Québec accent! I'm really curious how much harder it will be for you!

"Aujourd'hui" is actually a pleonasmic word. It is as if an Italian would say 'nel giorno di oggi'. Only the 'Hui' part is the real cognate to 'oggi', 'hoje', 'hoy'....

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”.

If you’re still doing this next year, I’d like to see Finnish or Hungarian for the first of April (since I’m sure even you’ll have difficulty recognizing a single non-noun).

@kanrakucheese

10 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan472Hence "first of April"

Bravo

Hi! Very fun video and very good idea. I'm French and about the "Pariss", she doesn't actually say this, she pronounces "Pari" as you thought she should. She just speaks fast and breath heavily afterwards which gives that illusion of an "s". When I'm listening to her I clearly hear "Pari" without the "s".

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,

@DanSolo871

9 ай бұрын

Or Frisian

@valerietaylor9615

9 ай бұрын

Or Yiddish.

As a french who also studied latin in high school, it’s easy to get the general idea of most of italian sentences if spoken slowly

It's not a "s" sound, it is a long "i" followed with an aspiration... Pariih. In French, the stress is always on the last syllable, which explains why French people usually have a problem with stressed words in other languages. It is so regular that stressed sounds have lost any relevance to us. However, at the end of a word ending in "i", we tend to stress the vowel and make it longer.

3:32 parisians tend to pronounce some kind of aspirated h when a word ends in ''i''

3:20 the sound at the end of Paris is not an ‘s’, but another sound - a voiceless palatal fricative /(ç/ in IPA). It’s the same kind of sound that Americans make at the start of the word ‘human’, or like ‘ch’ in German ‘ich’. In French, unlike in German, the sound doesn’t actually carry any meaning and is instead a sort of filler sound which we put between ‘i’ and a pause or stop of speech. A different example is ‘oui’, which tends to get pronounced /wiç/ and not /wi/

Bravo mon Grand! Un jour tu feras le beau français Québecois. J'adore ton intelligence! Vous êtes une de mes outils favori à ma reconstruction cerébrale. Mes ailes ce déploies! Grâce à vous en parti. Un héros et ami dans ma solitude. Vivez longtemps et prospérez🖖

When watching a video you should put the window thing in the up right corner so we can see the subs

So, because it's understandbly confusing, the Marais (lit: The Swamp maris=swap/marshland) is a small district (best translation I could think off in elglish for "quartier") in Paris

In U.S I studied Spanish, Italian and French. French was most difficult. You should try Maltese. My neighbors were Maltese on one side and Barese on the other.

As a french having done a road trip in itlalie, i can get the meaning of many word but have a lot more difficulty when talking with an italian .

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".