Céline Dion

Deborah   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 20:53 GMT
Chamonix, I was observing a difference between the French accent and the French-Canadian accent, and soliciting confirmation or denial of this tendency. Have you noticed French-Canadians using "D" where the French would use "Z", or some other tendency?
JJM   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 21:57 GMT
It's the other way round.

French French: "un maudit anglais"

Canadian French: "un maudzit anglais"
Jordi   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 21:59 GMT
I trust the southern French will be able to confirm this but it is also quite usual to hear in popular southern French (Marseilles, for example) "un maudji anglais." or "mardji" for "mardi" (Tuesday).
greg   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 22:59 GMT
Jordi : when you write 'maudjit' or 'mardji' I have the impression I've just landed in Marseilles like by magic. I confirm this is exactly how <maudit> & <mardi> are pronounced in informal Marseilles French - especially among youngsters.

As for the English digraph <th>, some of the French succeed in articulating it appropriately, but the majority say [z] or even [s] (and even[v] for some).
Kazoo   Friday, April 22, 2005, 00:54 GMT
I think that when Deborah asked if French Canadians used 'd' where the French would use 'z', she meant when speaking English. In that case, I would say that she is correct. French Canadians will tend to say 'dat' for 'that', 'de' for 'the', and so on. People from France will often say 'zat' for 'that, 'ze', for 'the', and so on.

I would say that a French Canadian accent when speaking English is more harsh, for whatever reason, then a France French accent.
Deborah   Friday, April 22, 2005, 01:03 GMT
Kazoo, you are correct. In my second, supposedly clarifying post, I forgot to mention the part of speaking English.
Deborah   Friday, April 22, 2005, 01:04 GMT
part of speaking English --> part about speaking English
Chamonix   Friday, April 22, 2005, 01:51 GMT
Yes I agree with you, Deborah about "d" and "z" substitution and I wonder why the difference.
All I know is that in the European schools for teaching English the students are tought to pronounce "z" the voiced "th", ( with the tongue inbetween the teeth), but I guess because of the difficulty of the sound, "th" comes out as "z".
I am not sure why French Canadians pronounce it "d".Perhaps because English is not their native language and "th" is the most difficult sound???/
Travis   Friday, April 22, 2005, 02:16 GMT
The thing is that even in the dialect here in southern Wisconsin, /D/ (a voiced "th") is *very* often not pronounced like [D], but rather can be pronounced as [D], [T], [d] (or [d_d]), [t] (or [t_d]), [z] (or [z_d]), [s] (or [s_d]), and [n] (or [n_d]) *by context*, due to assimilating with the preceding phoneme by voicing, place of articulation (if alveolar or alveopalatal), manner of articulation (if stop rather than fricative), and nasality (if nasal alveolar stop). In actual sentences, I very often do not actually pronounce /D/ as [D] myself, even though I normally do so when I pronounce individual words alone, without any context.

One problem with teaching people /D/ as simply [z] is that it does not show the assimilation which /D/ may go under. For example, [z] for /D/ should not be so when following an unvoiced consonant; if one is to always use [z] "normally" for /D/, one should use [s] instead of [z] for /D/ when having it follow an uvnoiced consonant. If people aren't taught to pronounce /D/ like [D], they should at least be taught to do assimilation of /D/ by context, by pronouncing it as [z] or [z_d] by default, but [s] or [s_d] after unvoiced sibilants, [d] or [d_d] after /d/, [t] or [t_d] after /t/, and [n] or [n_d] after /n/. In the very least, at least if one cannot pronounce [D] itself, such assimilation would at least make the practical pronunciation of /D/ be somewhat closer to that which is used, say, here, in actual context.
Jordi   Friday, April 22, 2005, 08:34 GMT
Interdental sounds are extremely difficult for French-speakers because they don't have them in French. When the French (especially adults) learn English they will often say "Sirsday" (for "Thursday".

This said, the difference between French Canadian and European French could be due to sociolinguist factors and contact with the English language. The French Canadians have always had more contact with English than European French. Not only were they neighbours but they also lived amonst them from a very early time.

The Canadian French have "dat" and the European French say "zat". We would have to study the varieties of English in contact with Canadian English (perhaps northern British dialects, Irish, Scots and present day more popular varieties) whilst the European French would be an imitation of a Standard English accent with the same difficulty to reproduce interdentals. In the case of Canadian French, the difficulty was there but the local English dialects probably helped them out makaing a choice. Even the Germans say "dat" when they speak English.
Since I'm no expert in Canadian English dialects I would like to hear some opinions from Canadian or Canadian English experts.
greg   Friday, April 22, 2005, 15:25 GMT
Jordi : "Even the Germans say "dat" when they speak English".

I heard some Germans pronounce [zæt] for En <that>.
French Canadian   Friday, April 22, 2005, 20:59 GMT
Celine, when speaking French, has a horrible French quebec accent. Her accent to us French Canadians is sort of like the 'red neck'/'hill billy' accent in English.
greg   Saturday, April 23, 2005, 15:16 GMT
Céline isn't that horrible, businesswise, I mean.
Chamonix   Saturday, April 23, 2005, 18:24 GMT
"Celine, when speaking French, has a horrible French quebec accent. Her accent to us French Canadians is sort of like the 'red neck'/'hill billy' accent in English"

FR Canadian,

Just for my couriosity, which French Canadian accent do you or other Canadians consider being nice or close to the standard one?
I heard Quebequiose accent a few times and it sounds less Frenchy that the Parisienne one, for exemple.
Travis   Saturday, April 23, 2005, 18:36 GMT
I myself wonder why /D/ is *so* hard for non-native English speakers, as non-native sounds go. For example, here in English, we don't have /x/ and /C/, yet I haven't really heard anyone having that hard of a problem with either, when speaking German, and if they do they, they just pronounce seem them as [S], which is luckily for them an actual dialectal pronunciation of both in German. I'm not sure what makes, say, /x/ and /C/ not *that* hard for English-speakers to learn, even though they are not native to most English dialects, and yet which makes /D/ so incredibly hard for, say, French and German-speakers to learn.