secretdaddy

[woeful hare]

Please be patient

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[sour moat]

It's just the nasal "an" vowel

[pseudo crescent]

Nasal « an »

[sour moat]

If you're not aware of the nasal vowels there are lots of videos discussing them

Just be aware that some will say in/un are the same vowel while others may not (a decent bit of France mixes them)

[stoic egret]

Sweet, I'll look into those videos. I'm brute forcing things with straight vocab rn

I'm working on something weird but how would you write a nasal « an » in English?

[sour moat]

Basically, the nasal vowels are:

• an/am/en/em
• on/om
• un (idk if this is ever written as "um"?)
• in/im

[sour moat]

I wouldn't, bc English doesn't have any similar nasals

If I were to write it anything other than straight IPA I'd write it ã

But that won't mean much to someone that just speaks English

Nasals are more important to know than how to do the french r, getting them right is important, as to an anglophone, they can sound pretty similar, but messing them up can change a word or make it incomprehensible if you're unlucky

[pseudo crescent]

le parfum

[sour moat]

Nice ty

There are a few other spellings for some of them but that's a whole other rabbit hole

[pseudo crescent]

Yes this is key. Francophones don’t really care if you trill the R but they will care if you mix up « écran (screen) » and « écrin (setting/background) »

[stoic egret]

I'll put some love on it. Thanks. I've been attentive to the pronunciation of nasal vowels but I should do better to keep track of them.

[sour moat]

Just be aware that (vowel)n and (vowel)m are generally nasals, and en/an(etc) are always the same one

in/un difference is up to you if you want to differentiate

[inner badger]

some people say chopin with a nasal

[pseudo crescent]

(vowel) + n/m + (consonant/pause) is better

[sour moat]

Yeah

[inner badger]

anyways, if you don't pronounce the nasals, you'll only be intelligible to 17th century frenchmen

[stoic egret]

Is it a more local culture thing or accent? Who differentiates and why?

[sour moat]

Lol

[sour moat]

Parts of France don't, I'm pretty sure everywhere else does?

[inner badger]

in some villages, they're pronounced the same all year except for christmas

[stoic egret]

Time to break out the Ouji board and talk to my 15th century Frenchmen great, great, etc grandfather

[stoic egret]

I'll be more in the south so it's better I do, thank you

[sour moat]

Quebec always differentiates

Pretty sure belgium and switzerland differentiate but not 100% sure

[pseudo crescent]

Quebec French has a pretty clear distinction. For Swiss and Belgian French, due to European French having the same pattern of nasal shifts, the difference between in and un comes down to how rounded your lips are

I’ve heard that the difference is minute

[stoic egret]

You've all been heroes and real human beings, thanks!

[sour moat]

This one includes the other regions!

Quebec hardcore differentiates them, I'm pretty sure when it is different in europe it's at least less distinct

But still worth looking into

[inner badger]

what about french africa where the majority of speakers live 🤔

[stoic egret]

Yeah

[inner badger]

in parts of north africa, i think they combine the "an" and "on" nasal

which i find sometimes hard to understand tbh

[sour moat]

I've often heard an odd mix of accents and super varied levels of french

[inner badger]

yeah it definitely depends on socio economic status

[sour moat]

It's kinda a toss up in my experience

[inner badger]

it's on a spectrum with standard parisian french on one end

[sour moat]

I had a teacher who went hard into the "in" nasal when just saying "un"

Caught me off guard

[pseudo crescent]

I think you'd have to look on a national basis or even sub-national basis because you have native languages like Yoruba potentially affecting phonology and grammar

[inner badger]

yeah, i mean no different from this map which looks at national and subnational basis

you don't have to worry about the other languages themselves, just how the french sounds

there's more variation, sure, but there's also standards and common features

[pseudo crescent]

Might also depend on colonial possession. I've heard that Congolese French is rather distinct from Beninese French though I don't know if that's due to just France vs Belgium or also due to the various native languages

[inner badger]

i mean i can definitely tell the difference between north african and subsaharan african french just by accent

and there are actually parts where french is effectively the native language

although at it's most informal it diverges quite a lot from the standard french, like singlish in singapore

[hollow ore]

Humble

I should have scrolled

Anyway