
How good is your French accent? - montbonnot
http://frenchmeter.com
======
yodsanklai
Lot of stereotypes in the comments. I'm little disappointed to read that on
HN.

Some commenters tell they had bad experiences in France. In my opinion, it's a
case of confirmation bias and lack of understanding of cultural differences.
For many reasons, you can't expect the same types of interactions with a
waiter in Paris and one in NYC or Tokyo. I think people traveling to foreign
countries should be open-minded and understand that things may work a little
differently than in their home country.

The French aren't arrogant assholes overprotective of their language! that's
just plain stereotype. Yes, they don't speak English as well as Swedes for
instance, but not worse than let say Italians. Besides, there are tons of
English words making their way in the French language.

Also, French people are often shy of speaking English. Sadly, we tend to make
fun of each other, and those that haven't had the opportunity to practice
outside school are often embarrassed to speak English.

~~~
jmnicolas
I'm French too and if you read more of the comments you will find more
positive things about us.

By the way, if they form an opinion on France by how they are treated by
parisiens I can understand they don't appreciate the experience.

We're much friendlier in province ;-)

~~~
programLyrique
I am French and I've lived both in "province" (means not in Paris...) and in
Paris, and I don't think that's particulary accurate to say that people are
much friendlier in province. I've met friendly people both in Paris and in
"province" as well as unfriendly ones...

In my opinion, it's just a way of reenforcing this dichotomy between Paris and
"province" (and this word is also part of that scheme).

~~~
bane
> I've met friendly people both in Paris and in "province" as well as
> unfriendly ones...

As it turns out, people are just people everywhere. Some are good, some are
terrible.

------
joeblau
Funny Story: I was traveling from Portugal back to the U.S. through Charles de
Gaulle Airport and my Dad gave me 4 Euros. I went to this little bakery and
the man behind the counter asked me what I wanted in French. I mustered up as
much _throat_ as I possibly could and said _croissant_ which was apparently
good enough for him to go off on this long answer to what I ordered. I looked
at him blankly and said "Sorry man, that's the only word I know." He was not
amused.

~~~
teekert
The French are very proud and protective of their language. I have a similar
experience, I was asking Je cherche le croissants (or something: I'm looking
for croissants), I got a blank stare until my friend made a very theatrical
overly french "Croissants!" hand waving and all, then the supermarket guy
understood. I know of no other language that invented new words when computers
came to the market (ordinateur) or when RNA splicing was discovered
(Épissage). French will be spoken long after Dutch completely Englifies.

~~~
notalaser
Ordinateur was not invented when computers came to the market. It was coined
in its modern sense of computing _machine_ , not by Proud French People Who
Liked Their Language but by IBM France, because they felt that "calculateur"
(French for -- whaddya know! -- "something that computes", a literal
equivalent for "computer") was too restrictive. In the 1950s, when that
happened, "ordinateur" had been in use for a very long time. I don't know how
common it was (I'm not a native French speaker), but it's certainly not a word
they made up on the spot (it's of very obvious Latin origin), and they don't
use it because they don't have a more appropriate word for "computer" (which
they do -- "calculateur", which they deemed inappropriate because a
"calculateur" could do a lot more than "calculer"; just like, indeed, a
"computer" could do a lot more than "compute").

Many European languages had a local equivalent for "computer" long before
electronic computers were around, and French is certainly not the only one
that kept it.

~~~
chrstphrhrt
My fave in Québec is 'baladodiffusion' for podcast. Not sure if they say that
in France too.

~~~
jmnicolas
No we don't. To be frank, podcasts are not a (big) thing here.

I love how Quebecois are always inventing these funny french words, always put
a smile on my face.

I got to talk to my friends about 'baladodiffusions' but I'm not sure that
they all know what a podcast is so I doubt they will appreciate this new word
to its full extent.

~~~
rawfan
Wait, what? No Podcasting in France? Go start a Podcast ;)

~~~
jmnicolas
According to Google there are French podcasts, and they are very popular ! I
found an article from 2012 that said there was 20 millions podcasts downloads
in France every month (we're a bit less than 70 millions French).

I had no idea since nobody I know ever mentioned podcasts to me. Maybe they're
all Luddites or they hide their podcast addiction well ;-) Me I exclusively
listen to audio books (and I can recommend wholeheartedly the ones from
Graphic Audio).

------
cpa
I'm french so I had to try it out! Although I got 90-100% on all words, I was
able to get 50+% on most words doing what I think is a strong (but totally
understandable) american accent in french. That was fun!

~~~
grondilu
I'm French as well. When I saw the title of this post, I thought it was about
how French you sound when you speak English, not how well you can speak
French.

The thing is, there are a lot of very educated French people who, when they
speak English, have an extremely accentuated French accent. Typically
scientists and politicians. It's like they don't make any effort whatsoever or
think that the French accent is some kind of honorific mark they should
cultivate.

Me, I've always thought the French accent is the worst ever and I try my best
to hide it because it makes me feel retarded.

~~~
GuiA
I'm French, and speak American English natively (i.e., when people meet me
they think I'm American and when I tell them I'm French it takes them a bit of
time to believe me - "you mean, you have french parents but were born here?"
etc.).

Most people don't realize that a language's accent is a physical thing. Your
throat, nose, tongue behave differently when speaking different languages. If
you're French, you can't speak English while keeping the same physical
arrangement of your mouth and throat than when you speak French. So if you
want to speak a language with a native accent, you have to experiment with all
those parameters, and find what your voice sounds like in that language. For
instance, my voice is a bit deeper in English than it is in French; this is
particularly noticeable with my female friends who are speak both English and
French natively - their voices tend to be very noticeably higher in French.

I've been learning Japanese, and it seems that I get best pronunciation
results when my throat is in an even lower, more relaxed position than
English. I intend to pick up mandarin at some point and am very much looking
forward to experimenting with that, as I have no experience with strongly
tonal languages.

Kids get this intuitively, but adults have a much harder time with it- it has
to be taught consciously. Which is why most French people, even after living
in an English speaking country for many years, retain a horrible French
accent. We really ought to be teaching kids from the maternelle, much like
many of our European neighbors do.

That being said, one thing I just have never been able to do are regional
accents in languages I already speak. I cannot for the life of me speak with a
northern French accent (my family's from the south, although I grew up in Lyon
so have a mostly neutral accent), or a British accent.

~~~
TillE
> Most people don't realize that a language's accent is a physical thing.

Right! This is why I hate saying English words in the middle of German
sentences. It's actually easier to just say them with the German accent,
rather than take the effort to rearrange both my mouth and my brain.

~~~
titzer
Agree! But vice versa: I've been learning German for a few years and it's hard
to dynamically reconfigure for the odd German place name or person while in
the middle of English, but my German accent is actually pretty decent and
don't want to let it get Americanized by laziness. The other way, speaking
German and inserting English words with a German accent, is actually pretty
comfortable, I find.

------
haberman
It's too easy. I got 100% on "Bonjour," but I definitely do not sound native
to French people. I know this because last year I took a hike in a french
gorge and greeted people with "Bonjour" but they often answered me back in
English.

But I'll take the flattery. :)

~~~
rconti
I almost spit out my beer at "answered me back in English".

My favorite language story is from when I was studying in eastern France
(Strasbourg). I went across the border to the train station in Kehl, Germany,
as I reasoned that train tickets _inside_ Germany (I was on my way to Berlin)
would be vastly cheaper than trying to buy the same ticket with an origin in
Strasbourg.

Anyway, I know a little bit of German, and suddenly I understood why foreign
language classes always start you off with directions and tickets and
timetables and so on. So I was all set with my basic train vocabulary. We went
back and forth and conducted our business. I gave him my American passport at
the end, he seamlessly transitioned to some pleasantry in English as we
concluded, and I walked away with my train ticket.

Well, as I walked away, I was pondering his lack of surprise that I was
American (which should not have been surprising; my crappy German is clearly
not a Frenchman's crappy German), and I replayed the conversation in my head.
As I got to the "smoking or non-smoking" part, I realized I could not recall
the German word (rauchen, for those keeping score at home). Eventually it came
to me, and I realized that he had actually said "smoking oder non" (oder being
German for "or").. Well, of course, English with a German accent sounds like
German to an English speaker...

And I suddenly realized that we had probably conducted virtually all of the
transaction in English, and I had no clue. He probably switched to German-
accented English as soon as I did a poor job of asking for a 2nd class ticket
to Berlin arriving at this time on that date, and I didn't even realize it.

~~~
kaffeinecoma
You know I think there is this phenomenon of "listening in the wrong
language". As an American in France, sometimes I'd meet people and they'd want
to try out their English with me. Every once in a while I'd meet someone and
be totally confused by their French, and I'd have to ask for help. "Dude, he's
speaking English to you". Then we'd both feel bad.

~~~
rconti
That's great. Yeah, if I don't expect a language, the first 10 words are just
totally lost to me. Which is strange, because in normal, english conversation
here back home, sometimes someone will say something and I'll completely miss
it -- but then be able to stop, and replay what they said in my head. It's
like some part of my subconscious records it.

On the same trip, I was on a train from Italy to France. In my car was a
French woman living in England, and an Italian woman. They were practicing on
each other so the Italian would talk to the French woman in French, and she'd
reply in Italian. This went on for some time. As we prepared to depart the
train, the woman's child and husband joined her. I talked to the French
woman's husband for 5 minutes or so. Eventually he asked me where I lived and
I told him I was from California but studying in France. He turned out to be
British, and switched to English and said "oh, well then I guess we can just
speak in English then."

I'm sure our French pronunciation wouldn't have fooled a native, but it was
good enough for a couple of foreigners.

------
callumlocke
Misleading app. If you say "bon appétit" in a good French accent, it fails,
then if you say it in a very bad accent but imitating the distinct pitch and
rhythm of the guy in the recording, it scores 100%.

~~~
SilasX
Sufficiently advanced imitation of a native French speaker is
indistinguishable from a good French accent.

~~~
callumlocke
It would be weird if you always said the words "s'il vous plait" exactly like
that one guy says it in that one recording

------
panglott
Interesting, it looks like this is an app geared at accent reduction, which
could be promising. I'll try it out.

Duolingo French elicits speech, but I fear that it is set so permissive as to
hardly be helpful (I haven't dared to test feeding it nonsense or clearly
incorrect pronunciations yet). There's a Czech-learning app I use that uses
speech recognition to test the user's pronunciation, but the implementation is
bad: it is fairly strict, and the speech recognition simply tries to interpret
the speech (rather than gauging correctness), so it frequently misinterprets
the user's utterance as another statement entirely. Which is frustrating and
unhelpful.

~~~
Swizec
Making your accent absurdly french like in a cartoon fools Duolingo. I do it
when I get too frustrated with the pronunciation and want a pass.

------
rmason
I think in general the French outside of Paris are more polite, especially in
tourist areas. I've had Europeans complain to me about rude New Yorkers. I
think at least part of it is the big city.

I've found the friendliest people in France are in the South. Along the French
Riviera the economy is highly dependent upon tourists and they want the repeat
business.

Many years ago I visited a restaurant near the train station in Nice. The
proprietor seated me at a table with someone else. I was confused until I
realized he seated me with a regular who spoke English. I visited a week later
and he did the same thing but with another regular.

A dozen years later I relayed the story to my parents who were going to visit
the area. My mother who did speak fluent French had a long conversation with
the proprietor. After paying their bill he gave them a wine pitcher with the
restaurants name and said give this to your son. Together we've probably sent
two dozen friends to that restaurant.

~~~
mangeletti
Absolutely agree.

We visited Domme, Arles, and Eze, and the people were really great,
particularly in Domme.

The other thing I noticed about the South is that it was easier to carry on a
conversation in French, in part because the people spoke a lot less (if any)
English, which puts your mind into the mode of speaking only French. In Paris
we'd be speaking French one minute, English the next.

BTW, what's the name of the restaurant in Nice?

~~~
rmason
The restaurants name is Le Colbert. I suspect the place is under new ownership
now. I visited in '76 and my parent's in '88\. This link references a female,
not a male owner:

[https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187234-d20819...](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187234-d2081971-Reviews-
Restaurant_Le_Colbert_a_NICE-Nice_French_Riviera_Cote_d_Azur_Provence.html)

------
vowelless
Android app would be much appreciated!

~~~
noobie
Seconded. It would've been nice to include an iOS only tag to spare me the
excitement and the subsequent disappointment.

------
rconti
Heh, kinda cool! Definitely in its beginning stages, but I had to try it out
as I'm probably a target market; studied French for ~10 years (middle school,
high school, some university), and have spent a total of perhaps 6 months in
France -- But I've not lived there permanently, and haven't really used the
language in perhaps 10 years.

I'm at the point where I'd have a hard time following dialogue in a TV show
(although, to be fair, that's always hard for foreigners), but am rarely
identified as american by native french-speakers; they usually guess German or
something similar (more plausible to know French well, but still with the
harder-edged anglo accent; I'm clearly not an Italian or Spaniard... well,
okay, I AM Italian, but do not speak Italian).

Anyway, what I mean to say is my background with the language is complicated,
and my french is far from perfect. Typically I managed in the 80-100% range
depending on words.

Anybody know the goal of the project?

~~~
the4dpatrick
Since you're apart of the target market, mind sending me an email? (email in
profile)

------
mmanfrin
French is also a bit of a minefield in terms of phrasing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69toGGjoO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69toGGjoO0)

~~~
AceJohnny2
Tangential, but I always love this series of similar words with completely
different pronunciations:

tough trough though through thought thorough

Or, as commonly found on the internet: "English is weird, but it can be
understood through tough thorough thought though..."

Oh dear, I gave myself semantic satiation just by writing this out.

------
AdamSC1
Really great concept - I feel the UI needs some work, there were a lot of
times where it showed an "x" and didnt give me a score - I assume this means
its having trouble hearing me. Some sort of distance or volume indicator would
be great.

As a Canadian I'm a bit surprised though as all the words it was able to
detect I got 100% scores - I know a lot of the Quebecois french pronunciations
we learn in Canada are very different than French from France so it'd be
interesting to hear how that is taken into account.

I really hope they keep going on this project as mastering accents is one of
the largest gaps right now in online language learning and market leaders
either lack the feature all together (like Duolingo) or do a rubbish job of it
and charge a fortune (like Rosetta Stone).

~~~
geori
Grading is definitely on a curve. My accent is terrible and I'm getting 100%
on the native speech.

------
morinted
Any love for the difference between French and Quebec?

~~~
rconti
I used to have TV6 Monde here in California back when I had cable.

The Quebecois programming was inevitably subtitled in (real) French, which was
an endless source of humor for me.

~~~
nkrisc
My wife (we're American) watches a lot of British programming, and for some
shows she has to put on the subtitles. Between certain English accents and
slang, it's hard to follow sometimes.

~~~
jmnicolas
As a French I never found an American TV show that I had difficulties with
(love the Appalachian accent btw) but English shows were another matter
(usually when there are criminals).

But if you tell me it's difficult even for Americans I'm a bit reassured about
my abilities ;-)

~~~
nkrisc
Rest assured, there are American accents I can't even understand. The most
recent example on American TV that comes to mind is some of the characters in
the first season of True Detective. Some of those Deep South accents,
particularly from the bayou in Louisiana are beyond my comprehension.

------
Mikeb85
It'd be interesting to see accents from Northern, Southern France, Paris,
Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec compared... I'd reckon there's more variation
than people think.

------
twright
Very cool! I've been looking for something like this to improve pronunciation
in other languages. The next best thing I have is to change the input language
on iOS and try to talk to Siri. One could certainly do the same thing on
Android/Google Now, but keep in mind not all voice recognition/synthesis is
equal between languages.

------
wyldfire
My employer's proxy blocks this site as "malicious." I suspect it's a false
positive but on the off chance that the proxy actually has a way to detect
this I figured I'd share.

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forgingahead
This chap would get top marks with this app:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzbgpGuX6-s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzbgpGuX6-s)

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weberc2
It seems to either not recognize the phrase at all, or it says my accent is
perfect. Since I'm an American, I'm doubtful about the accuracy.

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6stringmerc
Very interesting, thanks for posting this to be able to check it out. Now I
get to find out how far I've fallen since passing the Paris Chamber of
Commerce non-native business French test. Reminds me that I haven't listened
to any streaming French radio in too long, which was a trick I used to re-up
my comprehension and vocab from time to time. Super chouette app!

------
satysin
Haha just had a little competition with my French wife. I sound more French
than her with my Basil Fawlty-style accent!

She is not impressed ;)

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stared
Is there a similar app for English? As I learn English mostly from reading, I
mispronounce a lot of words.

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reirob
I was disappointed!

Reading through the comments, before loading the page itself, I got really
interested. Finally I clicked on the page just to find out that it is for
Apple devices only. Quelle discrimination in the age of HTML5! If I only had a
button to down-vote!

------
unknownzero
Interestingly I've never studied French, nor have I spent any significant
amount of time hearing it, and I somehow get 100% on basically every word
using my horrible childrens cartoon version of a French accent. Huh.

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rcarmo
I was kind of hoping for a Pepe Le Pew[1] cartoon, at the very least. :)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepé_Le_Pew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepé_Le_Pew)

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vmorgulis
The best french accent I've heard in a movie is from Sacha Baron Cohen:
[https://youtu.be/yv7UJLOyERs?t=17](https://youtu.be/yv7UJLOyERs?t=17)

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mfo
Any english alternative ?

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hokkos
It works from a native french point of view, no false negative !

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hackersuede
That's fun! It seems that it depends how far you talk from the mic. Otherwise
It's pretty accurate. Is there a certain speed I have to talk?

------
doorty
That's a good idea to use speech recognition software to give feedback for
foreign language leaners.

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montbonnot
For people who're blocked via proxy, just go on the app store and search for
FrenchMeter.

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horsecaptin
Alright, but what if I want to speak English with a French accent? Can this
app help me??

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the4dpatrick
I'd love to connect with you @montbonnot - my email is in my profile

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funkaster
Funny, maybe cute, but not very useful if you're actually trying to learn a
new language.

Having "perfect" accent is pointless. When learning a new language you should
aim for learning grammar, understanding basic pronunciation, but not "speaking
with native accent". That's pointless, unless you're a spy[1] (Look the answer
to "Q: Is it possible to acquire a language to a "native" level?").

[1]:
[http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article.php?id=517093](http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article.php?id=517093)

~~~
montbonnot
This app is indeed the complete opposite of what you're looking for. The
FrenchMeter is not meant to teach French. It focuses on the spoken aspect of
the language, unlike most of the apps out there.

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neil_s
Anyone know how this works?

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3327
Tried the app very buggy ! good start kids !

