Could you tell me some characteristics of French dialects and accents and also give me some examples? I wonder how French will change when it comes to dialects.

Answers

Deleted user

17 Oct 2017

Several things change when it comes to "dialects":

* The most obvious one will be the intonation, the pronunciation of vowels an consonants, the speech rate... This can be linked to the proximity with other countries (example: close to spain, close to germany). People living there are often multi-lingual (or have been in the past) and this can influence their pronunciation of the french language.

* Dialects will often incorporate words from other regional or national languages (german, spanish).

* There can be unique words or expressions not coming from other languages but linked to local history, geography or culture.

Example: the word "calanque" is mainly used in the South because this is a geological formation found only in this part of France.

* Belgian French, Swiss French or Canadian French have evolved from the same root but sometimes differ because choices were made at a point in the past (if you speak Japanese, a good example is the simplification of traditional Chinese characters that is not exactly the same than in simplified Chinese).

Example: "80" would be "quatre-vingt" in french but "octante" in Canada or "huitante" in some parts of Swiss. This is the result of seeing the number "80" as being "8 x 10" or "4 x 20".

I hope someone can provide other examples :)

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Schwarzes_Haar82

17 Oct 2017

Korean

@Litame Merci beaucoup! Your summary is a good comment for me. I'm impressed there is a form like "octante" or "huitante" instead of normal "quatre-vingt". For me, "octante" or "huitante" is more logical ones than normal expression because there are expressions such like quarante, cinquante, soixante...

Deleted user

17 Oct 2017

The same thing applies to 70, 80, and 90:

70 = "soixante-dix", "septante"
80 = "quatre-vingt", "octante", "huitante"
90 = "quatre-vingt dix", "nonante"

I agree that "septante", "octante" and "nonante" seem more logical. It seems that Gauls used to count twenty by twenty so it is historical. I'm not too sure why we chose to count that way starting from 70 haha...

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Schwarzes_Haar82

18 Oct 2017

Korean

@Litame Merci! Your comment is very interesting.. So French has several words for one concept,, it was my new finding. I think the concept of number, is very primitive one in language system, and maybe they are formed in very early time in the history.. I'm curious that which is original form and which is later form between logical form and "x number" forms like quatre-vingt..