How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time

RIP DJ Arafat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Arafat

Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.

Native German speaker from Austria here who has been living in Quebec for many years.

I had to study and pass my exams in standard French with a Parisian institution. This is made obligatory by the Quebec government for immigrants if they want to stay and apply for a PR.

Anyways, the insight I want to share here is that Quebecois French is much closer to Austrian or Bavarian German vs Standard German.

Both share a similar trajectory with their standard counterparts, diverging over centuries but in the end remaining more comprehensible compared to Swiss German.

Quebecois, evolving since the 17th century from settlers' French and Austrian/Bavarian dialects, shaped since the 6th century's “Lautverschiebung” are also old but less divergent branches.

Swiss German, though also rooted in the High German shift, has veered more distinctly. Watching Swiss TV (SRF), I only get about 80-90% due to that deeper linguistic forking.

Standard Quebecois has not been much harder for me to understand than standard French. Like in Austrian German there are certain “quirks” but again much easier to parse from context than with Swiss German.

Of course there might be the case where a heavy local dialect becomes even harder to understand than say Swiss German even. German language learners could test their comprehension of Swiss vs going to a pub in Wien Ottakring or into a deep recess of the Tyrollean alps. I’d guess some encounters would be minimum as hard to understand if not harder. Same for rural Quebec etc. Then again the underlying grammar even can be really different in fundamental ways with Swiss German which is not the case for Quebecois.

TL;DR standard Quebecois is easier to understand and much closer to standard French than standard Swiss German is to standard German.

IMHO: France has just been very steadfast about language standardization up to this day and across its zone of influence. E.g. there even is obligatory standard French language learning in Quebec for immigrants and possibly public schools as well. So for some people from France they often don’t have developed the “muscle” for even slight derivations. In addition not much proficiency in “foreign languages” in general especially for older generations.

It's more from ignorance than anything. I speak Quebec French and had little trouble being understood in France in the two times I've visited. I have folks from France, French Africa, and Haïti here at my job. It's more just ignorance about the accent than a lack of actual experience not being able to understand it. It's certainly not analagous Californian English to Shetlandish Scots, far from it.

^ this. French people make fun of every accents. Racism and discrimination is about what society deem acceptable and what minorities or weaker communities we find OK to mistreat. I’d say discrimination in France is much worse than in America.

Without denying at all that racism exists, I believe it is also possible to imitate accents outside racism. I'm from the south of France, and my accent kicks in when I speak with elderly family members that themselves always have the southern accent when they speak. Despite that, sometimes I make jokes imitating the southern accent, does that make me a "self-racist"?

Clarification in case it's needed: I absolutely agree that making fun of someone's accent when they come to you is a best inappropriate, and more often than not utter bigotry. But I'm concerned about criminalising humour. This might not be a widely-shared idea (especially in the anglosaxon world?), but I even believe that racist jokes can be tools against racism, decredibilising racism and not actually oppressing the minority in question. Of course, again, context matters.

(clarification #2: I don't believe "cancel culture" is a thing, if you do racist jokes in the public sphere and someone calls you out for saying something racist, I don't believe anyone has been "cancelled")

Actually, all French speakers for a very long time have mocked other accents, especially from France, therefore they have a kind of specialty of mocking themselves. Parisian have always mocked regional accents, every region was mocking other regional accents, and even accents from two cities 50 km apart are mocked from both sides. Other accents are just mocked the same as french people make fun of other french people regional accents. I would say that the accent mocking in France is less about racism than about the structure of french society, which is extremely centralized historically, and regions have always been very defensive about their specificities, like the local dialects, languages and the accent is part of that. Some regional languages were even forbidden in some places not so long ago. Racism in France being looked by the accent prism is a foreign worlview with a very low relevance level. It avoids the real and problematic issues of racism that exists. But indeed there is a link: racism flourishes when you do not see or hear people different from yourself. This can happen everywhere and mocking other accents is just using one parameter to insulate your own social group from the rest of the world and diminish/blame/mock the others. If you live in a country where regional accents are not a thing, you will find another parameter and anyone can say through the prism of this local parameter that racism is worse in this country compared to another. My point here is that racism can be everywhere, and has first to be fought on its causes, because symptoms can be very different from places to places and fighting them might help, but not solve.

I live in Canada, and the folks I know who live in France (direct blood relatives) have mentioned that Quebec French sounds like a weird mix of Russian and Valley Girl, with a few weird terms mixed in.

The English equivalent would be something like a deep Northern England accent which sounds goofy to my N. American ears.

I would say Acadian is probably as far from France French as Québecois is, but it certainly has some fascinating qualities. They use old French words there that have changed everywhere else French is spoken (aside maybe Louisianna French).

My favourite anecdotal example (though I couldn't find any proof looking it up) is that "to kill" it's "killer".

Acadians were an earlier emigrant wave from France, so their French sounds like that from the 18th century plus developments.

The Québécois were about 100 years later, so their French is like the 19th century plus developments.

African French dates from the colonial period, so it sounds more like early 20th century French plus developments.

That’s how I understand it to be.

Yeah, I remember how I tried to order coffee in a restaurant in Paris. Even though coffee sounds almost exactly the same both in French and in English the dude refused to understand what I need. Probably it was just for fun, but this type of fun is what stops me from visiting Paris ever again.

People from the US generally find accents from other English speaking countries fairly charming (source I'm from the US) rather than a source of amusement or derision. I think attitudes about accents from non-English speakers vary more widely and regionally.

24h definitely. Ananas is not so commonly used, but in informal speech, yes, as pineapple is also ananas in most of the EU languages (not in Spanish).

Fruit regulation would typically use a more formal (sub)species nomenclature like 'Ananas comosus'.

For whatever it is worth, I had actually good experiences in France including in Paris. Or, basically normal one, not really different from trying to get around Germany.

I suspect that French are unfriendly meme has taken life on its own. People complain when the French switches to English for them, they complain when the French speaks more slowly and simplifies the language, they complain when the French does not simplify for them.

I do this too but I think it works a little differently. I would say that we unconsciously tailor the way we talk to align ourselves socially with others.

I don't think that's true.

There's a lot of nuance, socialising is a complex mixture of things which varies a lot between and also within country.

People coming with their home expectations and judging others based on it are often just seen as obnoxious and disrespectful from an outside point of view.

As an example, in France it's quite common to tease/gently mock people you're friend with. Some insults can even be used in a friendly way. This is something that doesn't fly AT ALL in a lot of places and, as a french, you have to be really careful with when meeting non-french. If not, you are just being super mean instead of trying to be friendly.

As well, the American way of using a lot of superlatives, being overly excited about things that are not that exciting can been seen as fake and disrespectful, in a lot of other places.

I'm American and concur with this. Aside from some slightly accented tweaks here and there, the Dutch speak a remarkably clear and rhotic English that feels quite comfortable to listen to.

It's odd because Dutch itself, being a Germanic language, has a lot of pronunciation commonality with the most conservative of all English accents, Scottish. You can hear it in this video, where a sentence composed of common Germanic words is spoken in every Germanic language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVG5LHRMJ4

The Dutch accent is closest to the American; if you didn't know English or Dutch, you would be hard pressed to tell the two apart. They sound a lot alike from a distance.

If it weren't for Trainspotting, which I adore, I'd be utterly useless at understanding Scots accents. As it is, I can just barely manage.

What criteria are you using?

~320M French speakers globally (220M native, official language for 29 countries)

~559M Spanish speakers (~480M native, 20 countries)

~1.1B Mandarin speakers globally (a few countries, mother tongue in ~20 countries)

~1.5B English speakers globally (~400M native, official language for 67 countries)

So for much of the world it seems pretty clearly English (& has been since WWII) and French is in the “second” tier competing with Spanish and Mandarin (probably just behind Spanish & Mandarin in terms of penetration lingua franca is about being the bridge language).

In West Africa and the western part of North Africa, sure. But outside of there, English is gonna be more useful. Even in Europe. Hell, even in some multilingual Francophone countries - https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/english-as-a-common-lan...

No, it's just that they were themselves learning French, so used to speaking broken French. You would get the same experience by gathering a German, an Australian and a Venezuelan all learning French as 2nd or 3rd language.

Additionally they most likely already knew English and were able to decipher "French broken by an English speaker".

Edit: and since we're sharing anecdotes. I got the same "rude" treatment from Russians when I was learning Russian in Russia, or from Swedish folks when learning Swedish in Stockholm. It's just hard for native speakers to deal with broken linguo, that's just how it is. Swedish people would even reply to me in English, some would call it rude, they were just trying to be helpful and efficient.

For the reaction to be so strong I wonder if there was more than just broken French. Always easy to go with the super nice tourist/mean for no reason autoctone.

Anyway, sorry you had this experience.

That is very weird, I've spent a few months in France almost every year for the last 8 years and never had one bad experience. My wife speaks beginner French and not had any issues either. I know enough to order, please, thank you, nicely ask if they speak english, etc…

Was this one situation or multiple? What was the context?

During my first trip to Paris, I was at a patisserie in an admittedly tourist-y part of town and the gentleman behind the counter yelled at me and insist I speak English when ordering. So in Paris stopped attempting to speak to them in French. However, people in Beaune and Chamonix humored me.

> No. In France they openly showed their disgust at my French and refused even to speak to me.

No. It’s most probably in your head and is inconsistent with everything I have seen or heard. Or you were unintentionally rude, maybe. There are pricks everywhere so I don’t doubt that someone was like that, but I seriously doubt that the people in general were.

We understand each other's broken accent really well though. So it doesn't really matter.

Probably doesn't help that 1/3 of English is imported and mangled French words.

I’ve had extraordinary luck with broken French in France. If you start in French and do your best, a lot of people suddenly speak fluent English. Especially in metro areas.

But the experience does not compare to traveling with my partner who speaks fluent zero-accent French. Paris turns into a different much nicer city when you pair with a native speaker.

That said, you’ll never get the level of service you see in USA. The French (Europe in general) just don’t care that much about customer UX. You either do it their way or you can leave.

locals are not obligated to please illiterate tourists

however the trick is simply to learn enough that you can politely ask if it's alright to use english with them

When I was a little kid my school took me on a trip to paris. I got lost and tried to ask for directions. The locals literally ignored me as I was begging for help. Until I finally remembered my parents talking about how the french hate anyone who doesn't speak their language and I started my plea with "I'm sorry I don't speak your beautiful language"

So yeah, they'd rather ignore a lost child than tolerate foreigners not knowing their "beautiful" language.

> The main criticism I've heard is kind of the opposite - that they dislike foreigners not trying to speak French, and just starting communication in English.

That’s the case most often, and that’s what most of my friends who lived in Paris say. There’s a (not entirely justified) pervasive feeling that French people can’t speak English properly and they tend to be self-conscious about it.

> If both of these are true then I guess that puts foreigners in a tough place where they're damned if they try and damned if they don't?

It’s different people. Most of them are forgiving, if clumsy, and a few of them are pricks. Just like in any country. A fair few don’t care and you can live perfectly well near Paris for years speaking only a handful of French words.

This is true in every touristic place, not just in France. Many people will get annoyed by tourists who don't even try to say "hello" or "thank you" in the country they're visiting. And they don't even make a majority but you'll more easily remember the one bad experience you had than all the good one.

However I don't think that it's common for French people to critized foreigner's French. On the contrary, they're very supportive of people trying to speak their language.

I'm sure you can find some people who would critize foreigners' bad French but probably not more than any other country.

I met French speaking Quebecois in Paris. They were complaining the Parisians didn’t understand them.

They weren’t enamoured to France.

I am French .. and yes people in Paris are rude. Thats the running joke in France that nobody likes them. If the dont work there they invade the rest of france and remember us how annoying they are. And yes the rest of France is awesome and totaly helpfull and nice to strangers.

> nor my wife (who studied in Lyon for quite some time)

Can you please ask her some recommendations for contemporary music?

I find french rap wonderful!

My new favorite artist is Aye Nakamura ; before I really loved Eva Queen.

> First of all, french is not some beautiful language once you grok the grammar, rather pretty weird and old layered 'spaghetti code' with tons of exceptions to tons of obscure rules (nothing, absolutely nothing elegant there). Its needlessly complex especially when you know other languages solved it much better,

Though I can’t disagree with the “ancient spaghetti code” characterisation, “needlessly complex” is linguistically meaningless. People continuously use language and infelicities are typically rapidly eliminated.

My wife and I would between us resort to French express things that couldn’t be conveniently expressed in our respective native languages. I think it’s pretty common — probably universal — to inject foreign loan words or phrases in multilingual families or other groups. In the case of resorting to French, it’s usually for a word that has a lot of implications, ambiguity or other ramifications, which can be expressed compactly in French. A consequence of the spaghetti code you decry.

Written Arabic is really great for this.

Written French grammar is particularly good at expressing nuances due to the expression of the variety of "times" and tenses.

J'aimais and j'aimai (imparfait and passé simple) are both past but

the first expresses "I loved (duration, action being performed in the past)" and the latter "I loved (instant, action completed)".

Je finissais (imparfait) = I was completing (some stuff), je finis (passé simple) = I completed.

Also

Je marcherais (conditionnel présent) = I would walk, (possible)

Je marcherai (futur) = I will walk (true)

(Maybe the ability to express a nuance discreetly is a sort of elegance)

You could say " this is spaghetti code" but je marche, je marchai, je marchais, je marcherai, je marcherais respects some kind of nearly mathematical rules that allows me to feel situations.

March - e

March - ai

March - ais

Marcher - ai

Marcher - ais

J'ai marché, j'avais marché, j'eus marché, j'aurais marché, j'aurai marché express a lot of different things based on the different forms of "to have".

English has this kind of complexity too : I have walked, I had walked, I did walk, I will walk, I will have walked, I did have walked...

I am not arguing about the possibility of nuances here but rather about the means by which they are expressed, of course.

> English to non-native (in both of those) is a beautiful magnificent blessing in comparison

Absolutely not, really. French was easier to learn.

I often say the French is the C++ of natural languages.

> Judging from how indifferent and unhelpful retail workers, waiters, and such were

Did you start your interaction with a "Bonjour" at least? "Customer is king" is not something in France, so you want to be polite with everyone.

Sounds like you're asking to talk to a girl named Lola, diminutive Lo. And the guy is like wondering if he remembers someone at the bar with that name or if he misheard you. But after he sees your hand gestuals, the meaning of your needs becomes clear. French and Italians are familiar with waiving hands and making facial expressions to accompany their words, so keep doing it, and be patient until your language skills improve. My first trips in Britain as a teenager, no one could understand me asking where the bathroom is (French is my mother tongue). Now that's not a fun one to use gestuals for. In time I got to learn about the John, loo. But hey, it's the fun about traveling in foreign land!

You might be overthinking a friendly ribbing. I had a similar interaction in Italy and he was just trying to help and I did find it helpful.

Well, maybe he was an asshole, but in his defence articles are much less optional in French than in English, thus you don't expect it standalone. It basically becomes one word in your consciousness. A bit like if someone asks you for "ater". And when you finally understand, you feel really stupid, because yes ultimately it was just missing a useless article, but it just didn't click.

No, I don't think so. In my experience of traveling around and trying to speak various languages in a broken fashion, the biggest difficulty is the native's receptivity to trying to understand you. The second biggest difficulty is ease of basic pronunciations, and this does vary a lot between languages. For example, currently I'm in Vietnam, and local people do not try to understand foreigners who speak Vietnamese at all. By locals, I mean people I meet around during the day like shopkeepers and service people rather than my friends. The pronunciation is also extremely difficult because of the tones and the very large difference in regional accents. It's frustrating and I have given up trying to learn the language because of this.

I would accept that France is slightly harder to pronounce than English but as a beginner/intermediate French speaker I don't personally believe it.

However, I definitely agree that people in France - especially Paris - are not receptive to foreigners speaking French at all. They don't support you, and you do feel looked down on for speaking badly (in comparison to Vietnam where you will never feel looked down on, you'll just receive looks of confusion). Again, I don't mean friends that you make. I mean the general French populace that you meet while going about your daily business, in shops, restaurants, and so on.

Spain, Italy, Greece are similar to France in that they are condescending towards non-native speakers. Mainland Greece was the worst for me. Meanwhile I would say that Portugal, Indonesia, Germany, and many English speaking countries (at least in cities) are quite helpful and friendly towards non-native speakers. Of course, I only have my own limited experience to go on so I may be wrong.

You don’t? Help yourself:

https://youtu.be/t2Hxd3Emg4E

The whole channel is quite hilarious and depressing at the same time.

I speak fluent german and french. And I think yes. French has way less words then german or english. And for many things we dont have words but more desciptions. And french feeles more compressed in the sense that I cant take any word out of the sentence without taking the sense away. In english and German broken sentences still make sense if the context is given.

And some words to Paris. Yes people there are rude! But you have to understand that most People in France live there and WORK there. They give a fuck about tourism because there is so much other work there the town could skip on it. Thats why they are anoid by tourists. They go to work and some people ask them for things they dont care because they have to go to work. Paris is a dream in Summertime because so many people leave Paris because of summer vacations that it is totaly empty.

And yes American tourists are something special. You can see them 100meter away beeing confused why Paris is building houses in such an old fashioned way.

> Is there any evidence that French has some unique qualities that render it unusually difficult to understand when not spoken by a someone fluent in the language?

Usually it’s just English exceptionalism and the centuries-old rivalry between both countries. Don’t expect much objectivity from either side. From Americans, it’s usually ignorance of a foreign language. Spanish-speaking Americans don’t tend to say this sort of thing.

> I’m reasonably competent in French and if there is such a feature, I don’t see it.

There is none.

The lack of tonal stressing makes enounciation and grammar more important than it would otherwise.

This reminds me of the early years of Mixed Martial Arts where you had lots of Brazilian second language speakers interacting with guys with journalism degrees in MMA journalism at the time who weren’t aware how confusing they sounded using American sports idiom after American sports idiom and the Brazilians would just do their best trying to make sense of what they’re being asked

I’d be curious to know where she is from.

I’m from Southern France but I have lived in Paris for a few years. I didn’t have a strong accent that would require subtitles on French TV like some people do, but I did have an accent. Nobody would mistake me for a local.

I think people over there are generally condescending and don’t care about you. I don’t think the accent is the issue. If not that they would find something else to complain about.

I was occasionally mocked for my accent but nothing that a stare and raising of my voice would not fix. Maybe staff is more likely to mess with a woman?

Anyway. Almost nobody is a local in Paris. People from all over France come there. They erase their accent and all pretend to be Parisians after a few years. Then they age and go back home to retire or raise a family in an affordable place.

These days I travel with my wife and switch from perfect English to perfect French and I get a bit of shock from the staff when this occurs. Nobody complains about my accent anymore, relieved they won’t have to deal with English for once. I must have a fairly weird and impossible to geographically locate accent nowadays after years of living abroad and speaking to expats. I’m no longer sounding like the caricature of the peasant from Southern France. Also my wife is a lot more friendly than me and generally would befriend staff members that can speak good English (foreigners or students) so I guess that helps.

That's with every dialect of English. English has phonemic stress, i.e. the way you stress a word can change its meaning or make it unrecognisable unless you're speaking to an English-speaker familiar with people who speak English coloured by whatever your native language is. This is a particular problem for French-speakers, since French doesn't have phonemic stress.

British and Irish people will probably understand French-accented English better than Americans because of greater exposure to French.

True, but aren't you primarily talking here about vowel length? As a language feature it's more pronounced than accent/stress.

/ˈmaʊntɪn/ MOUNtain

/mɒn'taɪn/ mounTAIN (?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length

Reminds me of foreigners asking for "water" in the US at restaurants, having to pronouce it "wadder" in order to be understood.

> This feature is seldom seen in most other languages let alone lingua francas.

Source? On it's face this doesn't sound plausible...

You are are literally describing a "lingua franca" here.

And there's no evidence that English is special in it's ability serve as a lingua franca. In previous eras, other languages held this role (e.g, French, hence the term "lingua franca").

The dominance of English can be far more certainly attributed to the geopolitical dominance of english-speaking nations...

I'll take a guess. It's been a while since I've looked for ally at another language. But English has fewer cases of verbs, and a more rigid sentence structure.

We have more special cases of past tense verbs and weird pronunciation, but I think it's easier to duck up and still make sense in English? Maybe.

many languages have this feature. For example Russian or German. You can put in the words, with most words missing, in any order and somehow someone will get it. France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive.

English is mostly unique in its vocabulary size. We have redundant words for nearly every concept. We often shift registers by using different vocab--Latin-origin words for more formal/respectable registers. The ability to speak it in broken fashion and be understood is not unique.

English actually has terrible "error correction" on account of extensively using word order to indicate grammatical constructs, rather than inflection. You move the order of words around and it gets an entirely different meaning.

Plus its orthography is ridiculously inconsistent, and a learner is never sure if they've got the right pronunciation when looking at a word because it's been caked over with N layers of different systems (Anglo-Saxon + Norse + Norman French + Latin + Greek etc)

Yea it’s very rare to find a French person who will slow down or repeat things to help you understand.

I am French, the oral French is very different from what is taught in books. There are a lot of transformations like 'je' to 'che' or 'il' to 'i' (from a French perspective). Also, many liaisons between words are pronounced but others are not, sometimes astonishingly to me, a guy born a long time ago in Brittany.

And young people learn to speak very quickly when they go to primary school (I don't know why).

Also there are lots of invented words by each generation like "wish" that you are ignorant if are not 10 years old.

Haha, it's funny we have had similar experiences. But I have been the German in this situation. We had some designers from the UK and often out team members were struggling to understand them, and I had to reiterate their sentences in other terms, sometimes in bad English but that everyone understood. (A large part is also the British accent)

The fun thing about those experiences in professional settings is that the non-native speakers struggling with $5 words will liberally use $10 words ($50 words? I don't know how this is deals with inflation) that are part of the specific domain.

> Swearing in foreign language is just a word woth another meaning.

I don't think so. Swear word is a swear word. It feels just as taboo to me.

Do your research on European Portuguese vs Brazilian Portuguese, and you’ll realize that the latter owns its own version and defines its own standard without needing the consent from any other country.

So, there is nothing France or any institution can do about it.

Is that really? I know in Quebec it’s the government that decides what is thought in school and the French they use is definitely diverging from outdated académie française. Not sure about France

Well then what's their point of existence apart from taking (rather large) bunch of tax money? To point out how much they didn't do every year?

I see you are starting to understand ;)

Really, this is more of a honorific position for famous authors and those with enough political influence. Some deserve their fame, but they tend to be passed their prime and are far from expert linguists.

Their contributions are often treated as a joke by most French people. One of their mission is to maintain an official dictionary of the French language. The latest edition is nearly 100 years old. And for reforms, they only part of the process, most of the real work is done by actual expert linguists and legislators.

Exactly. Hence

> people with zero or little linguistic knowledge.

They are tilting at windmills.

I agree, top-down linguistive prescriptivism is good when it means not catering to marginalised people

"Mesdames et Messieurs" is inclusive. You've heard that for as long as you can remember.

"Statut : marié(e)" is also inclusive. Check your tax return.

The median "." for example "marié.e" is also inclusive and is probably what you're against. Please hate it right, we all use inclusive, even in English (ladies and gentlemen for example). Being inclusive is good, you're doing it too.

To non french readers: le gorafi is the french equivalent of the onion :)

If we're talking about spelling, the biggest source of English's orthographic oddness is the Great Vowel Shift:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

> This said, I am all for a simplification of French

Interestingly, they tried 15 or 20 years ago, and that went nowhere. The only thing I remember about it is they wanted to simplify oignon, but I don't even remember if they suggested removing the i or spelling it like in English.

> It was "vas-y carré"

I guess I'm too old to know this, even non abbreviated.

> sometimes one r, sometimes two, sometimes one l, sometimes two.

Same with m, etc. And many more. The "fun" part of living abroad and barely speaking or writing French is that now there are plenty of times where I can't find words or how to spell them. It's compounded by the fact that English spelling of similar words is sometimes different (e.g. address vs adresse), or worse, some words spelt the same way have different meanings (which trips French natives often, but now I sometimes have the opposite problem, ironically)

No, it's speaking the word backwards, syllable-wise.

L'envers becomes verlan, femme becomes meuf, fête teuf, louche is chelou and merci is cimer, for the most common, everyday words.

It can even go further, with Arabe becoming Beur which itself gets verlanised into Rebeu. Or meuf, femeu.

And "l'envers" is pronounced lanver

Who has time for that?

Cute, same thing in Buenos Aires Spanish.

TIL and this clicks a lot with Italian slang in the town I growth where we did exactly this as early teenagers 30 years ago.

Gosh I know, right? Kids these days!

> the inability of young generation to be able to write and speak proper french

The language isn’t going to stop evolving just because you were born.

> « les chiottes » (vulgar but very common)

Don’t use that word with people you don’t know, though… Being rude when asking for something is not the best strategy.

Mmm, same word as "shitters" in British English, with what I have to imagine is an identical etymology

If you have some current hits you can recommend, I'd love to get recommendations from another Magic System fan!

In return I can suggest artists like Slava Marlow, or places like zaycev.net to get a nice curated experience without involving youtube: just click on the play button at the bottom of the screen: currently I'm listening to Subbota (Дым бомбим)

> Woah, did not expect to see a Magic System fan when I opened up HN today.

Maybe "fan" is a bit too strong but I'd say any French speaking person, at least in France and Belgium, growing up in the 90/2000s, knows Premier Gaou and can sing a bit of it. It was very popular.

> It's a pity because the rest of the comment is fine.

It's indeed sad because it offered a nice general argument: cultures interates on what they produce, in a feedback loop. It produces wonderful new creations.

So it shouldn't be a surprise, both for language and for music.

I care more about the music part, because I've found some gems where I didn't expect them. It's taught me to keep my eyes (and my ears lol) open for the wonderful new creations that are all around us, but that we may miss.

> Gems in Russian rap?

YES: the music and the rythms are great but the visual composition (scenery, etc) is even more wonderful: in Cadillac the drone shots then the rotations with the slow blends of racing games ending the nostril are very unique.

The visuals in rap are rarely that creative

> As a native speaker I’m genuinely surprised

Do you find surprising I also like the social critique from IC3PEAK (Смерти Больше Нет) or моргенштерн (Aristocrat)? (but he's lost some of his magic since he moved)

If you do, give me better recommendations!

I always liked this version of Hustlin.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuM-uZtfYQ

For all the critique that can be, Oxxxymiron is, like, the last big name in Russian music.

Thanks!

I just checked a few of the songs on https://www.supraphonline.cz/album/50244-entre-deux-mondes (the 1999 album isn't on suprphon) there's some good beat but it's not very complex music-wise. I'll try to find the 1999 album and check it too.

In terms of unique French music, I've recently found La Petite Culotte - La Goffa Lolita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmjCLbFkT5w

Given the musical composition (stanza, vocals, etc.) I hesitate to call that rap.

It's different from say Baby or Djadja by Nakamura, she's often categorized in Afrobeat but I would absolutely group them together in their style: I don't know how to name it (French Fusion?), but I love it!