For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)
That is very far from the truth, and unhelpful. Yes, some people have accents, but it’s not because you cannot hear the difference (or at least claim you cannot) that it does not exist. Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce "il a fermé la fenêtre"?
For non-French people: there are accents in which é and è are most of the time very similar, particularly in the South. They are very proud of it somehow. I am all for regional accents, but claiming that your particular pronunciation is the one true way is ridiculous.
Ah, so you're not Parisian.
I almost added a line about my friends from the South exaggerating their "é" because they are afraid of sounding like Parisians. In reality, who cares? It’s just that statements like "it does not matter" is really unhelpful to people who are not native speakers.
No we don’t, wtf
é and è (as well as e but it goes without saying) are very clearly distinct sounds.
I suppose you're replying to someone from the area. And it's undoubtedly Parisien to assume that the way they pronounce is how the whole country does it, lol
Could you be talking about the southern accent where maybe those sound similar?
A pet theory of mine is that people confusing "est" (sounds like "è", means "[he/she/it] is") and "et" (sounds like "é", means "and") while writing grew up with an accent that does not make the distinction between those sounds. (I don't criticize the mistake or the accent but have always been curious about this precise kind of writing mistake because those two words sound so different to me)
One friend of mine once had to translate English-to-English in France. A French policeman or taxi driver or something knew English as a second language. My friend is from New Jersey and sounds like what I might call CNN English (is there a name for roughly "unaccented" Northeast/West Coast/DC English?). The other person he was with had a thick Alabama accent. The Frenchman could not understand what he said directly, but could understand it when repeated by the New Jerseyan.
General American English.
Although it's traditionally much more common among white people in the western half of the country. People on the east coast, as well as black people everywhere, traditionally have distinctive accents (though these are fading over time, and many people from either group now speak pure General American).
No we don't.
In the South the é sound is more common while in the North they tend to pronounce the è very 'correctly', but that does not apply to all words.
For instance the way someone pronounces "après". In the South it is quite common to pronounce it pretty much like if it was written "aprés". Same goes for "est", e.g. il est(é) vs il est(è).
That's how you recognise a Parisian in Marseille because they have an "accent pointu" ;)
* In fairness, most (but not all) of it was probably light-hearted laughter, but I didn't understand that at the time so it left an unfortunate psychological imprint on me that is hard to shake and gives me anxiety even thinking about it
No, they don’t.
Some accents use é when standard academic French would use something else. For example, in "j’ai été fêter ça", the 5 sounds "ai", "é", "é", "ê", and "er" could sound pretty much the same. But AFAICT there is no local accent in which both the "ê" in "fête" and "fenêtre" sound like "é". Certainly nothing mainstream.
Not GP but I want to note that the pronounciation of "faith" would never occur in metropolitan French, as it features a diphthong. And in Quebec fête has a diphthong but féte would not have one I think (please correct me if I am wrong), and it is not the one in faith anyway.
Non.
But also true that we have some strong local accents, and that people no matter their level should feel encouraged to at least try to speak French. It's the best way to learn.
I could guess that solely from the space before ':'
Gone are the days when American actors flaunted those crisply enunciated albeit preposterous "continental" accents