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What makes France such an endearing and infuriating country at the same time?

Why are the French a people that you love one day and hate the next?

Come here every day and you may find out...

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    We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids

    speech accent archive
    Ever wondered how English with a French accent sounds?

    The Speech Accent Archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

    The paragraph to read:

    Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

    The archive contains 14 speech samples of people with a french-language background.

    Here's how it sounds from the mouth of a 31-year old Frenchman who started learning English at the age of 11, and spent 8 years in the USA:

    Please install Quicktime to view this video file.

    According to the experts, this person's consonants suffer from final obstruent devoicing, interdental fricative to stop, and non aspiration. Bet you didn't hear that!

    The Speech Accent Archive | Via