"Napoleon's Mastery of French" Topic

Someone, and I can't find who, mentioned something along the lines of Napoleon's ability to speak French.

According to Vincent Cronin in his biography of Napoleon, before Napoleon entered Brienne he could not speak French. After four months at Autun College, where he stayed before entering Brienne he 'learned to speak French' but he still had a strong Italian accent pronounced words that were similar, in the Italian, not the French manner.

Undoubtedly it was immersion learning of his new language and I would think that the accent would eventually change the longer he was in France and speaking French.

He was nicknamed "strawnose" due to his accent. I have often wondered if the Kingdom of Italy troops did do well because he was more Italian than French (ducks and runs from Corsican outrage…..).

indeed, loads of "French" at this time spoke with accent, Boney could tease Italian troops with some Italian compliments Ah cujoni, non Fa male! – or andian a cavallo.
I don't know if Corsicans in the 18th century were more Italian than French.

The theory is no doubt pleasant, but I'd have to see testimony to that effect. I was driving an old (92) German immigrant friend Friday. Fluent but distinctly German-accented English after 70+ years in the United States, and no change in the 50+ years I've known her. My old Psychohistory prof had been a US resident 40 years when I knew him--again, fluent but accented. The accentless speakers I know learned very young, frequently in kindergarten. Cadet di Buonaparte at age 10, might be just on the line.

And of course once you make general--let alone Consul, Emperor and King--I'm pretty sure people stop correcting you. I've never heard anyone claim that Hitler shook his Austrian accent or Stalin his Georgian one.

My mother learned English as a woman in her early to mid twenties and when she died at 80 her accent was still strong – especially with certain words. My mother was Italian as well.

And of course once you make general--let alone Consul, Emperor and King--I'm pretty sure people stop correcting you. I've never heard anyone claim that Hitler shook his Austrian accent or Stalin his Georgian one.

Yet another unwarranted comparison of Napoleon to Hitler and Stalin…

Re. "strawnose" (or, "straw-in-the-nose"), this was also a play on the sound of "Napoleone" in Italian, similar to "le paille au nez".

Well, people can have accents but really it doesnt matter if they can speak beautifully, like Napoleon.

I worked with a French executive with a heavy accent but perfect spoken English and I remember on one conference call a GED from South Carolina who was barely comprehensible kept apologizing to everyone for the Frenchman's "accent". He apologized so much it was becoming awkward. Of course, once the French executive started speaking, he was perfectly received and understood.

Sometimes, even accents can have bizarre lineages. For instance, the mid-Atlantic American accent is closer to the original English accent while the accent called the "Received pronunciation" is a recent construct. One could assert with a good degree of accuracy, that the English speak their own language with a foreign accent. :)

Everyone speaks with an accent and accents are constantly changing.

The Queen's accent, like everyone else's, has changed over time. Sometimes we are witness to a dramatic change in accent – like that of a certain Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who changed his accent mid-term of office.

I can imagine Napoleon was the same as the rest of us: change if you want to appeal or are fed up not being understood or simply retain what you think gives you individuality or character or membership of a group. But, in the end, we are all probably more inclined to do the best for the job that we are trying to do.

Like many people, Napoleon's accent probably changed when he returned home, to Corsica, especially if he had any thought of leading anything regarding independence. He also most probably spoke near-perfect 'proper' French when he spoke in French to the Tsar of Russia in a formal setting. In all this, he would have been behaving exactly as we all do.

At this point I'd love to add a superfluous 'innit?' but perhaps a 'n'est pas?' is more appropriate.

The ability to speak a foreign language with little or no accent is partly governed by what language you grew up speaking. It's exceedingly difficult, for example, for a native French speaker to lose their French accent entirely when speaking English, and vice versa. I have a French colleague who's lived here for 20 years and speaks excellent English, but you can tell he's not a native. When he goes back to France, the French compliment him on how good his French is, amusingly. In contrast, a native English or German speaker can certainly aspire to losing their own accent completely when speaking the other language.

Some of these example pairs can be quite unintuitive. Apparently Germans can learn to speak Spanish without an accent and vice versa.

It has to do with soft palate, or vocal cord development, or something. The hardware adapts to the range of sounds it's expected to make, and once it has its library, it's a challenge to vary it.

The Japanese language has no L and Mandarin has no R, so although speakers of these languages can pronounce the missing sound perfectly all right – they're both "liquid" consonants – they are apt to "forget" to do so, because of the unfamiliarity. I had a Japanese colleague some years back who kept calling our other colleague, Larry, "Rally" for this reason.

I don't know how hard it is to shed a native Italian accent altogether when speaking French, but I reckon it might actually be quite hard.

It also depends on who taught or is teaching you the language.

My first two years of studying the Russian language, the instructor was a Czech. That was in high school.

I took two more years of Russian at West Point, and one of the instructors was a native Russian, and he asked me where I learned Russian with a Czech accent.

So accents are somewhat fugitive I expect and it depends when and where you learn it.

I would suspect that being immersed in the French language among native speakers would definitely influence the accent of the new language.

I don't see any reason to highlight an Italian accent as difficult to shed. I know a famous performer who is Italian but went to boarding school in London and speaks English with the same acquired accent as the rest the school. That's my experience of the collective accent of boarding school pupils and I found it simple in the past to recognise other people who had gone to the same school no matter what part of the world they came from or in what part of the world I met them.

In Napoleon's case, I'm unwilling to believe that in the days before TV and radio that his fellow students all came to his boarding school speaking with the same French accent. I am more willing to believe that the boy Napoleon was somewhat stubborn in his willingness to acquire a collective accent for whatever reason, national pride or otherwise. This may very well have resulted in him receiving comments like he still speaks ‘Italian', perhaps simply as a short-hand to explaining any difference in his speech at the time. I don't recall hearing of any problem his brother Joseph had at the same school or that Joseph ruled Spain with a thick Italian accent. Or that their sister was accepted more readily as a ruler in her corner of Italy because she was as good as Italian. A study of Napoleon's mother, as a member of the older generation, is perhaps relevant but probably only to emphasise the differences with the younger ‘French' generation.

La-Paille-Au-Nez would have to have had a truly remarkable ear for the language to be able to distinguish one French accent from another. His nickname doesn't suggest that he did.

You can lose your Swedish, Dutch, Danish or German accent when speaking English, and vice versa, because the vowel and consonant sounds are all so similar. This can't be said of French versus Italian. I don't say it's impossible, only that it's hard, like English / French.

You can sometimes work out what historical accents sounded like by looking at the literature. The metre and rhyme scheme may tell you how a word was pronounced. A number of rhymes in Shakespeare no longer rhyme with a modern English accent, but they do with an American one.

de Menevals Memoirs reports:-

Vol1 p371- "…strange pleasure in receiving all these reports… His marvellous memory grasped all their details, and retained them so well… The spelling and pronunciation of names were less familiar to him, and he never remembered them rightly (sic). But if he forgot proper names, it needed but the mention of them to bring a man or a place most vividly before his eyes."

"This walk lasted through the whole of his dictation. His tone of voice was grave and accentuated, but was not broken in upon by any time of rest. As he entered upon his subject, the inspiration betrayed itself. It showed itself by a more animated tone of voice, and by a kind of nervous trick (sic- tick?) which he had by of twisting his right arm whilst pulling at the trimmings of his sleeve."

"He had no difficulty in finding words to exress his thoughts. Sometimes incorrect, these very errors added to the energy of his language, and always wonderfully expressed what he wished to say."

"Napoleon rarely wrote himself. Writing tired him; his hand could not keep follow the rapidity of his conceptions, he only took up the pen when by chance he happened to be alone…"

p374- "His writing was illegible and he hated difficult writing. The notes or the few lines that he used to write, and which did not demand any fixed attention, were as a rule free from mistakes of orthography, except in certain words, over which he constantly blundered.

He used to write 'gabinet' (cabinet); 'Gaffarelli' (Caffarelli); 'enfin que' (afin que); 'enfanterie' (infanterie) [My editing for clarification_dw]. The first two words are evidently reminiscinces of his maternal language, the only ones which remained over from his earliest youth. The others have no analogy with the Italian language."

It goes on- "He had a poor knowledge of this language, and avoided speaking it. He could only be brought to speak it with Italians who did not know French, or who had difficulty in expressing themselves in our language. I have sometimes heard him conversing with Italians, and what he said was expressed in Italianzed French, with words terminating in i, o, and a."

p377- ""When he was tired of reading or reciting he would begin to sing in a strong, but false voice".

Regards, davew
-'Pass the Chambertin' –