Have you changed the variety you speak intentionally, and if so, how?

[nooj]

I speak a European variety of French, as all of my Francophone friends who taught me the language were from Europe, and I currently live very close to the border of the French state, about 30 minutes in car, so I hear and use French quite often with my French friends and tourists.

However, I would like to change the variety I speak all the time to a particular variety of North American French, namely Acadian French, or failing that, some gross exaggeration that could vaguely be recognisable as from the NE coast of Canada. FWIW, I plan to go live for a while in Acadie sometime in the indefinite future (all my plans have been thrown into chaos but I still want to go...some time) and I don't want to wait to go there and be immersed to speak like Acadians.

How can I do this? I have been watching Acadian (and Quebec of course) TV and listening to radio broadcasts as well as music for a couple of months but apart from gaining quite a lot of vocabulary specific to that part of the world, I have not been able to change how I pronounce my vowels for example. It seems ingrained into my head. I still sound French to my French friends when I speak. Is there something specific I should be doing?

[edit] I have terrible memory, I made a similar post before: Expanding out and learning other varieties of the same language

Well, I will leave this thread up and not delete it, in the hopes of getting practical tips and techniques. Thank you!

[golyplot]

I haven't changed my dialect or anything so drastic, but I do occasionally incorporate words from British English that I think sound cool. When I was a kid, I consciously switched from saying "pop" like my parents did to saying "soda".

Sorry I'm answering the question in the title, not your actual post.

[白田龍]

I have changed from broken American to a fairly decent RP by doing this:

Listen only to the accent I want to get for a while.
Learn phonetics so that I consciously know how the sounds should be articulated.
Reading out loud and self talking.

[jeff_lindqvist]

[edit] I have terrible memory, I made a similar post before: Expanding out and learning other varieties of the same language

You also started a similar topic back in 2017.
Do you learn only the standard dialect?

[nooj]

My bad. If I'm not careful, I'll make another thread like this in a few months time.

[Speakeasy]

… I speak a European variety of French, … However, I would like to change the variety I speak all the time to a particular variety of North American French, namely Acadian French, or failing that, some gross exaggeration that could vaguely be recognisable as from the NE coast of Canada. FWIW, I plan to go live for a while in Acadie sometime in the indefinite future (all my plans have been thrown into chaos but I still want to go...some time) and I don't want to wait to go there and be immersed to speak like Acadians …

nooj, you are clearly an experienced and enthusiastic learner of second languages. Furthermore, your support for minority languages is without question. Nevertheless, as someone who relocated to Quebec some thirty-odd years ago and simply adopted French as his primary means of communication (I have renewed my connection with written English through this forum), I would counsel caution here.

While I appreciate that it is unfair, many Québécois deride the speech of the Acadians as being inferior to their own. Having been the target of their otherwise fellow French speakers, quite naturally, Acadians can be rather sensitive when someone attempts to speak the French language as they do. Thus, should a non-Francophone, with a view to appearing "authentic", make failing attempts at mimicking their grammatical constructions, their vocabulary and their colloquialisms, not to mention their accent, this could be perceived by the locals as patronizing, demeaning, and terribly insulting. While I might understand your desire to be “authentic”, there’s no guarantee that your audience will.

There’s really only so much that we can realistically achieve as second language learners. Frankly, I wouldn’t go there!

EDITED:
Tinkering.

[Iversen]

Not intentionally ... but when I visit a place where I know the language my own speech tend to drift towards the variety I hear around me.


Time will tell when that situation will occur again .... in these sad and virus infected times...

[guyome]

When I started learning Yiddish I used the Standard pronunciation taught in textbooks, but since most of what you can hear in Yiddish is not in the Standard I moved away from it. At some point, I made a conscious decision to try and emulate a Southeastern pronunciation because that's what I like the most (Polish Yiddish sounds great too, it was a tough call ).
Of course, that was still in the early stages of learning (6 months/one year?) so it was rather easy to make the shift since I had no deeply ingrained habits at that point. A lot of listening and some conscious efforts did the trick (not that I kid myself into thinking that I truly replicate a Southeastern pronunciation, I just don't speak enough Yiddish for that, and there is also not enough material to fully immerse yourself into it).

[nooj]

When I started learning Yiddish I used the Standard pronunciation taught in textbooks, but since most of what you can hear in Yiddish is not in the Standard I moved away from it. At some point, I made a conscious decision to try and emulate a Southeastern pronunciation because that's what I like the most (Polish Yiddish sounds great too, it was a tough call ).
Of course, that was still in the early stages of learning (6 months/one year?) so it was rather easy to make the shift since I had no deeply ingrained habits at that point. A lot of listening and some conscious efforts did the trick (not that I kid myself into thinking that I truly replicate a Southeastern pronunciation, I just don't speak enough Yiddish for that, and there is also not enough material to fully immerse yourself into it).

Interesting! I would like to know, do you think there is more prestige in the new Yiddish community towards the standard YIVO or towards the native speakers (whether they are the old native speakers from Europe or the new Hasidic communities)? Is your journey in other words a standard one for new learners, wherein they migrate to a different dialect, or do they stick to what they learned?

[guyome]

When I started learning Yiddish I used the Standard pronunciation taught in textbooks, but since most of what you can hear in Yiddish is not in the Standard I moved away from it. At some point, I made a conscious decision to try and emulate a Southeastern pronunciation because that's what I like the most (Polish Yiddish sounds great too, it was a tough call ).
Of course, that was still in the early stages of learning (6 months/one year?) so it was rather easy to make the shift since I had no deeply ingrained habits at that point. A lot of listening and some conscious efforts did the trick (not that I kid myself into thinking that I truly replicate a Southeastern pronunciation, I just don't speak enough Yiddish for that, and there is also not enough material to fully immerse yourself into it).

Interesting! I would like to know, do you think there is more prestige in the new Yiddish community towards the standard YIVO or towards the native speakers (whether they are the old native speakers from Europe or the new Hasidic communities)? Is your journey in other words a standard one for new learners, wherein they migrate to a different dialect, or do they stick to what they learned?

I'm not very well connected to the Yiddish speaking community so take everything I say with a grain of salt! It is also hard to paint a general picture that still captures most of the aspects of questions like this, so sorry for the long rambling answer.

Let's say there are three Yiddish "poles": Standard/YIVO/klal Yiddish, dialects spoken by secular native speakers (overwhelmingly born before or shortly after WW2), and Hasidic Yiddish (which itself is not a monolith). In the secular world, and among learners of Yiddish, I'd say the the first two can carry prestige. It may happen that some people see the Standard as inauthentic or that others may insist on the Standard being the only "correct" Yiddish, but overall I don't think most people would have a problem with someone speaking either one of them. In my opinion, the rare negative comments about the dialects seem to stem more from insecurity and discouragement when faced with the huge task of learning a new language ("What!? Some people don't speak like I've learned?!", "You mean I have to learn several pronunciations of the same word?!") than from disrespect towards the dialects. In some cases, people may insist that you should use mikhome instead of krig and khoydesh instead of monat because Standard Yiddish prefers the Hebrew-Aramaic words, but I don't think that's a big issue (again, I may be wrong since I never attended any classes).
So all in all, there is no real tension I can see between Standard Yiddish and the dialects spoken/learned in the secular world. Sure, depending on the people and the circumstances, some disparaging comments or attitudes towards other variants can surface, but I think the secular Yiddish speaking community is rather small and generally appreciative of any genuine efforts to use the language.

Hasidic Yiddish on the other hand is generally disregarded or even looked down upon in secular Yiddish circles. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions but I think this is not an unfair description. At best, Hasidic Yiddish is ignored. My overall feeling is that many people project on Hasidic Yiddish their rejection of Hasidic Judaism. Since the feel threatened by or simply dislike Hasidism, then Hasidic Yiddish must in turn be criticized and delegitimized. Since the Hasidim are not interested in what delights the secular Yiddish speaking community, it is very easy for the latter to criticize the former on the basis of "See, the Hasidim don't produce any valuable Yiddish literature! While we, secular Yiddish speakers, have Mendele and Sholem Aleykhem and Perets! Ergo their language is crap.".
Attitudes may have changed a little over the last few years (the Forverts now accepts articles in Hasidic Yiddish I think), which I (maybe cynically) attribute to the shrinking of the secular Yiddish speaking community. With this shrinking taking place, it is tempting to be fascinated (and horrified at the same time) by the vast pool of fluent, native speakers of Hasidic Yiddish.

Of course, Hasidim at large reproduce the same thing by expressing their dislike for secular Yiddish because it is the vehicle of things they have no interest in. Standard Yiddish may even take more flak from them because it is not a natural variety. To make things even more complex, there is also the fact that for historical reasons a large part of Hasidic Yiddish today is Hungarian Yiddish (with 75 years of post-ww2 evolution of course). This dialect was a minor one before ww2, while the majority spoke Polish Yiddish. Now, the situation is sort of reversed. A secular Yiddish native speaker is more often than not a speaker of Polish Yiddish, while a Hasid will be a speaker of Hungarian Yiddish. This means that the dialectical difference has come to signify a cultural difference too, when before ww2 this would have been irrelevant because both dialects were spoken by Hasidic and secular Jews alike.