[spongepoc]

People placed a lot more 'art' into their speech than people nowadays. You hear it in the old English of England as well with the particularity of enunciation. Speech was the main interface of communication compared to today's more logocentric and multimedia audio visual world. In our age we appear to place that art into crafting text messages (nuances of capitalisation, punctuation, abbreviations, emojis etc.).

[simias]

There's a huge selection bias at play. Back then being recorded was a big deal and quite rare, so what little of it survives to this day was probably not representative of the bulk of how people talked.

Also back then people traveled less (especially in the lower classes) which probably made accents stronger and more easily identifiable. Now it's routine for people of all classes to move to a different part of the country for studies or work, and you have mass media spamming a somewhat "standard" Parisian French across the country.

And speech is still the main interface of communication. In general when people send casual texts they'll try to emulate the spoken language, including nonstandard inflections and spelling changes etc...

If anything on average we probably pay a lot less attention to the written word than we used to because we use it so much more and for much more casual conversation. Few people used to write "wanna grab sumthin 2 eat?" a few decades ago.

[dmch-1]

Perhaps being recorded was a big deal back then. So they made more effort. Today it is common to have ones speech recorded, even for mass media.

[pmezard]

One of the highlighted characteristic of this recording, is it is a live conversation, not something rehearsed.

So, while what you said may be true for radio broadcasts, I am not sure it is at play here even if the interviewee knows he is being recorded.

[alricb]

In 1912, the recording equipment would have been quite conspicuous.

[theelous3]

I think this is hugely reaching, as though some random french craftsman is consciously making an art of his speech. It's just an accent. Accents come and go.

[ldng]

No, it's really not. The spoken French has simplified over time and lost nuances in the process. It also shows if you compare tv news from the fifties and now. The parent remark is not about accent.

[Bakary]

It has gained new nuances in the process. I wouldn't call it a simplification, given that foreign speakers often struggle with some of the finer points of slang.

[malikolivier]

I would not say that nuances were lost. At most, word usage and the way nuances are expressed have changed. People from the 1910s just happen to make use of many words that have fallen out of use for the people living in 2021.

Someone from 1910 would have a hard time understanding all the neologisms that were introduced after two world wars and decolonization until today.

For us from 2021, someone from 1912 uses words that are commonly found in written works from the same period (and after). This is why we feel it sounds like 'art'. Written words live way longer than spoken words.

Even today, common spoken French is very different from common written French.

[theelous3]

But what has that to do with making an art of speech? Nothing to indicate literacy has made speech "unartful".

[Cthulhu_]

Born in the wrong generation? I think the 'art' part you mention is just different nowadays.

I mean one of my favorite channels on youtube is a pair of disembodied Canadian hands and voice, he has a way with words: https://youtu.be/toewD0VInlc. Here's a dictionary (do set it to show more than 10 at a time): https://codepen.io/LegoLife/full/YVXbMR

[seszett]

I don't know if I would call that art, if we're talking about the traditional Parisian accent that is linked here (a popular accent, mostly used by lower classes). Today it sounds rather uneducated, and although it is easier to understand than many other local French accents, it doesn't sound especially clearer than modern speech.

Although it might sound clearer to English speakers because it features more word-level stress while standard French doesn't really have it (but this has not been lost recently).

[ryanianian]

I studied French for many years in high-school and college. I've since forgotten much of it, but I was able to easily follow this "uneducated" accent. At times I found myself not even needing to read the subtitles. I had forgotten some of the meanings, but I could pick out the words and structure. Compare this to when I was learning French: most of the spoken material was in a more modern accent and was spoken much more quickly (as is de rigueur). I wonder if some of these older accents may be useful in teaching.

Similarly I've been learning Spanish the past few years, and the most comprehensible accents are those from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras--some of the poorest Spanish-speaking countries. I cannot for the life of me understand a heavy Mexican or Chilean accent, but I can easily follow Guatemalan. It's interesting from a socio-linguistic perspective if nothing else.

[johnchristopher]

No. The sentences are more elaborate and pronunciation, while heavily emphased in comparison with modern casual french, doesn't suffer yet from "word eating". Links(?) between words are also clearer, less mumbled together.

[mytailorisrich]

England/the UK is also a bit of a special case with its strong class system. Your accent is important socially in that regard.

This is still the case today but was even more so and educated upper classes people were taught to speak 'properly'. That very posh accent you hear in old British films and old BBC footage is called "traditional received pronunciation(RP)" [1].

That being said, accent is a social marker almost everywhere. It certainly is one in France, including because the country is very centralised on Paris and regional accents are usually deemed 'inferior' (it's similar to England, tbh). These days in France the accent and way of speaking you want to avoid at all cost is "l'accent des cités", i.e. the accent of people, often of foreign descent, from the bad suburban areas.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

[Tainnor]

The one thing that is as steady and unavoidable as language change is people complaining about language change.