Do French-speakers learning Bambara prefer to pronounce French loan words in their native accent or as Bambara-natives pronounce it?

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For example

11h45 sera : onze heures quarante-cinq sera

Listening to Bambara speakers, I almost alway hear them use rolled-r sounds and not the typical French “r”.

Is it more common for a French person learning Bambara to pronounce that with rolled "r"s or guttural French "r"s?

As an American who speaks some French, I can never make up my mind how to pronounce a French loan word, haha. I would love to know if there’s precedence.

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I am not a native French speaker, but here’s some thoughts:

Generally speaking, West African French varieties typically do not use a European-style French R (AKA the “guttural R”). In my experience, this is the case regardless of the person’s first language (e.g., Bambara, Fulani, Hausa, Akan, etc)

As for your question:

  • In my experience, native French speakers of French vary in how they approach and pronounce loanwords. If they want to sound more natural in Bambara, they roll their Rs because otherwise the guttural French R sounds like an intervocalic “g” in Bambara (e.g., in a word like taga ‘go’). Some French speakers struggle with correctly pronouncing Rs in Bambara — whether the word is a French loanword or not.

  • If you’re an American, I don’t see any reason that you would use a guttural French R when speaking Bambara — even if the word is technically originally from French. I’d add that when I speak French in West Africa, I don’t use guttural Rs either because, well, I don’t want to sound French :upside_down_face:

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