I’m sorry for not coming back in September as I said I would.
This blog was created for the purpose of getting started with French pronunciation resources while building a companion website.
Well, the website is far from being ready, and I don’t know when it will be…
An off the peg blog (like this one) is not the best place to make resources available because stuff gets buried in it. For example, in this blog:
• February 1 has the address of a cool website to help you with your pronunciation;
• February 15 has a downloadable PDF about French pronunciation;
• February 23 has a downloadable PDF about the letter H;
• March 15 has a downloadable PDF showing you how to separate French words into syllables.
You will find other interesting information if you take the time to read the other entries.
I am going to leave it at this for the moment. Hopefully you’ll find that the information available to you is helpful. I still want to get the website up and running so come back from time to time to see what’s happening.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
The diaeresis (tréma): as in ë, ï, ü
Please note this is the last post for now, but I'll be back in September 2010. Look up my previous posts there are resources that could help with French.
The diaeresis (in French: le tréma) can be put on the vowels e, i, and u to indicate that the vowel is detached from the preceding or following vowel and pronounced as a separate syllable.
In French there are vowel combinations that produce one sound, for example the vowels ai: they can be pronounced like an é or an è. But with the word naïve (naive in English) because there is a tréma it is pronounced na-i-ve, as opposed to nai-ve.
The tréma is also found in unusual vowel combination such as Gaël, Israël, and Noël (pronounced Ga-el, Is-ra-el, and No-el), which are often proper names.
The diaeresis (in French: le tréma) can be put on the vowels e, i, and u to indicate that the vowel is detached from the preceding or following vowel and pronounced as a separate syllable.
In French there are vowel combinations that produce one sound, for example the vowels ai: they can be pronounced like an é or an è. But with the word naïve (naive in English) because there is a tréma it is pronounced na-i-ve, as opposed to nai-ve.
The tréma is also found in unusual vowel combination such as Gaël, Israël, and Noël (pronounced Ga-el, Is-ra-el, and No-el), which are often proper names.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Dictation – more about syllables
When you want to help your child to write in French, you probably give him/her dictations, e.g. few vocabulary words or simple sentences.
Here are few tips to help you help them. First, read the words or text. Better, let your child read it, now the dictation is more a visual memory exercise. Then, go over the words or text to point out difficulties: silent letters, liaison, s between two vowels, etc.
Next, give the dictation. For single words, read one word at a time. The first time you read it, pronounce it like it is supposed to be pronounced, and then read it again by breaking it down into syllables. For example:
• la maison, you say the two words, then you sound them out: “la, espace (space), mai-son”; you say mai-zon although it is written with an s (the s between two vowels rule), which you should have discuss with your child before the exercise;
• la pomme: you say the two words, then you sound them out: “la, espace, pom-me. In this example the m seems extended because the first m belongs with the first syllable and the second one with the final syllable; you do pronounce the silent e because the syllable is me (not m on its own).
With words ending with a silent consonant, for example the words grand (tall, big) and petit (small), you do not pronounce the d of grand or the t of petit when you pronounce or sound them out. What you can do is discuss with your child that these words are masculine words, but when they are feminine the last consonant is sounded: grande and petite (gran-de, pe-ti-te). The feminine word becomes the clue to remember the silent consonant.
For full sentences, read a full sentence first, for example: Le chat mange la souris. (The cat eats the mouse.) Then break it down in chunk: Le chat / mange / la souris. Use the same strategy as the single words for each chunk; pronounce all the syllables, the spaces and punctuation marks.
Finally, with your help let the child corrects its own dictation discussing why mistakes were made.
Here are few tips to help you help them. First, read the words or text. Better, let your child read it, now the dictation is more a visual memory exercise. Then, go over the words or text to point out difficulties: silent letters, liaison, s between two vowels, etc.
Next, give the dictation. For single words, read one word at a time. The first time you read it, pronounce it like it is supposed to be pronounced, and then read it again by breaking it down into syllables. For example:
• la maison, you say the two words, then you sound them out: “la, espace (space), mai-son”; you say mai-zon although it is written with an s (the s between two vowels rule), which you should have discuss with your child before the exercise;
• la pomme: you say the two words, then you sound them out: “la, espace, pom-me. In this example the m seems extended because the first m belongs with the first syllable and the second one with the final syllable; you do pronounce the silent e because the syllable is me (not m on its own).
With words ending with a silent consonant, for example the words grand (tall, big) and petit (small), you do not pronounce the d of grand or the t of petit when you pronounce or sound them out. What you can do is discuss with your child that these words are masculine words, but when they are feminine the last consonant is sounded: grande and petite (gran-de, pe-ti-te). The feminine word becomes the clue to remember the silent consonant.
For full sentences, read a full sentence first, for example: Le chat mange la souris. (The cat eats the mouse.) Then break it down in chunk: Le chat / mange / la souris. Use the same strategy as the single words for each chunk; pronounce all the syllables, the spaces and punctuation marks.
Finally, with your help let the child corrects its own dictation discussing why mistakes were made.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Is your child in a French Immersion class?
I’ll bet that sometimes you wonder why you enrolled them:
• Do you feel left out and sometimes don’t understand what your child is saying?
• If they are having difficulty you may think: ‘How can I help my child? I’m in no position to do so.’
The good news is…
Your child is certainly becoming bilingual. Did you realize that you can piggy-back on your child’s French education (for free!) and become bilingual too?
How can you do that?...
First you have to acknowledge that you won’t speak fluent French overnight, but over time you can and will.
By having a child in French Immersion, you have 24x7 access to a French speaker. When children learn they don’t try to understand pronunciation like adults do, they just repeat accurately what the teacher says. As an adult, you need to know why a string of letters is pronounced in a way that doesn’t make sense to you. This is why I created my PDF Introduction to French Pronunciation (see posts below).
Once you understand French pronunciation mechanics, you’ll feel happier and more confident, and your child will sense it and benefit from it. Then, your focus can shift to learning new vocabulary words and phrases and before you know it you’ll be pretty good in French!
• Do you feel left out and sometimes don’t understand what your child is saying?
• If they are having difficulty you may think: ‘How can I help my child? I’m in no position to do so.’
The good news is…
Your child is certainly becoming bilingual. Did you realize that you can piggy-back on your child’s French education (for free!) and become bilingual too?
How can you do that?...
First you have to acknowledge that you won’t speak fluent French overnight, but over time you can and will.
By having a child in French Immersion, you have 24x7 access to a French speaker. When children learn they don’t try to understand pronunciation like adults do, they just repeat accurately what the teacher says. As an adult, you need to know why a string of letters is pronounced in a way that doesn’t make sense to you. This is why I created my PDF Introduction to French Pronunciation (see posts below).
Once you understand French pronunciation mechanics, you’ll feel happier and more confident, and your child will sense it and benefit from it. Then, your focus can shift to learning new vocabulary words and phrases and before you know it you’ll be pretty good in French!
Monday, March 22, 2010
The French language’s rhythm
Last week I showed you how to separate French words into syllables. This week we will see how syllables are used to mark rhythm in French.
In French we pronounce each syllable with the same weight, or length if you prefer, except for the last one, which is slightly longer, but only a tiny bit longer. Which last syllable, I hear you thinking? That would be the last syllable of a word pronounced on its own or the last syllable of a group of words representing a single thought/idea. For example:
| le chapeau | le cha-peau |
| le chapeau noir | le cha-peau noir |
| Le chapeau noir est beau. | Le cha-peau noir / est beau. |
On its own, le chapeau (the hat), has its last syllable peau pronounced slightly longer.
Le chapeau noir (the black hat) is a complete idea; le and noir do belong with chapeau, so noir is the last syllable in the group and is pronounced a bit longer.
In the final example, a new group is introduced: est beau (is nice). This is the group relating to the verb (the action word); the word is on its own dangles, the reader/listener thinks is what? (Is nice, in this case.) In this group the last syllable beau is pronounced slightly longer.
Granted, these examples are simple, but simple is always a good starting point.
Can you begin to see (or hear) how some people say that French sounds musical? It is because of all these slightly longer syllables here and there in an otherwise steady stream of sounds!
Monday, March 15, 2010
How to separate French words into syllables
Sounds make up syllables, syllables make up words, and words make up sentences.
Not understanding the mechanics of the French syllable undermines your ability to pronounce French words correctly and to communicate. Why? Syllables do make up words! Without knowing how to separate French syllables your pronunciation could be unrecognisable by both, French and English speakers.
Take the word spaghetti, as a Francophone having lived so many years in Anglophones cities, I really never mastered its English pronunciation; most of the time I pronounce it spa-ghet-ti (the French way). If I say this word in English inevitably the Anglophone person’s face to whom I’m speaking to will go blank and he/she will say after a while: “You mean spaghetti?” (without any syllable separation; or so it seems to me!)
To help you learn how to separate French words into syllables I have prepared this document:
Not understanding the mechanics of the French syllable undermines your ability to pronounce French words correctly and to communicate. Why? Syllables do make up words! Without knowing how to separate French syllables your pronunciation could be unrecognisable by both, French and English speakers.
Take the word spaghetti, as a Francophone having lived so many years in Anglophones cities, I really never mastered its English pronunciation; most of the time I pronounce it spa-ghet-ti (the French way). If I say this word in English inevitably the Anglophone person’s face to whom I’m speaking to will go blank and he/she will say after a while: “You mean spaghetti?” (without any syllable separation; or so it seems to me!)
To help you learn how to separate French words into syllables I have prepared this document:
Monday, March 8, 2010
Different word pronunciations
How do you pronounce the word les in French?
The, in French translate into le (for a masculine noun – le garçon), la (for a feminine noun – la fille) and les (for plural nouns – les enfants (no matter the gender.)
I pronounce les like the word \let\ in English (but without the t). You may come across people who will pronounce it \lay\. I have seen the IPA transcription written both ways in different French dictionaries. I suspect that the pronunciation \lay\ is more common in France than it is in Québec, but I could be wrong.
Online last week, I came across in interesting thread about the pronunciation of word ending in il, like fusil (gun), baril (barrel), and persil (parsley). I never pronounced the l, but found out that people have been pronouncing it both ways (pronouncing the l and not pronouncing it). The amazing thing (to me) was both pronunciations were in used in Québec and in France.
When you suspect that people are pronouncing a particular word differently to what you know, check your dictionary, survey French speaking people around you to see which way they pronounce it and go with the majority.
The, in French translate into le (for a masculine noun – le garçon), la (for a feminine noun – la fille) and les (for plural nouns – les enfants (no matter the gender.)
I pronounce les like the word \let\ in English (but without the t). You may come across people who will pronounce it \lay\. I have seen the IPA transcription written both ways in different French dictionaries. I suspect that the pronunciation \lay\ is more common in France than it is in Québec, but I could be wrong.
Online last week, I came across in interesting thread about the pronunciation of word ending in il, like fusil (gun), baril (barrel), and persil (parsley). I never pronounced the l, but found out that people have been pronouncing it both ways (pronouncing the l and not pronouncing it). The amazing thing (to me) was both pronunciations were in used in Québec and in France.
When you suspect that people are pronouncing a particular word differently to what you know, check your dictionary, survey French speaking people around you to see which way they pronounce it and go with the majority.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Ask me a question
If you wish to ask me a question, click on comments below this post and leave a question instead of a comment; you can also write to me at mail@frenchpronunciationandmore.com.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The h aspiré
Although you never aspirate (pronounce) the h in French, the definitive work on the French language, Le bon usage from Maurice Grévisse, lists 189 words with an h aspiré. With these 189 words you cannot use elision or make liaison. For example, the word hibou (owl) is a masculine noun; you can say le hibou, but not l’hibou and you cannot make liaison between les and hiboux (les (z)hiboux). For more details about elision and liaison, please review pages 13-16 in my PDF Introduction to French pronunciation.I have listed the most frequent words with an h aspiré in the following document: The H aspiré
Monday, February 15, 2010
Introduction to French Pronunciation Part 2 (including Part 1)
It is time for me to post Part 2 of my PDF:
Introduction to French Pronunciation (parts 1 and 2)
Part 1 (pages 1-7) is included for those of you who are new to my blog. For those coming back for Part 2, you’ll now have the two parts in one document (and will only need to print from page 8 onwards).
It is difficult to write an introduction to French pronunciation without boring you to death; still, concepts need to be explained and I’ve tried to keep Elision and Liaison brief.
Little by little, I’ll add more info to this blog (Rome was not built in a day and you won’t become fluent in French overnight!). This will help you better than racing through concepts that you would struggle to properly assimilate, if I gave them to you too quickly – ‘slow and steady wins the race’.
Introduction to French Pronunciation (parts 1 and 2) Part 1 (pages 1-7) is included for those of you who are new to my blog. For those coming back for Part 2, you’ll now have the two parts in one document (and will only need to print from page 8 onwards).
It is difficult to write an introduction to French pronunciation without boring you to death; still, concepts need to be explained and I’ve tried to keep Elision and Liaison brief.
Little by little, I’ll add more info to this blog (Rome was not built in a day and you won’t become fluent in French overnight!). This will help you better than racing through concepts that you would struggle to properly assimilate, if I gave them to you too quickly – ‘slow and steady wins the race’.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Why am I doing this?
When it comes to speaking another language, knowing the right pronunciation is important to me. Some people like to learn pre-fabricated French sentences by heart and repeat them. My mind is more inquisitive; I like to know the why’s and how’s – that way I feel more confident. So when I learned in my French linguistic classes that there were only 37 sounds in French and that the majority of these sounds were used in English, I thought that Anglophones would not find French so difficult if they knew that.
Monday, February 1, 2010
To get you started: Introduction to French Pronunciation Part 1
(This is Part 1; Part 2 will be posted in a couple of weeks.)This PDF has been written with parents of French Immersion children in mind.
As a parent your child comes home with new words and pronounces them the way the teacher taught them to in class. You scratch your head when you see the written form of the new words and are tempted to correct your child. Hopefully this PDF will help you decipher pronunciation of French words and understand why your child pronounces them the way he/she does.
If you are not a parent of French Immersion children, but are learning French, please do have a look at the PDF. If you do not have a French speaking person to practice with, the next best thing to help you hear words as they should sound is this cool website that will pronounce text you type in French (with a choice of male and female voices with different accents): http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal
Note: If you wish to print the PDF please do so but be aware that it should be printed in color for the best usability of the document, since most of the pronunciation emphasis is indicated through use of different colors.
As a parent your child comes home with new words and pronounces them the way the teacher taught them to in class. You scratch your head when you see the written form of the new words and are tempted to correct your child. Hopefully this PDF will help you decipher pronunciation of French words and understand why your child pronounces them the way he/she does.
If you are not a parent of French Immersion children, but are learning French, please do have a look at the PDF. If you do not have a French speaking person to practice with, the next best thing to help you hear words as they should sound is this cool website that will pronounce text you type in French (with a choice of male and female voices with different accents): http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal
Note: If you wish to print the PDF please do so but be aware that it should be printed in color for the best usability of the document, since most of the pronunciation emphasis is indicated through use of different colors.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
About this blog
One day, hopefully, I will also have a companion website http://www.frenchpronunciationandmore.com/. When it’s done, you’ll find additional content about French pronunciation and other material.
For the moment it is easier for me to post items here than the companion site.
I welcome feedback on my postings and I am open to suggestions from blog readers about French-related topics that they would like me to cover.
For the moment it is easier for me to post items here than the companion site.
I welcome feedback on my postings and I am open to suggestions from blog readers about French-related topics that they would like me to cover.
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