skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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:
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.
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.
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
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’.
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.
To get you (and me) started with French pronunciation, here is a downloadable PDF file: Introduction to French Pronunciation
(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.
