French Pronunciation - Sounding "French"
Hi!
I am relearning French as part of a subject knowledge enhancement course. From learning Mandarin, I have recognised that mastering pronunciation right at the beginning is absolutely vital for preventing headaches later on.
However, I've come across a bit of a conundrum.
For simple words like "que", the IPA transcribes the phonemes as /kə/ (for those who don't know the IPA, in English it could be pronounced as "ker").
However, the way this sound is pronounced in French is different to English in some way even though the phonetic transcription is the same. Can anyone tell me why this is? Does French have some kind of special phonetic feature?
Thanks in advance!
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 7
1
Shouldn't it be written /køː/? The sound you wrote is a bit too "open mouthed" to me.
According to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aide:Alphabet_phon%C3%A9tique_fran%C3%A7ais
0
I've not studied phonetic, but when I write "que" in English letters to guide my students, I write "kuh". I find the mouth in "ker" to be too relax and open. With "kuh" you need to pout more.
I've brushed the subject of pronounciation in this article http://www.italki.com/article/94/getting-the-hang-of-7-french-quirks#.U3sHo_ldX2o but the best thing is to have a native speakers repeat it a few times for you and correcting you until they think you hit the right note.
0
I agree with Zine. The sound does not exist in English. It's not a schwa. (If anything, it's closer to the "e" in Mandarin--for example, in "che" 1st tone meaning vehicle/car.) Try studying French pronunciation from a course, such as the free FSI "Introduction to French Phonology" which can be downloaded from the Internet, or one of the books-with-CD on French Pronunciation from Amazon or Continental Book Company.
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