French was the first language I was able to transform into a fluent speaker, in addition to English. I love listening to French when it is well spoken. I believe that acquiring excellent French pronunciation is a challenge for every French student and therefore I would like to offer some advice. I will not go into the details of the pronunciation of the letters in French , since this information is easily available online. I recommend that you often refer to these sources to remember important details such as the influence of the accent on the “e”, and the number of unpronounced letters in French , which depend on their position in the word or phrase. But these are details that can be found alone.
French Pronunciation Considerations
As with studying the pronunciation of any language, it is important to spend a lot of time listening. This should include listening repeatedly to the same content. Give your brain the opportunity to get used to French sounds. There are sounds in French that don’t exist in your language. As long as you don’t hear these sounds clearly, you will have trouble pronouncing them.
It requires some exposure to sound, through listening, for your brain to start recognizing the sounds it has never heard before.
I often start a language by listening to simple stories, simple content for beginners, listening 20-30 or more times. In the case of Greek, I listened to 60 times, 4-minute stories, an average of 40 times. It is much easier to pronounce well after being exposed to the sound of a new language intensively. I remember the time I posted a recording of myself while speaking Russian in a language learning forum. I thought I wasn’t that bad, but I was criticized and ridiculed by others. Give yourself an opportunity, get your sound full before you worry about how well you can pronounce.
Active listening should always be an important part of the learning strategy, throughout the study period, even for an advanced degree. I know that after listening to audiobooks in French, my pronunciation improves. Nowadays it is easy to find audio material for each field of interest. Even after passing the beginner level exams, you should continue to love the language through many plays. This will continue to help you improve French pronunciation .
The sounds nasal What attracts the French are the nasal sounds. There are four: 1. Vin, pain, peindre 2. Cent, sens, quand 3. Vont, mon, ton 4. Un, brun, Verdun
Now the use of the fourth type of nasal sound, – a, brun, Verdun is disappearing.
It is often rendered in the same way as the first type, vin-pin-peindre.
It is important to make these sounds correctly, I wanted to spend a lot of time studying these sounds so as not to confuse them. Practice makes perfect. Exaggerate these nasal sounds when you are reading aloud.
Practice listening to short lyrics when you have songs with audio files. Read them aloud and register. Focus on his nasal sounds. You will have to exaggerate them in order to develop the natural ability to reproduce these sounds in the right way. Then listen and compare the sounds produced by native speakers.
The guttural
“r” There is no obligation to do the guttural “r” in French. You will do it perfectly if you understand the trill “r” or the weak English “r”.
However, it is a vain thing, many of us would like to pronounce it much more than native speakers than we think. How did you achieve this? There are no mysteries here. It is only a matter of practicing listening to the language, repeating the sound, as if to gargle so as to develop the ability to naturally pronounce the guttural “r”. It is not an English “r” or an Italian “l”. It is a deeper sound that is produced in the throat. You should take throat lozenges to calm her down after each intensive guttural “r” pronunciation. However, once you have achieved comfort during natural sound reproduction, you will no longer feel any tickling in your throat.
The French
“u” The most useful advice for making the French “u” is this: form a circle with your lips as if you were saying “who”. Keeping your lips still to form the circle, try saying “eee”. Keep doing this. Focus on the sound. It is extremely important to do it the right way to have an elegant French pronunciation. If you can’t make this sound, people will continue to understand you. However, if you can do it correctly, your French will be more pleasant to French people.
“Liaisons” hazardous
The relationships dangerous is a classic of French literature, tells of love affairs. One of the most important characteristics of French pronunciation is the way in which sounds are tied, some sounds are brought from the last syllable of the previous word which bind to the first syllable of the following word. Very often the consonants, which are muted among other things, are pronounced because they are attached to the word that follows them.
Comment ça va comment allez-vous
Vous savez vous avez
Ils ont ont-ils
Vingt vingt et un vingt et un ans
Mon père mon homme mon ami
This is known as “liaison” and is perhaps the reason why some people find French difficult to understand in the beginning. This leads one to believe that there are no divisions between the end of one word and the beginning of the next. Working on your pronunciation skills of these liaisons will help you understand speech.
Intonation
In English we tend to emphasize words. We put more stress on certain syllables than others. This makes English a bit singsong, not like Swedish, but I think you understand what I mean. Generally French is more monotonous. Syllables tend to have less equal value in each word, although this is hardly the case. You have to listen carefully to the intonation of French and try to imitate it. By varying the stress in the syllables and words, it will be less obvious than in English. French uses intonation to emphasize conversations such as English speakers. An important part of French pronunciation is to imitate intonation and rhythm.
” Euh “
The French “e”, unless it has an accent, is pronounced like the “e” in “her” in English. This is a neutral sound. It is often silent, although it is never wrong to pronounce it. In fact, from my point of view, improve your French pronunciation by making the sound both in the middle and in the end, whenever you have the chance.
This is to give your French a constant buzz, an “euh” makes your pronunciation very similar to that of a native speaker. Listen to it. This “euh” is often common and used even when there is no “e”, for example at the end of the word. It is a kind of replacement for English “umm”.
Making this sound good is important for your French pronunciation mastering package. I have given you some tips for French pronunciation. This is not intended to be a profound explanation of pronunciation, but only to give some suggestions to make you more like native speakers. You can find many more tips for pronunciation for beginners here .
I recommend that you practice every single feature of the language that I have described to you here. Do a lot of listening. Practice reading aloud and register, to see how well you have done by combining the various things. But when you talk to people, just let things come out naturally and don’t doubt yourself.
