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French Pronunciation

SURVIVAL GUIDE

This booklet is meant as a tool to help you with your

French pronunciation. It offers techniques and practical advice, quizzes & tongue twisters and drama & song

opportunities to practise your pronunciation.

1. The tricky sounds: advice on the French ‘r’ and other tricky sounds.

2. Tongue twisters

3. The phonetic alphabet, Forvo and rhyming.

4. Which letters do we pronounce and which ones not?

5. French Karaoke.

6. Drama: how to become a French actor.

7. Film: direct your own French movie (Xtranormal)

8. Final tips on how to sound more French

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1. The tricky sounds: advice on the French ‘r’ and other tricky sounds.

One of the more difficult sounds for non-native speakers remains the French

‘r’. This gargling sound is not produced with your tongue, but with your throat.

To make sure that you are not tempted to use your tongue to produce the ‘r’

sound, place the tip of a pen/pencil at the tip of your tongue (to keep it steady)

while you try to produce the French ‘r’. Do not stick your tongue out; just

leave it inside your mouth. The pencil will make sure that you won’t try to use

your tongue to produce the (English) r sound. The tip of your tongue should

touch your lower front teeth.

For a detailed explanation on how to pronounce the French ‘r’, look at the

following ‘French sounds’ video on Youtube:

French R: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsErE00ItH0

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Another tricky sound is the ‘u’ from the word ‘tu’ or ‘une’. Many English

speakers tend to pronounce the ‘u’ as ‘oo’ like in book because the former

sound does not exist in English.

Your tongue position is central to the correct pronunciation of ‘tu’. In fact, you

need to place your tongue where you would place it to pronounce the English

‘ee’ (as in free) of the French ‘i’ (as in ‘Paris’).

The video on the link below will take you through the pronunciation step by

step.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4XFrRnCOvM&list=UU2L9w7ozDeUl1w5ZjUPCOQA&index=14&feature=plcp

If you found this advice useful, look

through the entire selection of sound

videos of ‘French sounds’ on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/frenchsounds

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2. Tongue twisters

To practise the sounds you have just learned, have some fun with the following

tongue twisters. Do not worry about their meaning too much; the main aim is

to pronounce the sounds correctly.

Le chasseur sachant chasser sans son chien, est un bon chasseur.

Son chat chante sa chanson.

Le ver vert va vers le verre vert

Les chaussettes de l'Archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches?

Gros gras grand grain d'orge, tout gros-gras-grand-grain-d'orgerisé, quand te dé-gros-gras-grand-grain-d'orgeriseras-tu? Je me dé-gros-gras-

grand-grain-d'orgeriserai quand tous les gros gras grands grains d'orge se seront dé-gros-gras-grand-grain-d'orgerisés.

Dans la gendarmerie, quand un gendarme rit, tous les gendarmes rient dans la gendarmerie.

Pourquoi les alliés ne se désolidariseraient-ils pas.

Ces cerises sont si sûres qu'on ne sait pas si c'en sont.

The selection below comes from

http://www.momes.net/education/oral/1/aprononcer.htm

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Je suis ce que je suis et si je suis ce que je suis, qu'est-ce que je suis?

Un pâtissier qui pâtissait chez un tapissier qui tapissait, dit un jour au

tapissier qui tapissait: vaut-il mieux pâtisser chez un tapissier qui tapisse ou tapisser chez un pâtissier qui pâtisse?

Il était une fois, un homme de foi qui vendait du foie dans la ville de Foix. Il dit ma foi, c'est la dernière fois que je vends du foie dans la ville de

Foix.

Tatie, ton thé t'a-t-il ôté ta toux,

disait la tortou au tatou. Mais pas du tout, dit le tatou,

Je tousse tant que l'on m'entend de Tahiti au Toumbouctou

C'est l'évadé du Nevada qui dévalait dans la vallée, dans la vallée du Nevada, qu'il dévalait pour s'évader, sur un vilain vélo volé, qu'il a volé

dans une villa, et le valet qui fut volé vit l'évadé du Nevada qui dévalait

dans la vallée, dans la vallée du Nevada, qu'il dévalait pour s'évader sur un vilain vélo volé.

Il y a les papas Papous à poux, les Papous pas papas à poux,

et les Papoux pas papas pas à poux.

Les vers verts levèrent le verre vert vers le ver vert.

Trois petites truites crues

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To make the exercise more entertaining, cut up the tongue twisters, put them

in the middle of the table and use them as a game: time your opponent and

see how many tongue twisters he or she pronounces correctly within one

minute. Each correct tongue twister can be kept; the other ones must be put

back. The player with the most tongue twisters is the winner.

Check out how native speakers

struggle with tongue twisters:

http://www.tv5.org/TV5Site/publication/galerie-39-1-

Les_virelangues.htm

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4. The phonetic alphabet, ‘Forvo’ and rhyming.

One of the more difficult things with pronunciation is knowing how to

pronounce each sound. Understanding the International Phonetic Alphabet

will help you with this. If you open a (bilingual) dictionary, you will more than

likely see some funny symbols between brackets at the back of each word.

These symbols are the letters of the phonetic alphabet. To know which sound

they represent, have a look at the grid* below.

*The symbol for the French ‘r’ is R

Now that you understand this alphabet, how would you write down the

pronunciation of the following French words with the phonetic alphabet? If

you are ready, check in a dictionary of your answer was correct.

Mouton: lapin: garage:

Chat: canard: français:

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If all this is too complicated and if you have access to a computer, you can

always look at the following website, where native speakers offer you the

pronunciation of difficult words. Just select your language, type in the word

you want and listen. This, by the way, can be an excellent resource to prepare

you for official speaking examinations and other assessments.

www.forvo.com

You can choose

your language and

browse for

pronunciations.

Or you can type in a

word in the

language, then

select your

language and

choose a

pronunciation.

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To be able to rhyme, you must pronounce words correctly, so don’t forget to

check the pronunciation of difficult words in a dictionary (if you can read the

phonetic alphabet or through www.forvo.com (if you can’t).

Now try to find rhyming words for the following set of words:

beau

danse

géographie

ensemble

école

tard

amour

As you may have noticed, rhyming in a different language is actually a lot more

difficult than may appear at first sight. This is why the following online rhyming

dictionary can be useful:

http://rime-en.fr/

Now try to find some other rhyming words for the same set of words, by

accessing the online rhyming dictionary mentioned above.

beau

danse

géographie

ensemble

école

tard

amour

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5. Which letters do we pronounce and which ones not?

Unfortunately, French is not a phonetic language, so there is no transparent

sound-writing relationship. This makes it hard to pronounce written text in

French, as you don’t always know how to pronounce each sound. On top of

that, in French there are many letters which you should not pronounce at all.

The following website gives excellent and thorough advice on the notion of

silent letters. The summaries in the boxes are direct quotes from this website.

http://french.about.com/library/pronunciation/bl-lettresmuettes.htm

In a nutshell:

There are three categories of silent letters in French.

E muet / Elision

Final consonants H muet and aspiré

Where does the letter E represent an E muet?

A. In the nine single syllable words with one consonant ce, de, je,

le, me, ne,

que, se, te

B. At the end of a word, possibly followed by other silent letters homme

femmes

parlent

C. In the non-final syllable of a word, after a consonant sound and before one of the

following:

1. single consonant sound devoirs

recherche

logement

2. consonant + liquid consonant° chevronné

secrétaire

replacer

D. Miscellaneous

1. The re- prefix in front of ss ressortir

ressource

2. These three words dessous

dessus

dehors

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The basic rule of French pronunciation for final consonants

is that the final consonant is not pronounced, but there are many

exceptions

The letters B, C, F, K, L, Q, and R are usually pronounced at the end

of a word. Tip: Since B, K, and Q are rare as final consonants, some

people find it helpful to use the word CaReFuL to remember the most

common of the usually pronounced final consonants.

The other French consonants are usually

silent at the end of a word, with some

exceptions. Tip: many exceptions are

proper names or words borrowed from

other languages.

The letters M and N are

usually silent, but

remember that they cause

the vowel preceding them

to be nasal.

The letter H is always silent in French. However, there are two different kinds of H's: H muet and H aspiré. The type of H at the beginning of the word lets you know whether to make contractions and pronounce liaisons with that word. To find out whether the H in a particular word is muet or aspiré, check a good French dictionary. There will be an asterisk or some other symbol to distinguish the two kinds of H's.

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6. French Karaoke.

Music is a superb resource when it comes to pronunciation. Download French

songs, put them on your Iphones and sing along! Youtube also has a wealth of

good songs available, which often include the lyrics, so you can do your own

French Karaoke.

If you are not a good singer, don’t worry. French rap is pretty amazing and

rapping is a fantastic way to practise your pronunciation.

See below a selection of songs and raps which work very well. Check out the

links on Youtube, look at or print off the lyrics and have fun with your

pronunciation!

Elle me dit (Mika): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiHWwKC8WjU

Search for the lyrics online and print them off.

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Alors on danse (Stromae):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJCQDd4vYjg

Lyrics included in the video link

Ca m’énerve (Helmut Fritz):

Careful: done in a mock German accent! (Lyrics included in the video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffk9GioKkVk

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Jour de paix (113 et Blacko):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwx-WbNv_ho

Lyrics included in the video

Celui (Colonel Reyel):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRFgl2-PzHg

Lyrics included in the video

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7. Drama: how to become a French actor.

Another brilliant way to focus on your French pronunciation is by acting out

French playscripts. The link below gives you the choice between a range of

short, adapted playscripts. The French Star Wars play script works particularly

well and is brilliant as an end of term project.

http://www.play-script-and-song.com/fsl-french-activities.html

Je suis ton père!

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8. Film: direct your own French movie

To familiarise yourself with the sounds of the French language, you can also

direct your own French animated movie through the use of the website

mentioned below. In this case, you will need to prepare your own script or use

an existing script. This one could be as simple as a role play. You can create

your own backgrounds, actions etc and make the actors say your lines in

French. Unfortunately, you need to pay if you want to publish and save your

sources. However, you can do a free trial session, which is pretty fun, so have a

try!

http://www.xtranormal.com/

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9. Final tips on how to sound more French

The French speak with their hands. They also make a lot of ‘sounds’ which

cannot be found in the dictionary, but are really part of everyday French

conversations. Finally, don’t be afraid of exaggerating your intonation. Try to

have a conversation with your neighbour pretending to be a French person

speaking English with a French accent. What did you notice? What did you do?

Which sounds did you exaggerate? Now try to do the same when you speak

French yourself. Strangely enough most pupils are quite good at imitating a

French person speaking English, but they often forget to apply the same

language features to their own French pronunciation.

And if all this is too hard, you can always fake you French! Have a look at how

Joey tries to sound French without being able to speak a word of it by

accessing the following clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5O9EuWttaM&feature=related

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Bonne Chance!

And have fun with your pronunciation!