Pronunciation Differences

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 11, 2011 at 1:59am

For most native speakers of France, there's actually no difference between the first two vowels you mention. Both are pronounced [ ae~ ] (i.e. similar to the French 'a' vowel but nasalised). This means, for example, that "brin" and "brun" are pronounced identically.

 

A relatively small number of speakers distinguish between these two vowels, so that in "brun", the vowel is pronounced [oe~] -- i.e. a bit like the vowel of "soeur" but nasalised. In the attached file "Brun.m4a", I've done my best to give examples of these. The first word is "brin"/"brun" as it would be pronounced by the majority of speakers; the second is "brun" roughly as it would be pronounced by speakers that make the difference. Apologies for the terrible recording -- I have the cold from hell at the moment and nasalsed vowels are precisely the ones that don't tend to come out very well with one's nose blocked... If anyone can do a better recording, then please feel free!

 

Then, re "ui" vs "oui". These are basically glides going from the 'u' vowel of "vu" vs the "ou" vowel of "vous" respectively. If you can distinguish between French "u" vs "ou", then practise saying the vowels "u-i" in rapid succession, and "ou-i" in rapid succession. Have a listen to the attached recordings "nuit" and "oui". (These are of better quality -- they were "prepared earlier" under proper studio conditions without a blocked nose :)

Attachments:

• Brun.m4a, 27 KB
• Nuit.wav, 65 KB
• Oui.wav, 85 KB

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Permalink Reply by Jervon Voltage on July 11, 2011 at 2:42am

Fully understood! Thank you very much for this complete answer despite having a cold. :)

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Permalink Reply by Jervon Voltage on October 5, 2011 at 4:14am

Hello,

 What's the difference between these two sounds?

 

[o] as in paume

[ɔ] as in pomme

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 6, 2011 at 7:33am

See if the following page helps: http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/pronunciation/french_o_vowels.s... (From some new pages still in the preliminary stages -- better quality audio coming soon.)

 

Descriptively, you can get the sounds roughly as follows:

(1) make a French "ou" sound, with your tongue "high and bunched up" at the back of your mouth and your lips rounded

(2) now, lower your tongue a little bit (so that it's about 1/4 - 1/3 of the way down that you could possibly lower it at the back of your mouth), keeping your lips rounded-- this gives you the "close" [o] sound

(3) lower your tongue a bit more (so that it's about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way down) and bring it forward a little -- this gives you the "open" [ɔ] sound; you don't need to round your lips quite as much for this vowel but they're still rounded a little

 

Note that many speakers these days[*] actually pronounce what we traditionally transcribe as [ɔ] very similar to the vowel in "soeur"-- i.e. with the tongue further forward in the mouth-- so that e.g. "pomme" sounds a bit more like "poeume", and "donne" sounds more like "doeune" etc.

 

[*] I say "these days", but this trend is probably nothing new and has been ongoing for at least a century or so.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on October 5, 2011 at 6:16pm

I don't think you'd detect any difference between the vowels of un and bien in Paris, but you would in Montpellier or Marseille.

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