6.1 Franz and pronunciation practice
Franz is a good model for you to ‘shadow’ as you study the way words and phrases are connected in French speech.
Activity 29
Listen again to Franz. Pause the recording when you hear the words:
mes études
douze ans
qui est à présent
mes amis
je suis un être
How many syllables does each phrase contains? How are the syllables separated in speech? Do the syllables tend to end with vowel or consonant sounds?
Answer
mes études = 3 syllables > sounds like me/zé/tudes
douze ans = 2 syllables > sounds like dou/zans
qui est à présent = 5 syllables > sounds like qui/es/tà/pré/sent
mes amis = 3 syllables > sounds like me/za/mis
je suis un être = 4 syllables > sounds like je/sui/zu/nêtre
You will notice that syllables in connected speech tend to end in vowel sounds. This is called open-syllabification and is typical of spoken French.
Activity 30
Listen again to Franz, pausing the recording and paying particular attention to the words:
le hongrois
sens de l’humour
l’harmonie
and to Franz’s two pronunciations of
navetteur
What do you notice?
Answer
The letter ‘h’ is never pronounced in spoken French. It is to all intents and purposes treated as a vowel and therefore the words ‘le’ and ‘la’ before it are reduced to ‘l’, as in ‘l’humour’ and ‘l’harmonie’. However, in certain words (such as ‘hongrois’) the letter ‘h’ is known as ‘h aspiré’, and ‘le’ and ‘la’ are not reduced to ‘l’’, hence ‘le hongrois’. If you look at words starting with ‘h’ in your dictionary, ‘h aspiré’ is signalled by an asterix before the word, so you will find *harem, *hareng, *haricot and *hongrois among others.
In words like ‘navetteur’, where the letter ‘e’ is sandwiched between two consonant sounds, the sound [ә] tends to disappear, thereby turning ‘navetteur’ into ‘nav-tteur’. This is known as elision.
Activity 31
Remembering what you have learned about liaison, open syllabification, h aspiré and elision, play the recording of Franz with the subtitles and shadow-read along with him.
Franz, as befits his profession as an interpreter, speaks very clearly and carefully. The elements of his connected speech such as liaison, open syllabification, the absence of the contraction of ‘le’ and ‘la’ before ‘h aspiré’ and the elision of the sound [ә] when the letter ‘e’ occurs between two consonants are not ‘carelessness’ but, in fact, features of good spoken French which you should try to imitate. One advantage of using authentic video recordings is that they can sensitise you to features of natural connected speech and give you an excellent model for your own spoken French.
OpenLearn - Intermediate French: Understanding spoken French
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