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Intermediate French: Understanding spoken French
Intermediate French: Understanding spoken French

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5.1 Manon and identifying sounds in French

With Manon, you will listen out for nasal vowels and also practise ‘shadow-reading’, using subtitles and transcripts to help you achieve a natural speaking pace in French.

Activity 21

Listen again to the first 30 seconds of the recording (up to ‘La Meute’).

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Manon uses a number of words containing nasal vowels such as:

Manon [ɔ̃]

ans [ɑ̃]

viens [ɛ̃]

The symbols in brackets are called 'phonemic symbols' and represent the sounds made when nasal vowels are spoken.

Using what you hear, the subtitles and the transcript below, identify the nasal vowels you hear. Print the transcript and underline the nasal vowels.

Alors, je m’appelle Manon Gallez, j’ai 21 ans. Je vis avec ma petite amie qui s’appelle Charlotte. On vit ensemble depuis trois ans. Je suis originaire de Belgique, je viens de la province du Hainaut dans la ville de Mons et je vis à Bruxelles depuis cinq ans.

Je suis étudiante en Arts et je suis aussi en collaboration avec ‘La Meute’.

Answer

Alors, je m’appelle Manon Gallez, j’ai 21 ans. Je vis avec ma petite amie qui s’appelle Charlotte. On vit ensemble depuis trois ans. Je suis originaire de Belgique, je viens de la province du Hainaut dans la ville de Mons et je vis à Bruxelles depuis cinq ans.

Je suis étudiante en Arts et je suis aussi en collaboration avec ‘La Meute’.

Activity 22

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Now listen again and match the nasal vowels you hear to the phonemic symbol representing them following the examples given below.

[ɔ̃] Manon

[ɑ̃] ans

[ɛ̃] viens

Using the following two lists, match each numbered item with the correct letter.

  1. Manon ; on. Mons ; collaboration

  2. ans ; ensemble ; ans ; ans ; étudiante ; en

  3. viens ; province ;cinq

  • a.[ɑ̃]

  • b.[ɔ̃]

  • c.[ɛ̃]

The correct answers are:
  • 1 = b
  • 2 = a
  • 3 = c

Activity 23

Using the answer to Activity 22, can you identify a link between spelling and sound for the nasal vowels ?

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Answer

The sound [ɔ̃] is represented in writing by the spelling ‘on’.

The sound [ɑ̃] is represented in writing by the spellings ‘an’ and by ‘en’ and ‘em’ at the beginning or in the middle of words (‘ensemble’).

The sound [ɛ̃] is represented in writing by the spellings ‘in’ and by ‘en’ at the end of words (viens).

Activity 24

Using the answer to Activity 23, pronounce the following words including nasal vowels:

bon

banc

bain

sans

sain

son

rien

rang

rond

marrant

marron

marin

Activity 25

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You can also use subtitles and transcripts accompanying recordings to practise your own delivery of connected speech using a technique known as ‘shadow-reading’ in which you read aloud the subtitles/transcript while playing the recording. Try this now with the recording of Manon; it may take several attempts to get up to the same speed as her.

Discussion

There is no answer as such to this task. You should find, however, that shadow-reading will not only enable you to develop the ability to speak French at a faster pace but will also help you to achieve a more natural sounding rhythm and intonation as you make your voice shadow that of the French native-speaker.

The video clips in this course all come with subtitles and you can also access transcripts of the recordings. Using text to support listening can be very helpful for your learning: natural speech can sometimes seem like a stream of sound without the white spaces between words that exist in writing to break up a text into separate words. Used selectively, textual support can help develop your listening comprehension skills along with providing insights into the relationship between the way words are spelled and how they are pronounced and helping you to improve your own spoken French through shadow-reading.

You should however be careful not to become over-reliant on transcripts. If you are reading the subtitles rather than listening to the speaker, you can get a very false idea about your listening comprehension abilities, as most adults are better at reading a foreign language than understanding authentic speech. One possible strategy is to always listen at least twice to a recording without textual support before using subtitles. If you do use transcripts, always make sure to conclude your comprehension activities by listen again to the recording without textual support.