Sons et lettres: A Pronunciation Method for Intermediate-level French

11 WHY THIS BOOK? Is French pronunciation easy? Is good pronunciation important? If you are using this book, either in a French class or for individual study, your answer to the first question is unlikely to be “yes, of course it is!” French sounds and French spelling differ fromEnglish inmany respects, and rare is the intermediate student who can read a paragraph of standard French prose wth accuracy. As for the second question, if you have ever had the opportunity to use your French with native speakers, you may know from experience that a few mispronounced vowels can prevent effective communication. Some slips of the tongue may be amusing, while some could be more significant. If you agree to work for 12 ( douze ) euros and get the French vowel wrong, you might end up 10 euros short ( deux euros ). Accurate pronunciation is important if you want to speak French and be understood, and so it is important to work through the difficulties in decoding and pronouncing the written word that stand in the way of intelligibility. At another level, learning about pronunciation and developing good habits can make the entire experience of learning French less mysterious and more fun. The materials assembled in Sons et lettres are inspired by a desire to help students feel more confident about French pronunciation and more at home with French words. In particular, these materials are intended to clear away the confusion that English speakers often feel when they see French words with mysterious combinations of letters. In our experience, students are rarely given the information they need to successfully decipher and pronounce French words. Some explicit instruction about the pronunciation of letters and combinations of letters is a part of all beginning French courses, of course, but this instruction is often incomplete or unsystematic, due to either a lack of time or a lack of materials. PREFACE