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

91 BEYOND INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS: PROSODIC FEATURES OF FRENCH Sons et lettres is designed to help you recognize the letters and letter combinations (graphemes) that correspond to French sounds, and to help you learn to pronounce those sounds correctly. In addition to knowing how to produce the individual sounds which constitute the language (its phonemes), there are also a number of important differences between the pronunciation rules for French and English which must be learned in order to sound French. This material is usually covered in a course on French phonetics and pronunciation, or perhaps in a conversation and pronunciation class; although extensive discussion is beyond the scope of this book, the following brief presentation will familiarize you with some significant aspects of French that go beyond the production of individual sounds. French Vowels Vowel consistency. One important difference between French and English vowels concerns the consistency of sound-symbol correlation for vowels in French. As you know, in English, a written vowel can have more than one pronunciation ( sit , site ), and vowels often become lax in an unaccented syllable. Compare the vowels in Canada : the first a is in the accented syllable and has a different vowel sound than those in the following unaccented syllables, each of which contains a lax vowel (similar to the one in the word uh ). In addition to the change in sound, this lax vowel (called a schwa ) is often dropped, eliminating a syllable, as in Barb’ra , p’lice , or int’resting . While the schwa (/ @ /) is also found in French, it cannot be substituted for any unaccented vowel as in English. In French, the vowels you see should be pronounced as they are written: each vowel is to be pronounced distinctly and clearly, with its proper sound. There is no relaxation or regular alternation between stressed vowels and schwas, as there is in English. By way of example, say each of the following French words, being careful to pronounce all of the vowels consistently and to pronounce identical graphemes with the same sound: Barbara, Canada, Mississippi, Phillipe, photographie . There should be no schwas. Notice when you do so that this is very different from the way you would pronounce the same names and words in English; the reason for this is the lack of vowel consistency in English. APPENDIX B