![]() The French language has very few diphthongs, and those are generally easy to spot as they are usually written with two letters (see below). And you have diphthongs, too, I assure you.) Notice how your mouth closes a bit in a W sound a the end? Or how the A in “spade” rhymes with “may”? (If you don’t speak with one of the “standard” English accents, just bear with me. Linguists call these diphthongs. Just think of how O is pronounced in English. Most English accents don’t have just one sound within a vowel, but several. Say what? Remember that classic film, “My Fair Lady”? (If you don’t, go out and rent it, borrow it or stream it.)Īpart from featuring a rather horrid Cockney accent by Audrey Hepburn, it also shows a professor of Phonetics shuddering at the amount of vowel sounds in one “oi!”. This is because few English vowels are pure. Vowels are the bane of English speakers trying to learn a second language. Let's go How To Pronounce French Vowels 1: Simple Vowel Sounds And the most important thing is not 100% correct pronunciation - it’s getting it just enough right that everyone understands you.įind french classes in Houston here on Superprof. Studies have shown that babies become focused on the sounds of their mother tongue even before they are born the older you are, the harder it is not only to form different sounds but to hear the subtle differences between two similar sounds when listening to a language.īut cheer up! There are enough French dialects and accents that a certain variation in the pronunciation of words is not unusual. And that is more difficult than simply learning French greetings and saying “bonjour”, “merci” and “bonne nuit”. Speaking French means mastering pronunciation. But then you open your mouth - and you sound like a bad imitation of the Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau. ![]() Learning French is one thing: you learn your French vocabulary and French grammar, write your flashcards, make your adjectives agree, memorize your verb conjugations, practice your spelling - and you can write perfect French.
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