{"id":21758,"date":"2015-03-09T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=21758"},"modified":"2017-10-23T14:29:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T12:29:31","slug":"an-introduction-to-french-phonetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/an-introduction-to-french-phonetics\/","title":{"rendered":"An Introduction to French Phonetics"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the hardest things for advanced French language learners to grasp is how to sound like a native speaker. Your accent largely depends on the age at which you first learned a language. But what can be even trickier than working on the perfect pronunciation of each word is mastering the rhythm of the language.\u00a0Mastery of l<\/em>a phon\u00e9tique<\/em>, or French phonetics, requires the understanding of three elements: stress placement, individual sounds, and intonation. Today, we will be focusing on stress placement, called\u00a0\u00a0l’accentuation.<\/em><\/p>\n

French is a very musical language and there’s a reason for it: \u00a0syllables are not usually stressed. This means that you pronounce each word at roughly the same volume. In English, of course, the stress we put on a certain syllable is important for word recognition. Also, stress on particular words is used\u00a0for various purposes, such as to highlight the importance of a word or increase its intensity. This makes English sound harsher and choppier.<\/p>\n

In French, generally speaking, only the last syllable of a rhythmic group (which just means a group of syntactically-related words in sentence)\u00a0can\u00a0be stressed. This is called\u00a0l’accentuation.\u00a0<\/em>It’s important to mention the difference between English and French in this regard: In English, individual words retain their individual stress patterns in phrases. In French, however,\u00a0phrases (or “chunks” of phrases in the same rhythmic group, such as a prepositional phrase) are treated like individual words — the stress is only put at the end.<\/p>\n

Here are some examples:<\/p>\n

In English, you would say: “I’m VIsiting the caTHEdrale.” Notice how different syllables of different words are stressed? In fact, the stress is what makes an English word intelligible.<\/p>\n

In French, however, you would say: “Je visite la cath\u00e9DRALE.” Only the final syllable of the final word is stressed.<\/p>\n

Similarly, you could say “I’m SKIing.” Again, in English, the last syllable of the last word in a phrase does not need to be stressed.<\/p>\n

In French, you would say, however, “Je fais du SKI.” Because “ski” is a word made up of only one syllable, the whole word is stressed.<\/p>\n

Can you think of other examples?<\/p>\n

Next week, we will continue our discussion of la phon\u00e9tique<\/em> with l’intonation<\/em> and l’accent tonique<\/em>. A plus!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

One of the hardest things for advanced French language learners to grasp is how to sound like a native speaker. Your accent largely depends on the age at which you first learned a language. But what can be even trickier than working on the perfect pronunciation of each word is mastering the rhythm of the…<\/p>\n

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