The Sounds of French

Abstract

This introductory textbook is principally addressed to English speakers who want systematically to improve their pronunciation of French - whether relative beginners or more advanced students. It describes the difficulties typically encountered, explains why they occur. and suggests ways to resolve them. It also explains how certain properties of the French sound system came about as the language changed over time, and it includes an examination of the relationship between French spelling and French pronunciation. Although focusing on the pronunciation of standard French, different pronunciations in other varieties of French (Québec French, Southern French, etc.) are also considered. In addition, from a more theoretical perspective, the book provides readers with a fundamental understanding of the way French sounds are produced and how they behave according to general linguistic principles. Overall the book stands as a multifaceted introduction to French sounds, drawing for its account on contrastive analysis, general phonetics, traditional knowledge and modern developments in phonology, historical linguistics, and orthography. Teachers of French will welcome Bernard Tranel's wide scholarship and firm grasp of teaching principles, while students will welcome the refreshing clarity of style and organization.

The <i>loi de position</i> and the acoustics of French mid vowels

“…Since vowels are shorter in non-word-final syllables than in word-final syllables in French (Delattre 1966;O'Shaugnessy 1984;Bartkova & Sorin 1987) and shorter vowels are more subject to co-articulation with neighboring consonants (Lindblom 1963), the loi (Tranel 1987). However, Nguyen and Fagyal (2008) did not find this effect in Southern French and it will not be further investigated in the present study.…”

Markedness, Faithfulness, Vowel Quality and Syllable Structure in French

“…The inventory of General French (GF) segments is given in (2) for consonants, and in (3) for vowels (see Plénat 1987, Tranel 1987 Additionally, French has four nasals, two liquids and three glides, but no laryngeals.…”

French loanwords in Vietnamese: the role of input language phonotactics and contrast in loanword adaptation

“…In all models, the output vowel choice (tense vs. lax) is the dependent variable. The independent variables are all possible combinations of the following three factors-French input vowel 6 Such geminate pronunciations are also reported for French but restricted to particular words and speech styles (Tranel 1987). According to Fouché (1973), on the other hand, in contemporary French gemination tends to be found with sonorant consonants and so it is in fact possible that gemination in some of the data in (12) may be found in the French input itself.…”

“…In this section, we provide background information on the phonology of Vietnamese (Emerich 2012;Hoa 1965;Hwa-Froelich et al 2002;Kirby 2011;Phạm 2006;Phạm To appear;Tang & Barlow 2006;Thompson 1965) and French (Féry 2003;Fougeron & Smith 1999;Storme 2015;Strange et al 2007;Tranel 1987;Walker 2001). The information on Vietnamese is based on the Northern (Hanoi) dialect.…”