We as native speakers implicitly know the “rules” associated with pronouncing a word, but foreign learners need to familiarize themselves with the new system.
Linguists use a phonetic alphabet because a word’s spelling is ambiguous. Now, you may be saying “no duh”, but I specify this because there are other types of languages take Hebrew, a syllabic language where you pronounce the syllables in the same manner as what is written on the paper.
Well French and English are two types of “alphabetic” languages, meaning we use combinations of letters to create words and sounds. What is a phonetic alphabet and why is it important? It would help to have a good foundation in French to understand some of the examples. We’ll touch upon why it sounds like French speakers are “singing” when they speak, and where do English speakers have problems with pronunciation. Then, I’ll go into depth with some differences between English and French pronunciation. While in English, most of our words like to end with a consonant (closed syllables).įirst I will present the French phonetic alphabet and all the sounds that French contains (a few of them do not exist in English), so that you can leave here pronouncing words like a champ. In this extensive article, I will introduce many cool topics, for example: Did you know that in French, syllables have the tendency to end with a vowel? This is called open syllabication. The whole reason people have foreign accents in the first place is because their mouth cannot adjust to the correct ways of creating certain phonemes!
Phonology (and phonetics) should be interesting because knowing how the French make their sounds could help French language learners across the globe acheive a pronunciation “ non-marquée“, that perfect pronunciation. Phonology and Phonetics are two different fields in the science of linguistics that study how people make sounds and pronounce words.
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