Lesson - French Sounds (Pronunciation) - #2

[garçoncanadien]

espire i talked to a Frenchman and he said theres no difference

[espire]

In common spoken French, I wouldn't doubt it, but I know that for a fact, there should be a difference. At least there used to be one, long ago. In Ontario, we're still being taught archaic French, I guess

[garçoncanadien]

well, I learned French in Ontario too i have never heard of what you said.

maybe you can give me the textbook name where you got this, and a recording of where you can hear this difference? Otherwise please don't be teaching ye olde French on these forums

[espire]

You're of Ontarian descent too? Are you in Quebec now, or did you just take a ton of French in University?

Anyway, if I remember then I'll get back to you on the pronunciation thing. I'm sure that that's how it should be...

[fsquared]

This sort of question often has no right answer. If you ask a native English speaker if "cot" and "caught" are pronounced the same, a Midwesterner and a New Yorker will give you different answers; similarly with "aunt" and "ant".
A general overview is available on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French%5Fpronunciation

[CFHollister]

Originally Posted by fsquared

This sort of question often has no right answer. If you ask a native English speaker if "cot" and "caught" are pronounced the same, a Midwesterner and a New Yorker will give you different answers; similarly with "aunt" and "ant".
A general overview is available on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French%5Fpronunciation

Good point. there are certain vowel sounds in english that are used only certain directs. If i could type in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) I might be able to better illustrate; but fsquared's examples are valid, if you are familiar with the differences in dialect.

PS: I'm happy to see that my pronunciation lessons are still able to generate some conversation.

[Cooney]

If you hunt through the character map, you can actually find a lot of the IPA symbols there. I flabbergasted my acting coach once by turning in a paper where all the IPA pronunciations were properly typed out, with nothing hand added :-P The forums don't, however, have the cursive font installed that makes most of them possible :-(

[fsquared]

Originally Posted by espire

In common spoken French, I wouldn't doubt it, but I know that for a fact, there should be a difference. At least there used to be one, long ago. In Ontario, we're still being taught archaic French, I guess

These sorts of things like "there should be a difference" or "there used to be a difference" can be very influential in prescriptive specifications of languages (as opposed to descriptions of how people actually talk). A very interesting example of this arose in the first attempt at standardizing modern spoken Chinese (before Putonghua). There was this so-called fifth tone that had existed historically but was no longer actually used, but apparently for historical fidelity, the standardizers decided that it just had to be put in. Thus, they standardized a language with a set of records recorded by the linguist Yuen Ren Chao, but since it didn't correspond to any actual dialect, there wasn't anyone who could really teach it (the joke was that Chao was the only speaker of this language).
They had to scrap the whole thing and start over (and that's when they generated Putonghua).

[US_lili_lover]

Thanks for the lessons. I'm trying to learn french and this is helping.

[CFHollister]

Originally Posted by US_lili_lover

Thanks for the lessons. I'm trying to learn french and this is helping.

Glad I could help. Welcome to the site