The "e"

Bonjour tout le monde !

I am a student participating in a year abroad program in Paris. I am staying with a host family, taking a few classes with both my host program and at the Université Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, and interacting with locals on a daily basis. I arrived a week and a half ago, so I have been in Paris long enough to gage the obstacles that are interfering with making the most out of my cultural immersion. It has been evident from the very start of my stay in France that the biggest obstacle in communication is French pronunciation.

I studied French to a very high level, as required by Tufts University in order to participate in their program, Tufts-in-Paris. I did all the readings, wrote papers, improved my listening comprehension, did oral presentations, and even participated in discussions in class. The professors corrected the students' pronounciation when they spoke, and deducted points as well, but the why's and how's of the French phonological system were never quite explained. It seems as if linguistics and language instruction are kept separate in the classroom. I know that language students are supposed to naturally begin discerning the sounds as they listen and practice their chosen foreign language, but college students are past the critical learning period where they can, as infants, pick apart familiar sounds from new sounds with incredulous ability. A lot of what we can do now, especially if the phonological system of your target language is similar to your own, is take the new sounds you hear and refer back to the sounds you already know.

An example would be the French word "crêpe" [kʁɛp] being pronounced "creip," [ˈkreɪp] with a subtle, non-guttral r and a vowel diphthong, in the United States by most people I know.

Perhaps in the classroom, pronouncing every word like a French native wasn't too important. Many students would never go on to use their college foreign languages for much else outside of academics. But when I arrived in Paris, I realized that, while my ability to read, write, and listen to a conversation in French were helpful and fine, pronunciation played a big part in my cultural immersion experience. Especially when pronunciation changes the meaning of what you are expressing. It is nice to know enough vocabulary and grammar to theoretically be able to communicate with a fluent francophone, but when you are not aware of the minimal pairs in the phonological system of the language you are speaking, it can be a problem.

Example of an important minimal pair in French:

poisson [pwasɔ̃] poison [pwazɔ̃]

fish poison

I learned the importance of the s and z minimal pairs by making the mistake of talking about consuming poison instead of fish. Thankfully, I got that mistake out of the way before coming to France, while volunteering at the Alliance Française in Boston. Despite the famous stereotype of French people of always uttering the "z" sound instead of s, if the s has a consonant on either side, it is pronounced as an s, not a z.

We will look at more minimal pairs coming up, in the "e" sound. In each blog post I will examine a new sound in French and its minimal pairs. I will provide some examples and hopefully as you continue to listen to French you will pick up the minimal pairs yourself in the words you hear. In this blog I will also provide progress updates on how my own French pronunciation is coming along in my year of French language immersion. Will my accent ever improve enough that I could be mistaken for a French person once in a while?

Before reading on, take a look at this IPA chart of the sounds in the French language:

French consonants:

French Vowels:

Now find the french consonants and vowels in this interactive International Phonetic Alphabet chart and practice listening and repeating!

The vowel "e"

The "e" sound is a very important and volatile vowel. Often, when left unaccented and with a consonant on both sides, the e isn't even pronounced. (petit--> p'tit)

The major minimal pair we will begin with is [e] and [ɛ].

As you can hear in the website here, these two sounds make a world of difference in their distinct pronunciations. These sounds do not make any difference in English, so you really need to train your ear to distinguish them in French and train your jaw and mouth to differentiate them orally, if only subtly.

For the sound [e], keep your tongue rigid and flat, and your mouth halfway-closed with your lips rather firm and pulled back, like you're forcing a smile. If the [e] sound is found anywhere other than the last syllable of a word, it should be marked orthographically with an accent: é.

For [ɛ] think of a more feathery, light sound. As of a few days ago, I pronounced the last syllable "parfait" with [e], making it end harshly (and probably sound incomprehensible at times). But a word ending in [ɛ] flows and fades away, never quite closing off, with the mouth held a bit more open and the lips and tongue less tense and rigid. C'est parfait !

This differentiation can make the difference between saying "I" (Je, [ʒə]) and "I have" (J'ai, [ʒé]), so it can add a whole new word to your french sentence. It can specify an infinitive -er verb and it can make the differentiation between conditional (-ais, -ait, -aient) and future tense (-ai).

Also remember to adopt these new sounds when you say english-derived words like "o.k." so you sound more natural. French people do not do the diphthong (ay) sound but will use a single vowel sound like [e].

Again, look over the IPA charts above, and read over and listen to the audio clips in the language guide website.

Thank you for reading and 'til next time!