The rhythm of spoken French resembles a string of pearls or the beads of a rosary, wrote the phonetician Pierre Delattre:
L’égalité syllabique a fait comparer le rythme du français aux perles d’un collier, au grain d’un chapelet, aux battements du coeur. Bien qu’il soit un peu saccadé, ce rythme n’est ni dur (les syllabes sont croisssantes, elles commencent, doucement), ni lourd (grâce à la tension et au vocalisme). Il est à la fois saccadé et doux, clair et lié.
Principes de phonétique française à l’usage des étudiants anglo-américains,
Pierre Delattre, (Middlebury College, 1951)
In English we swallow unaccented syllables, we stretch vowels whenever we want to add emphasis. We merge vowels together to create diphthongs, either within words or across adjacent ones. (A diphthong is when your lips change place during the articulation of the sound: you can try it by saying out loud words such as “bay, buy, or boy”).
In French there’s none of that. The unit of spoken French is the vowel, not the word: each vowel sound has its own space like a pearl on a string and when you listen out for it you’ll hear the beat. There are no diphthongs or vowel merges. Consonants often but not always mark the time and there’s neither pause nor fusion between words within the same rhythmic group. Liaisons (between the final consonant of a word and a following vowel in the same word group) are important precisely because they help maintain that steady rhythm. So difficult it is to hear the gap between words that French children – before they learn to read – often believe that words beginning with a vowel start with the letter “n” (un navion instead of un avion).
You can see the difference visually by looking at the waveforms the different languages generate. Below are the words nation / nationalité in French and nation / nationality in English. The peaks are the vowel sounds. In French you can see the peaks are more or less equal throughout. The suffix -alité does not change the pronunciation of the root word nation. In English the stress varies more markedly. There’s strong emphasis on the first syllable of the word nation, which fades rapidly away at the end. The suffix -ality shifts the stress to the syllable –al, shortening the a sound in nation.
Each French sentence is broken up into manageable rhythmic groups – a series of strings. The groups can be marked by commas or conjunctions or by grammatical function. It’s only at the end of each group, in general, that the final vowel is lengthened and there is a pause between words. This separation helps the listener understand more easily and it gives the speaker time to breathe.
Articulating French vowels
Being able to emulate this steady rhythm of distinct vowel sounds is therefore a key to achieving good French pronunciation. And being able to do that requires working on the sounds themselves.
The International Phonetic Alphabet was established to help provide a way of identifying sounds without referring to how they are spelt. Knowing the IPA itself isn’t really necessary to learn French – but it’s useful as a reference point.
Typically vowel sounds are presented on a trapezium. The vertical axis represents how open the passage of air is from the lungs to the lips (open at the top closed at the bottom). The horizontal axis represents how forward the position of the tongue is in the mouth (forward to the left, back to the right). Additional variables are the shape of the lips (smiling, rounded or slack) and whether or not nasal cavity is used to echo the sound produced. This what the IPA trapezium looks like in French:
The majority of these sounds do not exist in English, so learning French vowel sounds involves experimenting with mouth and tongue positions that feel unusual at first. Practice moving from one position to another by using the guide below.
SYMBOL: i
Shape of mouth: Smiling
Width of opening: Tight-lipped
Tongue Position: Forward
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: imiter – le rire – c’est fini
SYMBOL: y
Shape of mouth: Pursed
Width of opening: Tight-lipped
Tongue Position: Forward
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: utiliser – unique
SYMBOL: u
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Tight-lipped
Tongue Position: Mid to back
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: où allez-vous?
SYMBOL: e
Shape of mouth: Smiling
Width of opening: Slight
Tongue Position: Forward
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: écouter chanter
SYMBOL: ø
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Slight
Tongue Position: Mid
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: je veux – il est vieux
SYMBOL: o
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Slight
Tongue Position: Back
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: l’eau – c’est beau
SYMBOL: ε
Shape of mouth: Smiling
Width of opening: Open
Tongue Position: Mid
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: le père
SYMBOL: œ
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Open
Tongue Position: Mid
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: une oeuvre – la soeur – des oeufs
SYMBOL: ɔ
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Open
Tongue Position: Back
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: bonne – un bol
SYMBOL: a
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Wide open
Tongue Position: Mid
Nasal Cavity: Closed
Examples: la cave – ma carte
SYMBOL: ɛ̃
Shape of mouth: Smiling
Width of opening: Slight
Tongue Position: Back
Nasal Cavity: Open
Examples: imbattable – le vin – un gamin
SYMBOL: ɑ̃
Shape of mouth: Round
Width of opening: Open
Tongue Position: Back
Nasal Cavity: Open
Examples: ancien – les vacances – pendant
SYMBOL: ɔ̃
Shape of mouth: Pursed
Width of opening: Slight
Tongue Position: Back
Nasal Cavity: Open
Examples: on – mon garçon – ma montre
