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Recognizing liasons in French?

  Tags: Phonetics | French
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center Post Reply
Tyrion101
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3903 days ago

153 posts - 174 votes 
Speaks: French

 
 Message 1 of 4
04 November 2014 at 3:10am | IP Logged 
One of my last hurdles in my listening time with the French language is apparently getting used to the idea of liaisons, and recognizing them. I can recognize simple ones such as un homme. However when it comes to the more complicated ones like: Merci d'etre avec nous. I knew what it meant long before I realized that it was a liaison, it is said something akin to: Merci de travec nous. Which to someone who is not used to listening for this sort of thing doesn't make much sense. So, is there any advice those of you who are more advanced than myself to help me become better at this? Will it simply come with time?
1 person has voted this message useful



Sizen
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4329 days ago

165 posts - 347 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German

 
 Message 2 of 4
04 November 2014 at 7:34am | IP Logged 
I think that you will eventually get the hang of liaisons if you continue to work on
your French (with a healthy dose of audio material) and make an effort to notice when
liaisons happen. However, if you're really having troubles with this right now and
feel like it's a major hurdle that's impeding your progress, some exercises might be
in order.

If you haven't already, read up on the rules of liaison and the difference between
that and regular enchaînement. (A quick search and I found
this.) Then,
grab yourself some intelligible audio sources (songs, assimil, pimsleur, whatever you
have) and do whatever you can to get yourself to focus on the liaisons: transcribe the
audio and mark the liaisons in some way, look at the original text and predict where
you expect to see liaisons, repeat the liaisons that you hear out loud, etc. If
possible, get the opinion of a native speaker to see if your home-brew exercises have
any mistakes and to make sure you're correctly pronouncing the liaisons.

Other than that, keep on trucking and you'll get there! Some aspects of the languages
we learn seem so odd early on but become second nature down the road.
1 person has voted this message useful



chiara-sai
Triglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 3698 days ago

54 posts - 146 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: German, Japanese

 
 Message 3 of 4
04 November 2014 at 9:30am | IP Logged 
Tyrion101 wrote:
One of my last hurdles in my listening time with the French language is apparently getting
used to the idea of liaisons, and recognizing them. I can recognize simple ones such as un homme. However
when it comes to the more complicated ones like: Merci d'etre avec nous. I knew what it meant long before I
realized that it was a liaison, it is said something akin to: Merci de travec nous. Which to someone who is not
used to listening for this sort of thing doesn't make much sense. So, is there any advice those of you who are
more advanced than myself to help me become better at this? Will it simply come with time?


As far as I know liaison is when a consonant that is normally “suppressed” gets pronounced, for example
nous avons avu is pronounced [nu.za.vɔ̃.za.vy] (nou zavon zavu] instead of [nu.avɔ̃.avy] (nou avõ avu).
Therefore I’m not sure the pronunciation of “merci d’etre avec nous” contains any liaison.
Wikipedia has a good article on which consonants
give rise to liaison and in which contexts it’s obligatory, possible or illegal.
1 person has voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5371 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 4 of 4
04 November 2014 at 4:41pm | IP Logged 
By default, all consonants are mapped to begin the following syllable rather than to end the previous, unless there is a pause. (Onset principle)


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