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Paires minimales?
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Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages

Heriotza
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Dominican Republic
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Message 1 of 3

27 August 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged

I have searched the entire web for recording of minimal pairs contrasting the french vowels /e/ /ɛ/ /ə/ and have found nothing. There are other kind of materials explaining how these three sounds are produced, which is useful, but not what I looking for.

Can anyone of you tell me where I can find something like this? Thank you.

Edited by Heriotza on 27 August 2012 at 10:02pm
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emk
Diglot
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United States
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Speaks: English*, French^B2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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Message 2 of 3

27 August 2012 at 11:20pm | IP Logged

Heriotza wrote:

I have searched the entire web for recording of minimal pairs
contrasting the french vowels /e/ /ɛ/ /ə/ and have found nothing. There are other kind
of materials explaining how these three sounds are produced, which is useful, but not
what I looking for.

Can anyone of you tell me where I can find something like this? Thank you.

You may have a hard time finding minimal pairs for these vowels. See the "Vowels"
section of the following Wikipedia article:

French Phonology

The sounds /e/ and /ɛ/ rarely appear in minimal pairs:

Quote:

While the mid vowels contrast in certain environments, there is limited
distributional overlap so that they often appear in complementary distribution.
Generally speaking, close-mid vowels are found in open syllables, while open-mid vowels
are found in closed syllables. Minimal pairs can, however, still be found:[16]

- open-mid /ɛ/ and close-mid /e/ contrast in final-position open syllables, e.g.:
allait [alɛ] ('was going'), vs. allé [ale] ('gone');

Note that the disctinction between allé and allait has disappeared in
many regions of France, so this minimal pair has ceased to exist, and the distinction
between these vowels is purely distributional in those regions.

The only thing which reliably distinguishes the schwa from [œ], on the other hand, is
the fact that it's sometimes silent:

Quote:

When phonetically realized, schwa (/ə/), also called "e caduc" ('dropped e') and
"e muet" ('mute e'), is a mid-central vowel with some rounding.[16] Many authors
consider it to be phonetically identical to [œ]…

The main characteristic of French schwa is its "instability" — i.e., the fact that
under certain conditions it has no phonetic realization.

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Iversen
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berejst.dk
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Message 3 of 3

28 August 2012 at 11:04am | IP Logged

des - dais (and dès) - de
...and - deux - du - do - da and their nasal companions.

But as emk mentions some of these oppositions are neutralized by certain speakers (and yes, the word "da" exists according to Littré, but it is a "mot rare et précieux")

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