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Beginner French pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| squelchy451 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5013 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English, Korean*, Spanish | Message 1 of 4 14 July 2012 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi. I am currently 20 and I've decided to learn French. I've learned Spanish for 3-4 years in high school and I've been reviewing grammar, watching videos with subtitles, expanding my vocab through Anki.
I thought that it would be a good idea to learn a new language since it's better to start when you're young. Anyway, I've downloaded FSI French and it's been a week now. My main concern is getting the pronunciation down. With Spanish, it was easy since I had a class every day and pronunciation is fairly simple for Spanish, whereas French is full of nasal vowels and that pesky uvular R. Learning the vocab and grammar's easy but how can I make sure that I'm pronouncing everything correctly? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5569 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 4 14 July 2012 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found the old FSI phonology course (free at the link) to be very helpful in getting
the nasal sounds - and worth doing before the full FSI course: http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=French%20Ph onology The videos from this lady on YouTube are also helpful practice: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=BsErE00ItH0&context=C433d31aADvjVQa1PpcFP5LimHm36zoeBPOmZm ELBLuLHxYn933Hs= 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5277 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 3 of 4 14 July 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
The less phonetic a language is, the less you can rely on pronouncing words based on their component letters. Take English, for example. With languages like this, for the basic core vocabulary that is most susceptible to phonetic irregularity, you just have to memorize what the word looks like (e.g. same as memorizing a Chinese character) and then memorize the pronunciation. I recommend an audio course like Assimil where you can carefully listen and re-listen to the way common words are pronounced, how everything melds together in fast speech, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| squelchy451 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5013 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English, Korean*, Spanish | Message 4 of 4 14 July 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Elexi The FSI course looks good. I think it'll be helpful. Much obliged.
@Merv I'll start listening to Assimil when I go running or during my commutes. I think what you're saying makes sense, as that's what I did when I learned English, listening to a lot of movies, tapes, etc since there is so much phonetic irregularity. With French, I think it's that the basic sounds are a lot harder to grasp than English (even though a lot of sounds in English aren't produced in my native language) than phonetic irregularity. At least that's my main difficulty with French pronunciation, just the basic sounds rather than the phonetic irregularity. Thanks for your help! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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