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French verb pronunciation | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1 of 21 28 August 2011 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have recently started learning French. I have listened to a couple episodes of the verbcast, and it raised a question about proununciation.
The first verb covered was "parler". I understand that the singular forms--parle, parles, and parle-- are all pronounced the same. The podcast later says that the ending of the 3rd person plural form, parlent, is silent. Here are the questions. The way it's said on the verbcast, parlent sounds the same as the three singular forms. It sounds like the "e" of the "ent" is pronounced, not like the ending is silent. Is it the same sound as the singular forms? Is it actually silent? Or is there a sound because you can't simply say "parl" with a purely silent ending? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4854 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 21 28 August 2011 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
the sound is the same for all except of nous parlons and vous parlez. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 21 29 August 2011 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Indeed. Exactly the same. Il parle and Ils parlent also sound the same. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7132 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 4 of 21 29 August 2011 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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According to my review book (AP French Language): "to the ear, there are only three
present tense ending sounds for all verbs in the -er group. The je, tu, il and ils forms all end in the same sound." While I'm at it, I'll just copy out the comments for the remaining verb groups. For -ir verbs: "The je, tu, and il forms all sound alike. The double ss of the ils form is distinctly pronounced as the FINAL sound of the verb." For the -re verbs, the author again states "it is always wrong to attribute a sound to the -ent ending" of present indicative verbs. I hope this helps. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| therumsgone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6537 days ago 93 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 21 30 August 2011 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As the others have said, they all sound the same. It really threw me for a loop when I first encountered it, coming
from Spanish where everything is phonetic. But once you realize that the reason why the pronouns (je, tu, il/elle/on, nous, vous, ils/elles) are obligatory is that the verbs are ambiguous without them, it starts to make more sense.
I get what you're saying here, there is a touch of an "e" sound at the end, but that seems to come by necessity when saying "parl" (I'm not great with phonetics, so anyone else can go ahead and elaborate here). If the "e" of "ent" wasn't silent, the word would sound exactly like the infinitive/vous form (/paʁle/, or par-lay if you don't know IPA). Hope that helps! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dr. POW Groupie Canada Joined 4965 days ago 48 posts - 58 votes Studies: German, English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 21 01 September 2011 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm just wondering, but are these words pronounced differently? I've always heard
"ait", "ez" and the infinitive ending "er" as the same sound. parler parlez parlait These four all sound exactly the same to me. parlerai parlerais As for these two, my French teacher told me that "ai" sounds like may, and "ait sounds like met, but when I listen to audio, I don't hear this distinction. Would the distinction be important in speech? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 21 01 September 2011 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
In Canada, parler and parlez sound the same and rhyme with parlerai, whereas parlait and parlerais rhyme with eachother. This is also true in Standard French, however, in some European dialects, there is a tendency for the é/è distinction to disappear in word-final position (>é). This causes, for instance, parlerai/parlerais to often be misspelled, something that is a lot less common in Canada because the distinction is maintained. Edited by Arekkusu on 01 September 2011 at 8:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 21 01 September 2011 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry, but I don't get this. There are three words in the first section, and neither of the next two ends in "ait". Am I missing something? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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