Talk:French phonology/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Semivowels

Are there any cases of vowel/semivowel contrast that do not rely on either ʎ→j or the supposed /wa ɥi/? It doesn't say, but I'm reading between the lines that this is one of the reasons these are considered difthongs while other combinations aren't. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Good question. I can't think of any that don't depend on syllable boundaries or geminate consonants. Something like qu'il l'y aie mis /kil.li.ɛ.mi/ "that he may have put it there" vs. Il liait /il.ljɛ/ "he tied/linked". What do you think of that? Pronunciation might vary among native speakers. Any of you native francophones have an opinion on it? Moxfyre (ǝɹʎℲxoɯ | contrib) 16:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

/wa ɥi/ are considered diphthongs rather than combinations of a semivowel and vowel because they can occur after consonant clusters. Other sequences can't.

According to Chitoran (2002 cited in the article), other instances of glides comes from a glide formation process that is blocked if the syllable onset contains more than one segment. Here are the examples she gives:

• lier ('to bind') [lje ~ lije]. Oxf: /lje/
• fiacre ('carriage') [fjakʁ ~ fijakʁ]. Oxf: /fjakʀ/
• nouer ('to tie') [nwe ~ nue]. Oxf: /nwe/
• plier ('to fold') [plije]. Oxf: /plije/
• clouer ('to nail down') [klue]. Oxf: /klue/

I've included the phonemic transcriptions of Standard French from my Oxford English/French dictionary. Note also the relationship between the word pairs in clou [klu]/clouer [klue] and impie [ɛ̃pi] ('impious')/impiété [ɛ̃pjete] ('impiousness'). The latter demonstrates an example of change upon suffixation, one of the stronger indications of allophony. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:20, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Loua can be pronounced either [lua] or [lwa], while for loi only [lwa] is possible. In general, oi can never be pronounced [ua]. For plier- and clouer-type words, there are restrictions on having a semi-consonant after certain initial clusters. Another example might be trier. 216.239.65.134 (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Info on VOT of stops

I read somewhere that the French voiced plosives are fully voiced- hence the symbols /b/ /d/ and /g/- as opposed to the English "voiced" plosives which are often only unaspirated. In other words, French voiced plosives have a negative Voice Onset Time(VOT). Can somebody add something about this? Marquetry28 (talk) 08:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I've heard somewhere that they may be so negatively voiced that there's actually some prenasalization. There's gotta be something out there that says something. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:52, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Vowel length table

The changes made to the vowel length table in October 2009 have too many mistakes in them to count. For example, pende ends in a d, which is not a lengthening consonant.216.239.65.134 (talk) 18:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Correct, but it does lengthen nasal vowels. The columns of the table were broken (now fixed), but I didn't notice any mistakes. CapnPrep (talk) 04:15, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not the d that lengthens the nasal vowels. Nasal vowels are intrinsically long, and so are long in any closed stressed syllable.

All right, I may have overstated the case, since I still had just seen the post-October 2009 version when I wrote that, and many mistakes have since been corrected.

Here are some mistakes still in the table:

• Faible is pronounced with a short vowel, and bl is not a lengthening consonant cluster. A better example would be lève.
• The transcription of Fais-le as [fɛˈlø] is debatable. It's not what dictionaries use, and many speakers do have a central vowel, rounded or not. I think [fɛˈlø] could be described as characteristic of advanced European speakers. 216.239.65.115 (talk) 18:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Some speakers apparently have an underlying long /ɛː/ in faible, but you're right, it's a bad example, and I replaced it with faire. You are also right that there is variation for stressed le, and if you have sources for this, please contribute to the section on Schwa and then we can update the table. CapnPrep (talk) 19:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

As for faible, I didn't know that, but you're correct. Littré gives only a short e. But here's what the TLFI says:

• Prononc. et Orth. : [fɛbl̥] Durée longue de la voyelle ds PASSY 1914; ,,long, mais un peu moins que la durée la plus longue`` (GRAMMONT Prononc. 1958, p. 38). Ds Ac. dep. 1835. La var. foible, dont l'anc. prononc. est, dans la transcr. de LITTRÉ, fouèble, se maintient jusque ds Ac. 1878.

As for Fais-le, both the TLFI and the Petit Robert give [ə] for le, so it's certainly not incorrect to transcribe it that way. I'd say those are reasonable sources for the transcription of le in the table. If it's pointed out in the "schwa" section that this is the general practice in dictionaries, then changing it in the table oughtn't to be confusing. 216.239.65.18 (talk) 01:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that humble and teindre don't end in lengthening consonant clusters either. Also, it would be best to replace rat with a word that ends in /a/ both in Europe and in Canada, such as la. Thanks to Lesgles for fixing the /a/ row, although topaze was fine, as /ɑ/ doesn't occur in that word (one of the rare words with /az/ rather than /ɑz/). 216.239.65.150 (talk) 09:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I replaced humble and teindre (I guess grunge is OR, but it's either that or put nothing in that cell, as far as I can tell). And again, you are welcome to make changes to the article yourself. CapnPrep (talk) 16:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Phonotactics

Hey, why isn't there a phonotactics section? 70.33.118.34 (talk) 17:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

No reason. I guess nobody's bothered finding sources about French phonotactics. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:09, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Velar Nasal

The page says:

The velar nasal /ŋ/ is not a native phoneme of French

But it appears in words such as "langue" and "anglais," doesn't it? Mikydude (talk) 01:13, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

It does occur as an allophone of /n/ before /k/ or /g/, but not in those words as they are pronounced with a nasalized vowel. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Consonant Clusters

This page on French phonology really needs information on consonant clusters. Komitsuki (talk) 11:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

So we hear. Got any sources? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:38, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I heard that there is a "tiny schwa" inserted between two consonants in a consonant cluster. Like "le plateau" is really "le pəlateau" in surface form. Forgot the person who researched this. Komitsuki (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Intonation?

I'd like to see a section put in on intonation. The only thing I can find is that apparently the following passage (which I believe means "pitch" or "intonation" when it says "tone", which is morphological) was deleted in 2008:

Syllabic stress is also very light in French normal speech (much less than in English or other Romance languages), and frequently not distinctive phonologically; however, it is most often replaced phonetically by variation of tone, which also marks the punctuation. In normal affirmative or negative sentences, the first and the last word of the sentence use a lower tone that the rest of the sentence and is generally not stressed. In interrogative sentences, the stressed syllable of the first word gets a higher tone and the last word looses its stress and distinctive tone lower tone. In exclamative sentence like orders, or in strong affirmations, the stress is more marked on the verb and on important words, which get a higher tone. A higher tone is also applied to the stressed syllable of a word terminating each subordonnated phrase of the same sentence or at end of expressions, and to the adverbs marking the negation. In songs where tonality cannot be used the same way, the syllabic stress becomes more apparent.

with the reason given on this talk page as

(Excuse the spelling mistakes as the contributer is ESL) It seems to contradict the statement we already have that "Stress falls on the final syllable of a phrase unless that syllable has schwa as its vowel, in which case the penultimate vowel is stressed" which we haven't refined from the nuance we got from Anderson (1982). Is this element of tone backed up anywhere? — Ƶ§œš¹, 00:31, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

But if you use "pitch" and "intonation" instead of "tone", and if you get rid of the part about intonation "replac[ing]" stress, and if you delete the puzzling part about the last syllable losing its stress, I think the rest of the passage may be largely true. When I say (very non-natively!) a French declarative sentence, I keep the same pitch, with no stress, until the last full syllable, which I pronounce both with stress and with a falling pitch.

Could someone find a good source on this and put something into the article? Duoduoduo (talk) 17:11, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

That paragraph is pretty bad. AFAIK, stress is purely intonational and never lexically or grammatically contrastive, unless you count e muet. (But that's a different matter, I think: word-medial e muet is AFAIK distinguished from /ø/ about the same way as when final.) You can have contrastive intonation in French as in English, and modulate it for other discourse functions (c'est súper!), but failing that you do generally have prosodic-unit-final stress. I'm sure tons have been written on it. — kwami (talk) 06:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

and what about the diphthongs in French ?

How come the question is not adressed in the wovels section ? see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphtong ... stephane.jourdan gmail —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.234.218.194 (talk) 01:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a good article in the Journal of the IPA about Romanian and French in regards to Diphthongs (Chitoran, Ioana. "A perception-production study of Romanian diphthongs and glide-vowel sequences" vol 32.2). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:17, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

this paper is about Romanian, not French. S.J. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.234.218.194 (talk) 01:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

True. There was a little about diphthongs that I've added from it. We can still add more. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

As showed by CAO (1985)Phonologie et linéarité: réflexions critiques sur les postulats de la phonologie contemporaine Par Xuan Hao Cao,Xuân Hạo Cao, the minimal pair method is never able to distinguish phonemes in a complex phonemes situation, because by definition, you don't know beforehand the number of phonemes you have in your examples. Then the opposition of loua and loi is certainly good (you also have roua and roi...) but what does it mean ? Those who conclude that in the first case it's the vowel and in the second case the glide have forgottent that the glide was introduced only as a different prononciation of the same phoneme /u/. However, there can't be a phonemic opposition using the same phoneme! But consider there was an invisible premise here : that the two words have the same number of phonemes, which is not proven. Following the method of CAO, I have devised a phonological method(a blend of morphematic limits and minimal pairs)which can differentiate between complex vowels (i.e. diphtongs, triphtongs) and vowels/semivowels groups. This method is explained and tested in these two articles, soon to me moved to wordpress btw : http://knol.google.com/k/-/la-diphtongue-en-français/3dfvm2oyvur0n/2# — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.72.178.189 (talk) 04:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

A few years ago, I was present at a small talk where Daniel Silverman shared an alternate method of determining allophony. I'm not sure if he followed up on that with anything, but you might be interested. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 21:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

French r

Where in the Francophone world is the alveolar r (sort of like the Italian r) used? I have asked my French teacher in college about it, and even she can't answer that question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.242.125 (talk) 19:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Guttural r has a map that shows this. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to use that image here as well. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

In Quebec, there is an isogloss running northwest to southeast through Trois-Rivières separating the areas where you traditionally had an alveolar r from those where you have a uvular one. The effect is that in Quebec City, you only have the uvular r, and in Montreal the alveolar one was near universal into the 1950s. It was even considered more prestigious because of its use by clergy. This changed at lightning speed - perhaps in one generation - so that most young Montrealers now use a uvular r in most phonetic contexts. The change happened for various reasons, including migration from eastern Quebec as well as the influence of France, and its speed sets it apart from virtually all other recent changes in the pronunciation of Quebec French. A good source for this is the book by Tousignant and Ostiguy. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 09:54, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Which book is that? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:36, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• Luc Ostiguy, Claude Tousignant (1993). Le français québécois: normes et usages (in French). Montreal: Guérin Universitaire. ISBN 2-7601-3330-3. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 04:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

nasal vowels

I always heard /ɛ̃/ as being closer to [æ̃] and /ɔ̃/ as closer to [õ], but John Wells also says /ɑ̃/ is closer to [ɒ̃], whereas in our article we claim the distinction is rounding (though granted that [õ] is more rounded than [ɒ̃]). Should we say s.t. to this effect? — kwami (talk) 11:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice if we used more detailed investigations than we currently do. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I also sometimes hear [ɒ̃] for an. I've heard it a good deal in Swiss newscasts, and occasionally from younger French people. However, the change is not yet advanced enough to say that this is the main variant. Here is a humorous example taken from this book. It was recorded at a Parisian primary school in 1989:

- 10 year-old girl: Tu aurais pu mettre que les chevals (sic). Ils ont tous un nom.

- 9-year-old girl: C'est pas vrai! Ils ont pas tous un an!

Evidently, the second speaker had a rounded /ɑ̃/, and for /ɔ̃/ the first had more of a genuine [ɔ̃] than an advanced [õ], hence the misunderstanding. There are more examples like this in the same source. All that can really be said is that things are in flux (most of all for /ɑ̃/), so much so that misunderstandings occur between Parisians of the same generation. The book says that the social values ascribed to the newer variants are somewhat contradictory, being seen as prestigious by some and disliked by many others.

This source supports your assertion about [æ̃] and [õ] as it pertains to Paris. See also footnote 34, which acknowledges the shifts above (citing the same source) but says that they won't be discussed further since they're not advanced enough. It also characterizes the changes as threatening some distinctions, as illustrated by the foregoing example.

French: A Linguistic Introduction illustrates the chain shifts underway for nasal vowels in Parisian and in Canadian French, which are in opposite directions. There is also discussion of Southern Metropolitan French.

This book (which is intended for English-speakers learning the phonetics of what the authors call "North American French") gives the most widely used transcriptions for the nasal vowels of Canadian French: [ã], [ẽ], [œ̃] and [ɔ̃]. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 23:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

/ʎ/

The sole reference provided that states this sound still exists in some dialects is from 1968, which seems rather outdated. It is entirely possible that the remaining dialects have merged it with /j/ in the intervening years. Larousse's French-English/English-French Dictionary (revised edition), published only three years later in 1971, makes no mention of it in its guide. The Wikipedia article mouillé states that the merge occurred in the 18th century (!) (though that statement is uncited) so we have a certain inconsistency here. Interchangeable 22:01, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

That is indeed possible. Are there any dialect studies of French? That should resolve it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:59, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

We could even get input from User:Erutuon, who seems to be the one who added the bit about the 18th century. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 01:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Moreover I don't see the purpose of this article. It is just a French word for "a soft sound" and I can't imagine that it can be used outside of French context or in non-French texts. It's like having the article "Myagkiy".--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 01:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It's no doubt that this phoneme does not exist in Standard French at least for a century, this very comprehensive description mentions it as outdated, and retaining of it by some as pretentious and artificial. And this very good book states that the sound ceased to exist in Parisian (e.g. Standard) French in the early 18th century, but still it has existed recently in South French. Though anyway I think that it is (was?) non-standard and nothing else than Occitan substratum pronunciation. But why we should reflect this? If so then we should also mention trilled [r], and [ŋ] after nasals and some other features which (low-educated) South French (in fact Occitan) has. -Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that /ʎ/ doesn't need to be in the table, but the information in the note is appropriate for the article and verifiable (and trilled [r] is mentioned in the article, and I would be fine with mentioning "(low-educated) south French" nasal codas, too, although not exactly in those terms). An academic source like Schane (1968) is more reliable than a normative dictionary for information about dialectal pronunciation. I'll check exactly what he says when I have a chance. In the meantime, I've added a reference to Le Bon usage, and here's the source text:

Le français a connu, dans travailler, sillon, etc., un l mouillé, prononcé en appuyant le dos de la langue sur le palais. Il est devenu [j] en fr. moderne, malgré les efforts des grammairiens, et encore de Littré, pour maintenir l’ancienne prononciation. Celle-ci existe encore dans le Midi, en Lorraine et en Wallonie (où on a plutôt [lj] qu’un véritable l mouillé).

By the way, I think Mouillé should be deleted (i.e. redirected to Palatal consonant). CapnPrep (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Are we thinking simultaneously? ;) I've just tried to say the same about this article. ;)--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 01:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I support not putting it into the table, but explaining its past in the note as proposed by CapnPrep. Does anyone else agree? Interchangeable 14:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that works. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

About "Glides and diphthongs"

The article section "Glides and diphthongs" states:

The glides [j], [w], and [ɥ] appear in syllable onsets, immediately followed by a full vowel. In many cases they alternate systematically with their vowel counterparts [i], [u], and [y], for example in the following pairs of verb forms:

nie [ni]; nier [nje] ('deny')

loue [lu]; louer [lwe] ('rent')

tue [ty]; tuer [tɥe] ('kill')

— French_phonology#Glides_and_diphthongs

However, common prononciation of the verbal forms are as follows:

nier [nje] or [nije]

louer [lue]

tuer [tue]

and I have never heard the stated prononciations for <louer> and <tuer> in european variants of french. Hum...

More generally, most assertions in this section sound to me weird, to the least...

--denis "spir" (talk) 15:47, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

You may be more familiar with variant pronunciations, but dictionaries give the versions with a glide as standard. See the TLFi, for example: nier, louer, tuer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CapnPrep (talk • contribs) 11:57, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Phonemic vs. phonetic length

Another quick question: is there any difference between /ɛː/, and the [ɛː] allophone of /ɛ/? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

In Canada, yes. This opposition only ever occurs in [ɛːv] words. For example, rêve and grève don't rhyme. That's why in the phonemic transcription used by the Franqus dictionary, grève has a short [ɛ]. In France, I suspect it's the same for people who make the /ɛː/ vs. /ɛ/ distinction at all. 216.239.65.134 (talk) 18:36, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Mettre and maître don't rhyme. Fête (talk) 00:21, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Single quotes

Aeusoes1 reverted a disambiguation I made, conflicting apostrophes with quotes. Why glosses are quoted with single quotes? I even referred to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation marks which states that we should use the double quotes and they are not only more preferable, they are also less ambiguous. For example:

She wrote that 'Cleanthes' differs from the others', but neither opinion may represent Hume's'; ...

She wrote that "Cleanthes' differs from the others', but neither opinion may represent Hume's"; ...

Which is clearer? The French phonology article has a sentence perfectly similar which was blindly reverted to:

'It's perfectly true.'

--Mahmudmasri (talk) 06:28, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I was referring to things like

The glide [j] can also occur in syllable coda position, after a vowel, as in soleil [sɔlɛj] ('sun')

In these cases, where a foreign word or phrase is being translated in parenthetical gloss format, it is common practice to use single quotes. I apologize if I also reverted instances of attribution; you are correct that double quotes are what we're supposed to do.

MOS:QUOTE doesn't seem to cover the issue, though it may need to. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:26, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Voiceless/whispered vowels

No mention in the article is made to this phenomenon which is very often heard with high vowels in absolute auslaut. -- Evertype·✆ 09:41, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

the vowel a

I added a paragraph for this and made corrections in the tables but I don't know how to do it for the chart. Wrongly transcribing the a is a serious error and omiiting the symbol for the a as in cat from the chart is, too. If you doubt this you just have to listen to francophones talk. I am francophone myself and a linguistics student and language buff.--Bpell (talk) 19:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This is your own impression, and OR is a serious error for Wikipedia editors. Your edits contradicted the information in the sources already appropriately cited in the article, without providing any new sources, so I reverted them. CapnPrep (talk) 20:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

There is only 1 source cited for this, Fougeron and Smith, and it is only 4 pp. from a magazine. I listened to the You Tube demonstration and the à is pronounced wrong and so is ami as they are both a as in cat; the others are pronounced correctly. I couldn't listen to the other 1 as I don't have MP3 and the other was "web page could not be displayed." This is not my impression as I am a native speaker and live in a French community where we are constantly exposed to the pronunciations that I elucidated in my paragraph from people we speak with as well as the French media. We can give endless examples but just to cite 3 on You Tube there's Marc Trudel avec André Arthur, for Quebec French, where we clearly hear magie, masqué, façon, caméra, évasion, classique, atelier, communication, maneuvre, etc., all with the a as in cat except for the 2nd a in caméra as it is final. For European French there are Sarkozy Face à la crise in 10 parts and the song Sacré Charlemagne.--Bpell (talk) 03:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime I also found the u-picardie-Francais: Phonétique, Phonologie, et Prononciation; under French Pronunciation there is Vowel Sounds 1 and 2 where we can clearly hear the ash, as it is called, the a as in cat, in several words but notice in one section it says the letter a is pronounced (a) but the sounds we hear are clearly ashes as is the case for the 1st e of femme yet it is said to be (a) also. You can check the distinction in audio demonstrations between the (a) and the ash at uvic-IPA under Public IPA Chart. --Bpell (talk) 09:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

One source trumps no source. It may be relevant to repeat the gist of my comment on your talkpage here - namely, IPA [a] and [æ], both being front vowels, are quite similar. ([æ] is officially a little higher, depending a little on the definition of "higher" tho.) You might be familiar with a variant of English where /æ/ is pronounced [a] (rather than a variant of French where /a/ is pronounced [æ]). The "mispronounced" /a/ you're hearing may be the corresponding central vowel [ä].

We cannot use your "speaker intuition", nor your own analysis of a sound file; it's possible you're right, but you'll need to find a sorce that actually uses the description [æ]. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You are still doing OR here (as Tropylium just pointed out). If you look around I'm sure you will find some other "magazine" articles that explicitly discuss the different phonetic realizations of French /a/ (I agree that it can have the quality of [æ] for some speakers in some environments, but I do not agree with your claim that this is the basic, correct pronunciation). Only then can you add the information to the article. CapnPrep (talk) 12:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

While cardinal [a] is front, the vowel chart shows French /a/ to be more central. Maybe there's variation, but no matter what, even bilingual English-French speakers aren't necessarily prompted to hear the differences between [æ] and [a], which is why sources are important. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

There is no mistaking the sounds in most instances especially in -al, -ac, -ation, ac-, av-, etc. And I was forgetting my Larousse Dictionnaire Français-Anglais Anglais-Français from '70; the principal editor is Marguerite-Marie Dubois, doctor of letters at the Sorbonne. It cites the sounds for a and includes the ash sound (but transcribing it as à, not using the IPA) giving the English example "can" saying the French is shorter, giving the example "canne"(meaning cane), which is exactly right. This cannot be confused with (a). Throughout, the ash sound is properly transcribed.--Bpell (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that you are confused. If you're going to stubbornly insist that you're right despite what experts say, you will not get far at Wikipedia. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

But Fr. canne does not (normally) have the same vowel as Eng. can. E.g. when people say the "Can Film Festival", the problem is not that the vowel is too long. And here is a quote from Fagyal et al. (2006, p. 31) which may help explain your 1970 dictionary transcriptions: "Descendants of the Parisian aristocracy still pronounced /a/ reminiscent of /æ/, i.e. more fronted and raised than a central vowel in the early 1970s (Mettas 1979), and this tendency was also attested in the speech of middle-class Parisian speakers at that time (Lennig 1978)." I can provide the full references if you care to actually find and read them. CapnPrep (talk) 21:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're the 1 who's being stubborn and who is confused. The "experts" you refer to don't know what they're talking about. Who is the author of the article?--Bpell (talk) 22:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Easiest way to decide this issue is to refer to the section on French in the "Handbook of the International Phonetic Association", which has only /a/, not /æ/. −Woodstone (talk) 08:55, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

These experts may not "know what they're talking about," but they're published, scholarly, often peer reviewed, and credibile. That's our standard. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:45, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Here are two more quotations from sources already listed in the References section):

The low central vowel /a/ is produced between the front /æ/ of English that, bat, gnat and the back /ɑ/ of English father, farther. To give students an idea of what sound they are to produce for /a/ in French la, sa, sac, parc, plat, etc., make them isolate the sounds /æ/ and /ɑ/. Then make them go back and forth between these sounds so as to make them experience the front-back movement of the tongue and the degrees of opening of the mouth. Then explain that any sound they produce between these two extremes is an acceptable /a/. (Casagrande 1984, pp. 188–89)

Even though the front [a] (patte [pat] 'paw') resembles English [æ] (cat [kæt]) and even though the back [ɑ] (pâte [pɑt] 'dough') resembles English [ɑ] (father [fɑðər]), the two French vowels generally tend to be more central than the English vowels and thus closer to each other from both an articulatory and a perceptual point of view. It is, however, interesting to note that in some dialects, particularly in a (stigmatized) variety of Paris French, these two vowels tend to grow apart, [a] becoming more front and slightly less open ([æ]) and [ɑ] becoming rounded ([ɒ]); hence the following pronunciations, for example: Paris [pari] becomes [pæri], pas [pɑ] 'not' becomes [pɒ]. (Tranel 1987, p. 48)

CapnPrep (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Telling French people like me how French is pronounced when you don't even know French should be named as the Misplay of the Millenium. Saying that the a as in cat doesn't occur in French is like saying the Earth is flat. I since noticed another mistake in the article which is that the é, -er, -ez, the e of some other words, and the -ai of some words, which all have the sound of the i in pin, the IPA symbol for which, like the ash, is also missing from the chart, are transcribed as the a in rain, or aren't included at all in dictionaries because some are conjugations. Saying that the i as in pin doesn't occur in French is also like saying the Earth is flat. The Dictionnaire générale de la langue française by L.-A. Bélisle does not usually include the pronunciation but when it does these sounds are always transcribed properly and without the IPA. But these other mistakes, it can be safely predicted, you won't admit either. Also, there is a Wikipedia article which includes the correct phonetic transcription, with the IPA yet, for the French a as in cat, and it is not my article, I don't have articles on Wikipedia, and it wasn't my edit either. But I will not tell you what article because you will only change it. But I will not seek mediation because this will achieve nothing and will be a waste of time and effort, as you will always continue to argue and refuse to listen to reason. Wikipedia is supposed to be objective and accurate but your article is neither. I have discontinued my account, as much as that is possible with Wikipedia, I haven't read any postings since my last 1, nor have I read the 2nd 1 from you on my talk page, nor will I return to this page, and it will be good riddance.--Bpell 22:43, 13 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpell (talk • contribs)

I am a native Italian speaker, and while reading the article about Italian phonology, I learned many new things that I did not realize about the pronunciation of my language - either the standard pronunciation (as opposed to my own), or even my very own pronunciation.

You need to approach this sort of things with more humility. Being a native speaker doesn't somehow magically gift you with an improved sense of hearing when it pertains to comparing the sounds of one language (namely your own) with that of another. Actually, I have found it often makes it worse, because you are influenced by your language's spelling when trying to judge phonemes.

Also, the sound in french é, -er, -ez ([e], as far as I know) is quite definitely not the same sound as English "pin" ([ɪ]), although I don't believe French has the latter sound (and English only has the French sound in the form of diphthongs like the one in "rain", and only in some dialects), so I suspect it's quite possible for a French or English speaker to confuse the two.

LjL (talk) 22:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

The {IPA|/æ/}-pronunciation for <a> is really typical of a (bad) Parisian accent and is widely stigmatized even by the rest of the French people. Moreover, it is not common at all outside Paris. If we go on with that kind of stuff, then we should also mention in the article the shift of word-final schwas to {IPA|/ø/}, also a "parisianism", or the merger of <o> and <au> in southern France. The goal of the article is to provide a fair account of the standard French phonology to the reader who knows nothing about it. We cannot present all sort of regional or unproper pronunciation which will doubtlessly confuse the average reader. And, as as native speaker of Standard Belgian French -with almost no accent since people don't notice where I come from when I go to France-, I can tell that neither I nor anybody else here renders <a> as anything else than [a]. And I fully agree with LjL, you don't need to be a expert to know that -é -er -ez are definitely not the vowel in "pin", unless you speak an English accent that I have never heard of. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to look for a comprehensive study on what exactly is Standard French, so the matter is settled for good.109.128.140.130 (talk) 18:45, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

3 years later, here is a source detailing that it happens, but in Quebec French. http://www.ciral.ulaval.ca/phonetique/phono/r9.htm Badbromance (talk) 02:10, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

IPA French Phonology Chart

I think the consonant chart could benefit from an expansion. I have seen other phonology charts (an easy example being for English) that have a larger amount of categories which could help give a more specific description of what sounds the consonants make. Furthermore, I've seen many of those consonant sounds before, and some of them would fall into different categories than others; that chart fails to make those distinctions. Also, "IPA Chart French Phonology" doesn't seem to flow as well as "IPA French Phonology Chart." I could probably fix the chart myself, and I would be sure to check other places to ensure that the consonants went into the right category, but I thought I'd run it by some other people first. Frivolous Consultant (talk) 00:04, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

-I looked at the French version of this article and it seems to have just what I'd want. However, the notes that go along with it don't match up with the notes in the English version, and I'm not sure what to do about that. Frivolous Consultant (talk) 03:31, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Glaring omissions

Help:IPA for French lists /ɛː/ and says it mostly occurs in Belgian and Quebec French. This article has almost no information on this phoneme. This is a problem; a phonology article should have more information than an IPA help page. Is there anyone who has a source and could add information to this article? — Eru·tuon 04:02, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm too lazy to add this to the article (:P), but here are the sources:

- For Belgian French, see [1] and [2] (both found here.)

- For Quebec French, see [3], 6 (no preview available), 7 (especially pages 45-51) and maybe 8. I found the first three here. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 07:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, thanks. I might be too lazy too, but we'll see. ;-) — Eru·tuon 17:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Glottal stop

The sign [ʔ] is often used as a representation of the Germanic h, for example haut [ʔo]. Why is the glottal stop not in the consonant chart? I don't know about the details. Maybe there is no actual glottal stop, just a lack of liaison? Although I do think that a glottal stop is sometimes heard. --93.206.131.159 (talk) 00:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

It's not in the table because it is not a phoneme. Peter238 (talk) 22:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's the question. Since it hinders a general grammatical rule (liaison), it looks like a phoneme to me, provided it is an audible sound. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.142.107 (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Linguists have differed about whether it should be treated as a phoneme. But in any case, it should be mentioned in the article, referring to the Aspirated h main article — though unfortunately that article isn't very good, and needs work. --Macrakis (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Voiced palato-alveolar affricate sound

both of the Voiced palato-alveolar affricate and French_orthography mentioned to this rare French consonant. i think it should be mentioned in this article that /d͡ʒ/ sound exist in some words like "adjonction" [adʒɔ̃ksjɔ̃] and "jean" [dʒin] Cnevis (talk) 19:11, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Missing explicit info on the close vowels

This is a great article, but after reading it I still do not know for sure whether the close vowels have any allophones or not, because the article is silent about this. It would be nice if there was an explicit note about the high vowels in the vowel section.--HD86 (talk) 04:00, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Translation

This is a translation error (that may be intentional) Written: On a laissé la fenêtre ouverte. Meaning: "The window has been left open."

One may paraphrase the translation as "The window has been left open" as that is one usage, but a more correct translation is "One has left the window open." This is not just literal, but accurate, as the phrase would commonly be used to indicate "We have left the window open." "On" in French or One, is used often in place of "We". Doesn't really affect the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiredrabbit (talk • contribs) 06:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Close vowels

In Vowels, there are sections for Open Vowels and Mid Vowels but none for Close Vowels. This must surely be an oversight? RoachPeter (talk) 17:15, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

@RoachPeter: Not necessarily, apparently editors just haven't found them worthy of being discussed in a separate section until now. If we were to create that section, what would you write there? Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:40, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:Well, my initial reason for looking here was to see what was said about the trend to devoicing close vowels in French in final (pre-pausal) position. That, to me, is an interesting area. But the lack of a section on close vowels just generally looks unsystematic. There is, after all, a close vowel row in the vowel table. RoachPeter (talk) 19:53, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@RoachPeter: I'll try to do something about it (we can write about the [ɪ, ʏ, ʊ] allophones used in Quebec), but you'll have to add the information about devoicing yourself. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:08, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Done. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:29, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:Thanks, that looks good. I'll try to produce something on the devoicing issue. RoachPeter (talk) 15:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Fagyal et al. (2006:26–7) says pre-pausal /e, ɛ/ may also be devoiced in addition to the close vowels in Parisian French. Smith (2003), which Fagyal et al. cites, says even /a/ can be devoiced (though the fact this is not reflected in Fagyal et al. tells it might not be well supported). Torreira & Ernestus (2010) claims phrase-medial devoicing occurs in "European French" as well. Maybe devoicing deserves a dedicated section rather than an description in the Close vowels section. Nardog (talk) 19:22, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Added the section, though not sure if I've done a decent enough job. Nardog (talk) 21:26, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nardog: It looks good, though a corresponding section on word-final devoicing of consonants in Belgian French would be nice. Or at least let's make it into a note... unless you're not aware of appropriate sources that discuss it? Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:49, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

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Palatalized /k, ɡ/ in final positions

International Phonetic Alphabet § Usage has [pikʲ] for French pique. This confirms my impression, in that whenever I hear a French or Québécois person speak English, one of the most striking features is that they pronounce /k/ as not only unaspirated but (what I hear to be) palatalized [kʲ ~ c] even when not followed by /i/ or /j/, including preconsonantally and utterance-finally. This is the case when I hear French too, and these Forvo recordings for pique, piqué, pique-nique, etc. seem to confirm it as far as I can perceive. In que, it seems to vary between [k] and [kʲ] depending on speaker.

However, even in the most detailed accounts I could find on French velar palatalization (Jacobs & Berns 2013, Berns 2013a, Berns 2013b; though I did not have full access to the first), I couldn't find any mention of velar palatalization (or lack thereof) in final or preconsonantal positions. Is my perception correct in that /k, ɡ/ can be palatalized even in preconsonantal or utterance-final positions? Nardog (talk) 11:55, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Found a source that mentions the palatalization of /k/ in word-final positions: Detey et al. (2016:131, 415). They present what is apparently the traditional view, that the palatalization is a feature of working class, citing Léon (1993), which Fagyal, Kibbee & Jenkins (2006:42) also present, though in a more non-critical, matter-of-fact manner, citing Gadet (1992). Detey et al., however, also mention recent studies (Jamin, Trimaille & Gasquet-Cyrus 2006; Trimaille, Candea & Lehka-Lemarchand 2012) that argue it has more to do with the urban areas populated with immigrants. They also suggest it might be gender-based and characteristic of male speakers, while tentatively concluding that "the feature has conserved some of its working class flavour, even if it is currently spreading to larger spans of the urban population" because "the upper class speakers in our study do not palatalize /k/". Nardog (talk) 11:32, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Dropping the "e"

@Captain frakas: Re your observation that "it is quite clear that you do not know your subject": You are absolutely right. Speaking French, and listening to people speak French, for 45 years, three of them while living in Brussels, and having read extensively about all aspects of language, including phonology, over the last 40 years in no way suggests that I may know something about the subject.

Did you read all of my edit summary? You questioned my knowledge while leaving in place text in the article leading up to the example that makes exactly the point that I was conveying to you, and that the example was crafted to illustrate. While, despite my comments above, I can't claim to be a perfect source of insight into all details of French pronunciation and usage, the example, as it had appeared before you edited it, seemed quite unremarkable to me, and had the benefit of reflecting what the text was relating to us.

There is no sound represented in IPA by [(ɛ)]. If you meant [fɛ] rather than [f(ɛ)], then that would still be incorrect because the first syllable is never [fɛ]. The word, when uttered carefully, in full, in isolation, begins with [fə]—just as it shows in the previous line that begins "In isolation".

If your use of parentheses was meant to convey what you wrote in your edit summary that there may or may not be an [ɛ] (or, giving you the benefit of the doubt, [ə]), that "The normal pronunciation isn't to avoid pronouncing the "e" ... it can happen that the e isn't pronounced in fast informal speaking" then your conclusion that "it is a faulty pronunciation" is where your motivation falls apart.

Languages are spoken as they are spoken. Saying it's a "faulty pronunciation" is like saying even the most highly educated, refined French speakers are pronouncing "fenêtre" wrong because they're leaving out the "s" between the second "e" and the "t", using a uvular "r", and ending the word with such a weak vowel. (In case you aren't aware of the etymology and I've lost you, the most elevated French pronunciation of the word is still a just plain lazy stab at the proper pronunciation of the correct Latin word "fenestra"; and French is more generally a gross failure by a whole population to speak Latin properly. Which is comparable to the situation with nearly every language spoken today.)

This article is about the language as it's spoken, not as ivory-tower defenders of the language would like it to be spoken. The text is relating observations about the phonology of French speech as spoken by actual French speakers. The example is supposed to be illustrating those observations. It isn't claiming that this is the only possible way an authentic French speaker may utter this sentence, it's stating that it's a way, one in which the phenomenon described in the text, where consonants shift to adjacent syllables, occurs. In this particular case, the point is that the "f" from "fenêtre", with the canonical pronunciation [fənɛːtʁ], has transferred from the syllable [fə] to the syllable that begins [la], yielding [laf], with [nɛː] following it directly, the vowel between the two having been lost. You've come up with "laf(ɛ)nɛ" in the middle of an example that had been deliberately divided up syllable by syllable (and still is on both sides of it) thereby completely obliterating the example and its value as an example. Did you notice that you were doing that? Largoplazo (talk) 00:54, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I see you replaced the example, which is fine, but while I then considered striking out some portion of my remarks above, I've chosen not to because there are valid points scattered throughout relating to your comment about me and your dismissal of "fast informal speaking" as a valid object of phonological analysis. Largoplazo (talk) 01:02, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Even the Atilf has "(ə)" in its phonetic rendition of the word, acknowledging that the sound may be omitted in speech. Largoplazo (talk) 01:08, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I've found a number of citations of Tranel and Grammont discussing the contrast between [lafnɛtʀ] and [ynfənɛtʀ]. It's funny what you can come up with if you Google lafnetr. Largoplazo (talk) 02:26, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

As for your new example, can you justify your syllabification of "des étoiles" as [de.zet.wal]? I can't imagine someone splitting up the [t] and the [w]. That would be like pronouncing "between" as "bet ween". Also, it fails to illustrate one of the phenomena mentioned in the text, where a word-initial consonant shifts to the previous word. Largoplazo (talk) 02:47, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: (I changed the syllabification of /tw/; I think you're right.) — Eru·tuon 22:45, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I never received your pings... Fenêtre is correctly pronounced [fənε:tʀ] and that is how it is pronounced. Sometime is also pronounced [fnεtʀ], in informal language. This is why, regardless of your age, your all your arguing about "it should be done how it is spoken" while erasing the way how it is pronunced indicate that you didn't known your subject. Those two possible pronunciations explain the parenthesis but as it change syllables it couldn't be used in an example about syllables. The "s" isn't pronounced because it is in a weak position, that's why -contrary to what you pretend- it would be incorrect to pronounce [fənεstʀ] and that's why the circumflex took the place of the weak s. I presume that you might trust that not pronouncing the first "e" of fenêtre would be an elision, but that is not the case (it is a syncope). Elision only happen at the end of the word. Captain frakas (talk) 21:51, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Other sources say you're wrong, and you continue to be oblivious to the way your determination to have the example read other than the way it does flatly contradicts what the article has just finished explaining and what the example is intended to, and does, illustrate. And I don't feel I need to defend myself against someone who puts ɛ in the first syllable of "fenêtre" or divides "étoile" after the "t". Largoplazo (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

French vocalic tables

Vowel phonemes in Parisian French

		Front		Central	Back
		unrounded	rounded
Close	oral	i	y		u
Mid		e	ø	ə	o
	nasal		(œ̃)		ɔ̃
Open		æ̃		ɑ̃
	oral	ɛ (ɛː)	œ	a	ɔ

This explains nasal lowering in Parisian better. The current table explains Quebequis better. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 19:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@Erkinalp9035: Let's not confuse phonemes (or diaphonemes) with allophones. The fact that Parisian French doesn't contrast all of the vowels is irrelevant, because Belgians and Canadians do. Their local standards are just as valid varieties of Standard French. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 11:27, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

There may be multiple standard dialects of a language, but only one is original. For English, it is Received Pronunciation. For French, it is Parisian. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Erkinalp9035: This statement is completely false. Neither contemporary Parisian French nor Received Pronunciation are 'original' standards of French and English. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Original as in "in origin", not as in "as it originated".Erkinalp9035 (talk) 19:32, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Erkinalp9035: I know what you mean and it's still false. This situation is slowly reminding me of the issue with LoveVanPersie from a few months ago. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:38, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Vowel phonemes in Quebec French

		Front		Back
		unrounded	rounded
Close	oral	i	y	u
Close-mid		e	ø	o
Open-mid		ɛ ɛː	œ	ɔ
	nasal	ẽ	œ̃	õ
Open		ã
	oral	a		ɑ

Current revision of article states ə basically does not exist. Lack of ə empties the central backness in the table. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 19:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Erkinalp9035: That, again, is false. Also, do not remove my messages. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:16, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

"The phoneme /œ/ and /ə/ are both realized to [œ̈] (parce que 'because', [paʁ̥skœ̈] ( listen)), but before /ʁ/, /œ/ is diphthongized to [ɑœ̯] or [ɶœ̯] if it is in the last syllable."

I meant that. A phoneme either exists or it does not. "Both phonemes exist but they are the same" seems like force-fitting. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 19:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Erkinalp9035: You should read more on French phonology and phonology in general. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:22, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

"Spoken French" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Spoken French. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:47, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Section about phonotactics?

It's surprising that this article does not include any section dedicated to phonotactics

--Baguetteux — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A03F:6998:4600:E907:32B5:5497:9605 (talk) 09:09, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Vowel devoicing

The section on vowel devoicing appears to imply that when /u/ is devoiced it may be followed by a voiceless palatal fricative. I would like to query this. To me the fricative that follows devoiced /u/ sounds more like a voiceless labialized velar approximant. RoachPeter (talk) 20:18, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

quatorze

• [katɔːʁz]:

Hello everyone. I noticed that many speakers pronounce [katɔːʁz], before [ʁz], vowels are long, but we don't have source. 138.229.19.202 (talk) 16:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether the vowel is long or we're both mishearing the uvular coloring of /ɔ/ for length. The /r/ seems to transition from a weak uvular approximant to a stronger one (maybe even a weak fricative, though I'm not sure about that). Sol505000 (talk) 12:11, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

French O

According to Wiktionary's article on French phonology: "In European French at least, /ɔ/ is partly unrounded, leading it to have somewhat of the quality of nut." To my ears the sounds do sound similar, with "donne" sounding almost the same as "done". It is interesting to note that the placement of French /ɔ/ and American English /ʌ/ is similar, as seen on the vowel charts https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:French_vowel_chart.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:General_American_monophthong_chart.svg. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MToumbola (talk • contribs) 13:44, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I have never understood the use of the same symbol, ɔ, to represent the US English sound (in non-caught-cot-merger speech) in "caught" and "cough" and the sound in French "donner". They're completely different sounds; English "dawn" sounds nothing like French "donne". Before ⟨ʁ⟩, as in "fort", sure, that's [fɔʁ]. I mean, if the sound in "donner" and the sound in "fort" are judged to be allophones of the same phoneme, and that phoneme is conventionally written as /ɔ/, that's fine, but they are not the same sound. They aren't both [ɔ]. Largoplazo (talk) 16:24, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the article should mention that - but the amount of unrounding seems to be idiolectal. Some use an [ɐ] quality, but some keep it rounded as [ɞ], making it sound very closely to [œ]. One of the hosts of Easy French on Youtube (the girl of Arab descent) seems to use a fully unrounded vowel which, as far as I can see, is a more modern pronunciation (but I could be wrong about that). Also, notice how the use of [ɐ] for the open O reintroduces a distinction between two a-sounds in the language (but it's of a close vs open nature, rather than the open vs back nature found in Quebec, it's also of a vastly different distribution).

And of course, French isn't just Parisian French. Not everyone who speaks French fronts the open O, and there also are phonological reasons not to retranscribe it with a different symbol. Sol505000 (talk) 18:39, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I've fixed the article, but we still need a source to confirm that the vowel is both central and unrounded for some speakers. It'd be nice if we also found a source that discusses the exact realization of /ɔ/ in other dialects. Sol505000 (talk) 09:01, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

frere jacques

is the vocalization of e-mute in songs significant, or just fall under "poetic license"? 66.30.47.138 (talk) 17:28, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Can you check whether the paragraph beginning "In French versification ..." under French phonology#Schwa answers your question? Largoplazo (talk) 21:01, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

oh yeah, i guess it does...except that i thought "versification" was something else entirely! could we maybe replace that with a less "jargon"y term? (i.e. "in poetic verse" or the like).

moreover, is it MANDATORY? i figured it just happened sometimes to fit a song's meter, but the article implies otherwise.

any restrictions on type of verse? HAIKU, for example, is syllable count sensitive. a few extra "e"s would really complicate things! 66.30.47.138 (talk) 14:49, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Is this verse elision happening also in French popular music? French rap? --Error (talk) 19:23, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Homographs that are not homophones causing confusion

(Redirected from WP:RDL#Homographs that are not homophones causing confusion)

In section 2.6 (Length), there is a table. I struggled on line 3 of this table however, as the line reads, "faites ... faire ... fait" - but says that the vowel in each is the same phoneme. I was very confused as I read this as, "(you (plural)) do... to do... done (past participle)" in which case, the vowel for "fait" would not be the same as that of faites and faire. However, the article actually meant, "(you) do... to do... fact" Since "fact" and "done" are homographs in French but not homophones, and the line in question gives some conjugations of "faire" it seems misleading to then use a completely unrelated word where there is a homograph which would follow the pattern. So, what may be done to remedy this? I can't think of an example to replace it with, as I'm not all too sure about IPA jargon and definitions. Thanks EcheveriaJ (talk) 23:04, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@EcheveriaJ: I may have misunderstood your question: but although I am not a native French speaker, *all* the examples in the last column (not only fait) have the shortest value: those in the first two columns are medium and long. As you say, Fait can mean n. 'fact' or v. 'done', but are (I believe) definitely pronounced exactly the same. There are no homophones in this list at all. The last column has the shortest length: eg the phrase je l'ai fait repeats the same sound, which is similar to eg Italian Auto da fé. This is different again (I suspect) from fée (fairy), more like rêve. As the IPA shows, the same written letters ai, ɛ, all have different pronunciations in French. A relatively nasal Scottish accent might tend to mask all these differences. Compare Glesga "Och, hen" (more like 'hên'), and posh English "the hen laid an egg." Copy and paste the IPA from the table (without square brackets) into IPA reader and select a French speaker, eg Mathieu or Celine [French]. Looking at the table, the line sotte, mort, — has no open syllable equivalent, but In Les Quatre Cent Coups in answer to the exasperated teacher's question, Doinel says "Elle et morte." which is definitely shorter than the other two. MinorProphet (talk) 23:03, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@MinorProphet: - Yes, I didn't quite understand that the length of the sound shortened across the row. I was just going off of the IPA vowel chart where I thought /fɛ/ sounded little like "fait" which I would pronounce as, /fe̞/. Don't really know why I thought the noun and verb have different pronunciations: I've never thought that before so it might just be the tiredness finally caught up with me - I think I was thinking about, "en fait, il ..." where I would indeed pronounce "fait" not as /fe̞/ but as /fɛt/ and I think I then just extrapolated this idea. Don't know. Thanks for the clarification. Concerning my accent, every Scot I've ever met (who has had the audacity to say) says that I sound English and many have asked where I actually come from . Then in England I'm told I sound so very Scottish. My accent is more like Edwin Morgan than it is Kevin Bridges! My ear probably does fail to distinguish between some of these sounds though. Les Quatre Cent Coups is a film I've yet to watch, a friend has told me its not as good as Pierrot Le Fou (a film I'm indiffirent too). Thank you for your help again, it's always appreciated. I often surf the ref boards too EcheveriaJ (talk) 16:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

French un /ɛ̃/ vs /œ̃/

Is the sound /œ̃/ disappearing in France? Please give me some source. 2405:9800:BA20:5F75:EDD0:3899:182E:DE22 (talk) 08:41, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

See the "Nasal vowels" section. Nardog (talk) 09:09, 29 September 2022 (UTC)