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French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

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Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#41

Post by kalenx »

rkomorn wrote: post #30
strongpigeon wrote: post #5

As a native (Québécois) French speaker who's been living in the US for most of my adult life, something I miss from French is that once you've learned the (many) rules, you can be pretty confident about how to pronounce a given word. English on the other hand has so many exceptions (usually based on the origin of the word), that I still encounter words that I'll mispronounce at first. I can typically pass as a native…

With the exception of some annoying ones like "fils" (son or sons) and "fils" (threads).

Or "est" (he is) and "est" (the East) although English also has plenty of such "non-homophonic homographs"...

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#43

Post by kalenx »

khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

You pronounce "fête" as "féte" (basically, equivalent to the English "faith" without the "h" sound at the end)? To my hear these two sound very different.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#44

Post by kergonath »

khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

> French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care.

That is very far from the truth, and unhelpful. Yes, some people have accents, but it’s not because you cannot hear the difference (or at least claim you cannot) that it does not exist. Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce "il a fermé la fenêtre"?

For non-French people: there are accents in which é and è are most of the time very similar, particularly in the South. They are very proud of it somehow. I am all for regional accents, but claiming that your particular pronunciation is the one true way is ridiculous.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#46

Post by kergonath »

kalenx wrote: post #43
khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

You pronounce "fête" as "féte" (basically, equivalent to the English "faith" without the "h" sound at the end)? To my hear these two sound very different.

> You pronounce "fête" as "féte"?

No, they don’t.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#47

Post by kerblang »

khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

Many Americans turn on subtitles when watching tv/movies

Gone are the days when American actors flaunted those crisply enunciated albeit preposterous "continental" accents

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#49

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #38
strongpigeon wrote: post #5

As a native (Québécois) French speaker who's been living in the US for most of my adult life, something I miss from French is that once you've learned the (many) rules, you can be pretty confident about how to pronounce a given word. English on the other hand has so many exceptions (usually based on the origin of the word), that I still encounter words that I'll mispronounce at first. I can typically pass as a native…

The most phonetically consistent language I know is Finnish. I believe there is exactly one way to pronounce every word and it's clear to all speakers. And the least phonetically consistent is English.

Spanish also has that property, i.e. given a word (existing or invented), there is a single way to pronounce it, easy to determine following some rules.*

Finnish (from what I've heard, as I don't speak it) is even more regular in the sense that this also works the other way around, i.e., if you hear a word, you can use rules to know how to spell it. This does not always hold in Spanish (e.g. B and V are pronounced the same, so you cannot know if you're hearing "vaca" or "baca" without resorting to context and common sense reasoning) although it does hold for all but a small bunch of grapheme pairs.

* Modulo regional variants, but if you focus in any given variant (e.g. Spanish from Spain) this holds.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#50

Post by maelito »

khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

> no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care.

Non.

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