Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jakubmarian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 165 posts

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

#151

Post by arkh »

l-p wrote: post #66
skydhash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one is pronounced with an O shape with the mouth (like you would do with the word oh), and the others with more of a smile shape (like with the word see). It’s impossible to pronounce one like the other. I’m not a native English speaker and I gave up trying to pronounce th (father, through). Although I can hear the difference.

This has to be a regionalism because there're strictly identical to me, eg. in "Un train." /œ̃tʁɛ̃/ I say the two vowels exactly the same way. After a cursory search it seems my Parisian-ish accent is at fault: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Annexe:Prononciation/fran%C3%...

Yup, very parisian. Love how then they almost mock how pain (bread) is pronounced in the south-west where you won't mistake the sounds between the words un pain.

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

#152

Post by pjmlp »

Given its origins, Portuguese also inherits all the è, é, ê, ë from French, across the various vowels.

Thanks to the various language revisions it is a mess for foreigners to learn, because, some words have lost their diacritics, however when speaking them depending on the situation, you still have to pronounce them as if they were there.

Examples, for her (para ela), stop the car (para o carro), however the second "para", would have been written "pára" until 2009, and still retains the same sound when spoken.

Then you have ridiculous sentences like "Ela nunca para para pensar nas consequências de seus atos.", (she never stops to think on the outcome of her actions).

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

#153

Post by rkomorn »

orwin wrote: post #63
Joker_vD wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, a common anecdote from European science conferences is that by the second day, everybody do settle into the thick, averaged Spanish/German/French/Italian/Russian accent of their English which is pretty much equally understandable to everyone present except from the actual guys from Oxford, England.

Exactly! When I have to speak with actual English people, I do try my best to imitate a Americanised, TV show accent. When I speak to non-native speaker, I don't try and let my french go through. It's easier for everyone.

I'm the other way around. I sound like a native US English speaker, but when I'm speaking English around French people who aren't as fluent, I "Frenchify" my accent so it's easier for them.

My spouse finds it amusing, which is probably the biggest benefit, TBH.

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

#154

Post by sph »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #48

As a native in English speaker, I refuse to switch to the French keyboard when writing in French I just don’t bother with accents. Why can’t French just be normal and know how to pronounce words without any hints like we do in English?

> know how to pronounce words without any hints like we do in English

Ha ha. Thanks for making me laugh. Of course it's the native English speaker utterly blind to the barbaric rules of his language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos

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

#156

Post by gkoenig »

Hey, just a little thing: I am pretty sure that "Noel" would be pronounced exactly the same way as "Noël".

Also for the é,è,ê, prononciations vary wildly by regions (in Belgium they are different, "ê" is like "è" but longer) but in the South of France, most people I have met do not hear the difference (but sometimes pronounce it, which always surprise me).

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

#157

Post by nathan_douglas »

Muromec wrote: post #75
nathan_douglas wrote: post #10

I'm trying to get to B2/C1 in French and intend to move to France in 2028. Over the years I've picked up a little Spanish here, took a few years of German there, etc. Recently I read _Erec and Enide_ [1] and it was really cool to be able to find the original Old French version of it and read large parts of it (not the whole thing) and find it so much easier to read than Early Middle English like the _Ancrene Wisse_ […

Is it even possible to actually learn the language without living in the environment, where it gets in your face all the time?

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in anything, let alone linguistics or language acquisition. Just reporting what I've found.

Effective fluency (C2+) seems to be really, really difficult without immersion.

Anything past A1 seems to be really difficult without dedication and active effort. Pimsleur is my foundation and I think it's debatable whether that will get you out of A1 by itself.

I do Pimsleur (practical listening and speaking and reading), InnerFrench (listening comprehension, roughly A2 where I'm at right now but I think it progresses through B1 and B2 as he speaks faster and rephrases things less for ease of understanding), and reading (_A Game of Thrones_, currently, which is handy because I've read the books in English before and can use that as leverage).

I also watch some French films, but that's less helpful at present. I can't always find good French subtitles for my (pirated) films and because I watch a decent number of foreign films (especially Polish, shoutout to Wojciech Has enjoyers), the trying-to-learn-French part of my brain mostly shuts off. This is just a place where I need to put in more effort.

I have a lot of other French language podcasts and some YouTube channels cued up, but I'm not ready for most of them.

And this doesn't really address two of the major components, which are writing and speaking French. I don't have much going on there. I plan to add 2-3x/week iTalki next year so that I get feedback from fluent French speakers.

So TL;DR: your skepticism is absolutely justified and it's an uphill battle, a significant challenge and a sink of time, money, and willpower. I've been doing it for a year, on top of three years in high school and another year in college, and I think it's getting harder, not easier.

So we'll see.

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

#158

Post by nathan_douglas »

windowshopping wrote: post #67
nathan_douglas wrote: post #10

I'm trying to get to B2/C1 in French and intend to move to France in 2028. Over the years I've picked up a little Spanish here, took a few years of German there, etc. Recently I read _Erec and Enide_ [1] and it was really cool to be able to find the original Old French version of it and read large parts of it (not the whole thing) and find it so much easier to read than Early Middle English like the _Ancrene Wisse_ […

You may enjoy the book Latin alive, for me it was a revelation on how the romance languages diverged and took their present forms.

Thank you so much for the recommendation! I think that's right up my alley and I'm gonna grab it right now.

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

#160

Post by bloppe »

m132 wrote: post #31
bloppe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been speaking French since pre-school (albeit in North America mostly) and to me é always sounds more like the English short i (as in "tip"). I'm becoming increasingly convinced that everybody on Earth but me is wrong about it.

Do you happen to be from the western US or Canada? They tend to lower the /ɪ/ monophthong (i of tip, pit, sit, etc.) there, making it sound pretty close to /e/ (French é, German eh). It's one of those things that, combined with regionalisms and other accent features, give away where you grew up :) I noticed a lot of Londoners do this too, though this is just my experience.

Nope, Northeast. And my French teachers spoke with a Parisian accent.
Post reply on HN