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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?

#61

Post by z500 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #49
yakkomajuri wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The only problem with that is the vast number of declensions. Sure they're not as wildly divergent as, say Latin or Ancient Greek, and there's no gender, but because of all the cases there's a lot of subtle variations to remember

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

#62

Post by strongpigeon »

skydhash wrote: post #52
isolli wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I've been told... but I could never hear the difference myself!

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.

> I’m not a native English speaker and I gave up trying to pronounce th (father, through). Although I can hear the difference.

Why can't the Québécois count to four? Because there is a tree in the way.

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

#63

Post by orwin »

Joker_vD wrote: post #29
rkomorn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right that working in certain areas (geographical or professional) gives you an ability to grasp all kinds of English. I've worked in universities and in tech, in New Jersey, LA, and Silicon Valley, and I feel like I can understand just about anyone's English. Ironically, the ones I have the hardest time understanding are almost always Brits.

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.

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

#64

Post by monsieurgaufre »

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)

Non. Personne ne prononce tous les accents de la même manière.

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

#65

Post by agluszak »

amelius wrote: post #19
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…

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

It's my go-to (pun intended) whenever a native English speaker complains about other languages being "hard to pronounce" :)

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

#66

Post by l-p »

skydhash wrote: post #52
isolli wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I've been told... but I could never hear the difference myself!

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%...

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

#67

Post by windowshopping »

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.

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

#68

Post by f1shy »

ghewgill wrote: post #25
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #17

>Ê with the circumflex accent marks an “e” after which originally some other letter was written (usually an S), but this letter is no longer present in its modern spelling. [snip] >By imagining “es” instead of “ê”, we can often deduce the meaning of unknown words; for example, forêt = forest, fête = “feste” = fest(ival); intérêt = interest and many others. The circumflex accent is used in the very same sense also for…

I had that "a-ha" moment not at first by learning that "fenêtre" means "window", but later when I learned the German word is "Fenster".

In italian finestra

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

#69

Post by Muromec »

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.

At some point I started to embrace my rolling Rs, "ze" all the way and rhyming passage and massage. But luckily I live at the bottom of the sea, where everyone is an English speaker, but nobody is a native.
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