#i just looked at my ladefoged and he's like 'rounding lowers the second formant so [y] sounds like it's between [i] and [u]' | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

coquelicoq · 4 months ago

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i'm now looking at my list of least favorite french words to pronounce and going "too many r's" for about 40% of them and "skill issue" for most of the rest. some of these are actually very fun to pronounce i just couldn't wrap my tongue around them a year or so ago, but now i can i guess??? so that's very exciting. makes me hope that someday i'll be able to pronounce the rest of them. this is a bit pie in the sky because i really don't see myself ever getting there with procureur du roi but you never know. and luckily the french abolished the monarchy so it's not like i'll ever have to use that phrase in modern conversation.

anyway here are the words i actually love pronouncing now: décaféiné diététicien filleul pneumonie

i now feel normal/neutral about these words that used to be hard for me: automne, condamner douloureux électricité, énergie inférieur, supérieur, etc. itinéraire lourdeur salmonellose sclérose subodorer succincte

words that are definitely within the realm of my current capability but i haven't practiced them enough: bugle hiérarchisation méditerranéen phtisie

words that are still the bane of my existence but i live in hope: [yʁ] plus at least one other r or [y] sound: chirurgie, fourrure, marbrure, moirure, nourriture, ordures, peinturlurer, procureur du roi, prurit, purpurin, sculpture, serrurerie, structure, sulfureux, tournure all words beginning with ur-, hur-, or sur- other difficult sequence of r's and vowels: construire and other -truire verbs; lueur and sueur; utérus too many r's: marbre, martre, meurtre, opprobre, proroger, réfrigérateur, rétrograde, rorqual difficult sequence of vowels and/or semivowels: coopérant, extraordinaire, hémorroïdal, kyrie eleison, météorologique, micro-ordinateur, micro-organisme, mouillure, quatuor, vanillier not pronounced the way i would expect from the spelling: indemne, penta-, punk just hard for some reason: humour

#girl you didn't like filleul????? get well soon damn #the french love writing about linden trees (tilleuls) so i've now had tons of practice with that sequence of sounds and love it #all the words that are hard for some reason other than r sounds is just a skill issue. and it makes sense because a lot of them are #not common words so when would i even be practicing them?#the words that are hard because of r sounds is also a skill issue but that's one that i don't know i will be able to fix through practice #i think i have maybe plateaued with my r sounds lol. but you never know!#bugle is a funky word. i want to love it. someday i will.#you'd think i would have méditerranéen down by now since it is a pretty common word. but it still trips me up. i'll get there #sur- words are bad because i just end up whistling the s?? i think i'm pronouncing the [y] too forward in the mouth #i just looked at my ladefoged and he's like 'rounding lowers the second formant so [y] sounds like it's between [i] and [u]'#but i think i'm trying too hard to get it really close to [i] and maybe overcompensating for the formant drop #and actually pronouncing [y] MORE forward in the mouth than [i]? that's my guess #french #fun with pronunciation #my posts #i deleted a couple words from the list if i couldn't remember why they were hard. filtre? what's so bad about filtre...#yeah folklore is a little weird in french but it's not like putting an l before a k is phonotactically illegal it's just unusual #and not at all difficult for an anglophone ultimately #lubrifiant? idk why i would have felt strongly enough about lubrifiant to go back in my drafts several pages to add it to the post #the rest of these though i can explain. électricité and énergie were hard because my mouth just automatically wanted to pronounce #the second vowel as é as well #automne and condamner were hard because you don't nasalize the vowel before the m AND you don't pronounce the m #these are now so normal to me that i can't get myself to remember the pronunciation of indemne (in which the m IS pronounced)

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