. (ein_suender) wrote in linguaphiles,
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ein_suender
linguaphiles

Story of French, continued...

So I am still reading The Story of French (Hey! It's a long book!) and I have a couple more things I want to pose to this community.

On pages 369-372, it discusses French vowels and how the vowels of the French language are currently changing and how, more and more, the "e" sound is being tacked onto the end of words that end with R, such as bonJOURe, and au reVOIRe, so that a schewa sound is tacked on to the end.

Question #1) Is this common in all varieties of French, or just Parisian French?


It also talks about how in Paris and surrounding areas the words mettre and maître are pronounced the same.

Question #2) Aren't the pronounced the same everywhere? I can't hear a difference between them. :-/


Finally, it talks about the nasal vowels of in, an, un, and on and how they all have almost merged into a single vowel.

#3) Can somebody explain this to me? I'm not sure I hear them as the same vowel at all. Is it different in Quebec French?

Last Question(not related to the book)) If you had to identify the main differences in pronunciation of Quebec French from "standard" French, what would you say they are? What I'm reading is that the vowels that sound the same in France don't in Quebec. Can anybody confirm this or deny this?

Peace and much thanks!! :)
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  • French: Inversion in French questions, first person singular

    Do French native speakers use the inversion in questions in the first person singular? Je pèse --> pèse-je, or do they simply say: Est-ce que…

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    It is not enough to read French correctly. It is not enough to literally understand what is written. You also need to be French in order to…

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