November 2016
Have you ever had the problem of not knowing how to pronounce a
French word?
If you are not in a French-speaking country and don’t have
any native or otherwise experienced French speakers to hand, then it’s possible
to get stuck and feel shy in case your pronunciation is completely ridiculous.
Sure there are written pronunciation guides, but they are
not the whole picture.
My approach has been to keep a note of particularly problematic
words and bring them up in French class so that I can hear the teacher’s
pronunciation. I also try to write these troublesome words in phonetics.
Keeping them in mind and trying to say them wherever possible is also of help.
Thankfully, further assistance is to hand. I recently stumbled
across the website www.forvo.com which
describes itself as “the largest pronunciation guide in the world”. It works by
a community of people (typically native speakers) from around the world
recording their own pronunciations of individual words and phrases, and then
uploading them to the site.
Apart from French, other languages include English, Italian
and Spanish, along with more than 300 more languages. French is well
represented, with more than 138,000 pronounced French words available on the
site.
If you want to know how to pronounce a word, select the
language and enter your word in the search box. Typically there will be
multiple examples of how the word is pronounced. For example, when I searched
“dehors”, I found four pronunciations. There were also a number of phrases that
feature dehors.
And joy of joy, the site includes place names. For example,
there are three pronunciations for “Rouen” and also one example of how to pronounce
“Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen”, a major tourist attraction in Rouen.
Before my next visit to France I would definitely visit this
site to practice how to say the names of the places I planned to visit. This
would save some anxiety and potential embarrassment for example at the train
station and when asking directions!
While on the subject of pronunciation, I’d like to recommend
the Twitter feed @CarofromF. This highly interesting Twitter account includes
multiple animated series which feature native French pronunciation.
One recent series from @CarofromF focuses on the top three
most populated cities in Normandy, giving handy pronunciations for the city and
the names for the people who live there, along with population details and a
location map.
Another series covers 10 common French words with different
meanings in masculine and feminine forms, such as la chèvre (goat) and le chèvre (goat
cheese). It makes a real difference to be able to hear an authentic French
voice and on top of that, @CarofromF creates really quirky and charming
content.
So if you are learning French and you are not on Twitter,
it’s definitely time to create your own account. One of the first people you
should follow is @CarofromF.
