When attempting to learn French, it is important that you establish links between your mother tongue, such as English, and French, if you hope to become good at speaking your second language. Each language has its own technique.
Try this:
Say the word “hard” in English.
What did you do to produce that sound?
There are a few steps involved:
1. You curled your tongue towards the back of your mouth.
2. You pronounced the “h” by blowing over your tongue.
3. You then said the “r” with the tongue curled
4. You flicked the tongue on the roof of your mouth and you said “duh”.
This is the technique for speaking English – the tongue is often curled towards the back of the mouth and consonants such as “h” and “r” are more important than vowels such as “a”.
French speaking individuals will have trouble with this word because the “h” is not pronounced in French. They will say “ard” as in aardvark.
If you ask a French person to say “this” or “that”, they will say “dis” and “dat”. Most French speaking people struggle with the “th” sound in English because this sound does not exist in French.
When you speak French, you MUST keep your tongue FLAT at all times.
Your tongue must also touch your bottom teeth at ALL times.
You may say that this does not feel comfortable. I know!
Do it until it becomes comfortable!
By doing so, you will speak French well and you will correct 80-90% of all your pronunciation problems.
Experiment with tongue and lip positions when words don’t sound correct.
By trial and error, you will find the correct position.
REMEMBER THIS:
English puts the emphasis on CONSONANTS (h,r,d, etc.).
French emphasizes VOWELS (a, e, i, o, etc.).
In my next post, I will tell you about the main vowels which are used in French and how to pronounce them correctly.
If you have questions, you can email me anytime at robert@rebelfrench.com.
A la prochaine….
Robert