каркнул ворон никогда

[avva]

Носовые французские гласные (видео, англ.)

Я никогда, никогда, никогда не научусь это правильно произносить.

Слышали бы вы, как я сейчас изгалялся, повторяя за этим видео в микрофон. А потом прослушал себя. Какое-то отвратительное фрическое гнусавое мычание. Похоже на правильное произношение, примерно как гитара на фрикадельку.

А кроме того, есть еще: Trois voyelles arrondies: /ø/, /œ/ et /ə/ (фр.).

/Безнадежно мотает головой. Машет рукой. Медленно уходит со сцены, издавая странные гнусавые звуки, перемежаемые горьким смехом./

Comments

Re: French pronunciation

[(Anonymous)]

Unfortunately, "roundedness" is another misleading description of how the French pronunciation system actually works. I already mentioned that the lips have to be held back against the upper and lower front teeth while the corners move horizontally. This is the reciprocal opposite of how the lips work in English where the corners of the mouth remain in a relatively fixed position and lip flexibility is achieved by moving the centers outward from the front teeth so that they can make a good seal to firmly stop air flow.

In French, both the upper and lower lips are firmly supported by the front teeth so the the centers are thinned to almost a point on the upper and lower edges of the lips. The airflow can thus be restricted by the lips but only for the briefest possible period as the consonants m , p, and b are pronounced. You can practice this by trying to hold the tips of your lips so close together that the air hisses as it passes through.

Since you are probably coming from basic Russian use of the lips, think about how they work. The Russian upper lip basically hangs relaxed in front of the upper teeth while the lower lip curls out like the English pattern and comes up so the the inside of the lower lip touches the outside front of the upper lip for p, b, and m. You might practice on the "pr" of the word "prosmotr"which is at the bottom of the page as I type. Back to French, if you tense up both the upper and lower lips and hold them as described above for French, you will discover that your whole outlook on life changes. I don't know why this is true, but it is what I feel every time I consciously practice the French lip operation.

Next, going back to "roundedness", the French get their lip flexibility by using three positions for the corners of the mouth. The medial position has the corners just back of the eyeteeth (i.e. the canine teeth. Then the back position has them in front of the next teeth back from the eyeteeth. This is the position for pronouncing "é". The narrow position has the corners pulled inside the position of the eyeteeth. This is the position for "u". The facial muscles need to be practiced to develop strength and ease for making these movements. You can do this by holding the centers of the lips firmly in position relative to the front teeth and then moving the corner inward and outward keeping in mind the three stop locations. The concept of "roundedness" tends to consider that there are only two stops instead of three. That's what you see in the "brin - brun" opposition. The "deux-heure" opposition uses the same corner postions and the variation there is between the half-open and full-open jaw positions.

You talk about ease of pronunciation and about correct nuances, but you are not going to get that until you develop muscular strength and feel for the relative French positions. It took me a year living in Paris and trying to figure out the mechanisms until I began to acquire ease. You may have a better ear than me for the nuances but they arrive out of beginning to master how the mechanism works. The "sloppiness" of easy pronunciation also arrives out of mastering the mechanism. I don't know whether you are familiar with the English variety of this, but the sentence "Did you eat yet?" slops into the pronunciation "Jeet yet?"
In French, "Je ne sais pas." slops into "Ché pa." Also in modern French, the opposition between "brin" and "brun" disappears to the point that they tend to be pronounced alike and the meaning is distinguished by context rather than sound.

As to Edith Piaf, I cited her because her pronunciation tends to follow the careful enunciation rather than the "easy sloppiness", largely because it is also easier to sing when governed by the length of the musical notes. Personally, I doubt that the fact of her "immigrant" background has any effect whatsoever on the accurateness of her pronunciation.

By the way, I realized afterwords that the gauge I gave you for the wide open jaw position should not be the thickness of the index finger, but rather that of the thumb which should be about twice as thick as the little finger. Sorry about that!