How phonetic exercises will help you master the French language
Do you know your ‘u’ from your ‘ou’?
French has a 'u' sound that doesn't exist in English
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In a previous column, I quoted Devant les accusations, il s’est tu. It would have been a red herring there to remark on the phonetic proximity of il s’est tu and il sait tout.
Making the distinction, however, provides a useful and important exercise, one I recommend almost as a mantra to reinforce the distinction between the phonemes ‘u’ and ‘ou’.
There were two sound-tags that I repeated regularly to myself as I cycled to school, one of which was Turlututu chapeau pointu, trying to perfect the ‘u’ sound that does not exist in English.
Read more: When and why do we say avoir un œil de lynx
Mastering the French 'r' sound
The expression seems to come from songs of yesteryear, but I did not know that then.
The other was an attempt to master the French ‘r’.
As I knew then of no equivalent to the tongue-twister ‘Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran’, I simply practised waggling my uvula, that apparently useless flap hanging down at the back of your mouth.
It contains a certain number of inert muscular fibres that need to be activated to produce the intervocalic ‘r’ in French (as in marron).
You hear it all the time when French people try to speak English, giving it the Gallic charm you love: all you need to do is imitate them.
And once you have mastered the intervocalic ‘r’, other ‘r’s fall into place at the back of the mouth: perdu; au secours; trouvé.
