French audio -- life after Pimsleur?

[Ani]

No, I believe it only does that for the nasal variants of œ and ø that it teaches as the same, because it teaches an accent that does not have such a distinction. It does briefly point out, with audio that the distinction exists. Unless you really care about this distinction I'm not sure what the big deal is. Increasingly, the distinction is maintained by fewer and fewer French natives. In particular, standard Parisian French (a prestige dialect, as I'm sure you know) has eliminated that distinction, i.e. brun and brin sound the same.

I'm leaning towards no phonology is better than bad phonology
It's actually /ə/ and /ø/ that they merged, (maybe /œ/ too, I can't remember) and /e/ and /ɛ/ as well. I think that's a dangerous path that will come back to bite you. Basically sorting out those sounds is almost the only reason to do a pholology course, and they make it worse, not better.
The second reason to do pholology is rhythm/intonation. They have a bit but not enough for how long the course is.

Why sort out sounds if they've merged? What about the distinctions the course does sort out, e.g. /i/ vs. /y/ vs. /u/, or the tendency for English speakers to dipthongize everything?

I did check the course before I said what I said, to be sure I wasn't remembering correctly. If you're going to disagree, you should at least take a look again yourself.

Despite what the course says, I am not aware of any French speakers who have no distinction between /ə/ and /ø/. If you go one way with that you'll be ok, of you go the other way, you'll make embarrassing pronunciation mistakes. Page 27

I also don't believe /e/ and /ɛ/ are merged sounds, yet they are merged in the course. Page 21 or 22 I think..

Personally I don't target Parisian French, so I'd rather know the difference between /ɛ̃/ and /œ̃/, but at least that one makes sense.. still it's not what I was talking about.

[kulaputra]

Despite what the course says, I am not aware of any French speakers who have no distinction between /ə/ and /ø/. If you go one way with that you'll be ok, of you go the other way, you'll make embarrassing pronunciation mistakes. Page 27

European French doesn't have a schwa. In broad transcription, both /ø/ and /œ/ are sometimes written as the schwa (usually in unstressed syllables). In narrow transcription, this is avoided.

I also don't believe /e/ and /ɛ/ are merged sounds, yet they are merged in the course. Page 21 or 22 I think..

They are in most European dialects.

[Ani]

Despite what the course says, I am not aware of any French speakers who have no distinction between /ə/ and /ø/. If you go one way with that you'll be ok, of you go the other way, you'll make embarrassing pronunciation mistakes. Page 27

European French doesn't have a schwa. In broad transcription, both /ø/ and /œ/ are sometimes written as the schwa (usually in unstressed syllables). In narrow transcription, this is avoided.

I also don't believe /e/ and /ɛ/ are merged sounds, yet they are merged in the course. Page 21 or 22 I think..

They are in most European dialects.

Did you read what I wrote? If you ignore what I said and keep referencing different sounds I am not willing to have this conversation.
At least one native French/France speaker on the board confirmed /ɛ/ and /e/ as different sounds.

[Fortheo]

This was my favorite French audio course



I like to think of it as a more friendly, but less exhaustive version of FSI.

Each lesson focuses on a grammatical point, and each lesson starts with an acted out dialogue that exemplifies that grammatical point in context, then you get a bunch of FSI like audio drills focusing on that lessons subject.

It comes with a book, but it's just the text of what is on the CD; I only referenced the book if I couldn't hear a word correctly here or there.


I did this course after finishing assimil and pimsleur and It really helped level my french up.


One thing, though, this isn't a mammoth audio program--i think it's only about 4 or 5 hours in total, but it's a grammar course, so some lessons demand repeated listens.

This was Definitely my favorite grammar experience with french, even moreso because I could do it while walking.

[kulaputra]

Despite what the course says, I am not aware of any French speakers who have no distinction between /ə/ and /ø/. If you go one way with that you'll be ok, of you go the other way, you'll make embarrassing pronunciation mistakes. Page 27

European French doesn't have a schwa. In broad transcription, both /ø/ and /œ/ are sometimes written as the schwa (usually in unstressed syllables). In narrow transcription, this is avoided.

I also don't believe /e/ and /ɛ/ are merged sounds, yet they are merged in the course. Page 21 or 22 I think..

They are in most European dialects.

Did you read what I wrote? If you ignore what I said and keep referencing different sounds I am not willing to have this conversation.
At least one native French/France speaker on the board confirmed /ɛ/ and /e/ as different sounds.

I feel we are speaking past each other. I am not denying some speakers do make this distinction. I am denying that everyone makes this distinction. Many do not.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I would starts dipping my toes into native French. With so many English cognates, you really can start sooner than you think. I highly recommend Le Journal in Francais Facile. It’s a ten minute news podcast, so you will still have plenty of time for other things. I always listen a day behind, so I’m usually already familiar with most of the stories. It is meant for learners, but it isn’t super slow. You won’t feel spoonfed. But I promise if you listen everyday, your French will improve quickly!

[jstan]

Thanks again for all of your ideas. I've been listening to some of the recommended podcasts for the past few days and am really enjoying those. I've listened to Le Journal en Francais Facile before and do like it. I may add that into the podcast rotation.

Foretheo, thanks for bringing that course to my attention. I'll be sure to check it out.

I'm finding myself able to understand and enjoy the podcasts more than I expected and am thinking of sticking with that for a while. I think that I'll revisit FSI in a month or two, and will probably take the suggestion to do FSI in small bites and alternate between FSI and podcasts for a while.

Thanks again for all the ideas!

[Speakeasy]

jstan, as you have been “poking around this forum for a while”, it is quite possible that you are already aware of the “French Resources” discussion thread that reineke opened a couple years ago. In any event, as the “Search” function of this forum can be a little finicky, with a view to saving you time should you wish to locate it, here is the LINK:

French Resources – LLORG – June, 2016
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2914

Vas-y, t'es capable!

EDITED:
Erreur de frappe!

[jeffers]

For pronunciation I heartily recommend the video course La Prononciation française pour de vrai by Penny Sewell. First of all, the course is entirely in French, so it assumes you're beyond A2. It begins with the rhythm of the language (stress and intonation) and then moves on to specifics of pronunciation, which I think is the correct way round. I've only started the course but so far I think the teacher and method are brilliant. The best thing about a video course is that facial expression is important for correct pronunciation. Sewell encourages the viewer to pay careful attention to her and to imitate the way she moves her mouth and face.

One minor issue: the course was originally designed to be a CD-ROM course, so from time to time she mentions exercises and audio which don't exist. Sometimes she says to pause the video and listen to the audio. However, on the DVDs there are the full versions (4-5 minutes long) of native audio from which extracts appear in the lessons.

Penny Sewell is British, but by all accounts her accent is impeccable.

EDIT: here's a link to the DVDs on Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/Prononciation-Francaise-Pour-Vrai-French/dp/0956179606

[zjones]

Everyone has given great recommendations already, but I have another one.

I've enjoyed InnerFrench's "Intermediate French Podcast" which you can find on Spotify and iTunes, and I'm sure it's available on many other podcast apps. I'm at ~A2 listening level and I don't have any trouble understanding Hugo. He speaks slowly and conversationally without sounding stilted or scripted, and his podcast utilises simple sentence structures and quite a bit of natural repitition. The topics of each podcast are really interesting, too. I've had better luck with this than the Balades podcast, which I feel is more of a B1 level (i.e. I need transcripts to understand what's going on).