FSI French Phonology course

[BOLIO]

I was playing around with it this morning and found it to be very interesting. It starts with this tiny amount of short dialogues and proceeds to have 150 "exercises " about the dialogue.

I have been playing around with the idea of learning French or Portuguese next along with a long slow process with Russian.

If French wins out, I think this course will be my starting point or is there a better choice from those of you who have learned French as a second language. EMK, Tastyonions, PM and the many others????

Thanks in advance.

[PeterMollenburg]

It so happens I've been glancing at this course myself a little last night and today, curious as to it's value. Although I find it difficult to see how it works without hearing the audio and actually doing some of the exercises (I've been flicking through some random pages of the pdf), I don't think it matters too much which course you choose to go with, provided it's not garbage. Choose a high quality course that interests you. Although not to everyone's tastes, FSI is generally well regarded here on the forum, and thus, FSI French Phonology should come under the category of high quality. I can't comment on the details of this course without doing it myself, which I'm currently internally debating.

[Daristani]

Generally, I'm pretty positive toward the FSI courses, and think that this one as well, even if somewhat dry, is useful for beginners -- particularly for native speakers of English, since the focus is on comparing and contrasting French pronunciation with that of (American) English.

One point I'd make, though, is that it doesn't teach ONLY pronunciation; there is a lot of "say this, and compare with that", etc., but it actually does teach a little bit of very basic French grammar and conversational skills as well, rather than just the sounds of the language. So I think it might be a mistake to see it as a diversion or delay to learning "real French". If I'm not mistaken, it was used at FSI as a preliminary to the FSI Basic French course, and having completed it prior to the Basic course facilitated the use of that course without a need for extensive drills in pronunciation. In any event, it's possible to work through it in a relatively short time, and I think it would likely be of use in helping to develop a good pronunciation regardless of whatever materials you might use afterwards.

Most of the other basic French materials that get recommended on this forum (such as Assimil, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, etc.) tend not to provide much if any explicit instruction in pronunciation, and seem to expect the learner to pick it up by sheer imitation. Given the importance that native French speakers seem to place on correct pronunciation, I think that a more explicit approach can be very useful. (Indeed, there are fairly thick university-level textbooks with audio to teach proper pronunciation of French; I don't see these being published in other major languages, and thus suspect that, for better or worse, this is more of an issue in French than in most other languages.)

As to whether it would likely be of much use to someone (like PeterMollenburg) who's already advanced quite a way in French, I would be less positive, but since it's available at no cost on-line, there's certainly no reason not to check it out.

[Arnaud]

I've been doing some of CLE's Phonétique progressive du français after Ani mentioned it the other week, and I have to agree with her that it's superior to FSI's French Phonology. It's chock-full of minimal pairs and intonation stuff.

I also remember someone saying that there is no "tutoiement" (informal you) in FSI.

[blaurebell]

If the French FSI is anything like the Spanish FSI tutoiement should be covered, but there will be significantly more formal language. While this doesn't match Spanish usage in most Spanish speaking countries, as far as I see it in the media the French use a lot more formal language, so FSIs focus on that should match real usage quite well. Formal and informal standards can be very different depending on the language and of course FSI covers mostly formal language because it's meant for aspiring diplomats. In any case, FSI definitely doesn't adequately cover when to be informal and when to be formal, but to be honest that's so weird in French I don't think any course can sort out these rules! In movies I rarely find any logic to the formal and informal language usage at all.

[Fortheo]

If the French FSI is anything like the Spanish FSI tutoiement should be covered, but there will be significantly more formal language. While this doesn't match Spanish usage in most Spanish speaking countries, as far as I see it in the media the French use a lot more formal language, so FSIs focus on that should match real usage quite well. Formal and informal standards can be very different depending on the language and of course FSI covers mostly formal language because it's meant for aspiring diplomats. In any case, FSI definitely doesn't adequately cover when to be informal and when to be formal, but to be honest that's so weird in French I don't think any course can sort out these rules! In movies I rarely find any logic to the formal and informal language usage at all.

I don't recall whether or not tutoiement is covered in the FSI phonetic course, but it's definitely covered in the main course.

As for the phonetic course-- it's definitely useful for practicing pronunciationn, but it's one of the most boring courses I've ever attempted, and this is coming from a fan of FSI (I've done 17 units of the main course). It's a little better than pimsleur for pronunciation because it will compare and contrast similar sounds to make sure you can recognize the two different sounds in use, but unlike pimsleur FSI won't teach you any of the vocab--they expect you to know it already.

My overall opinion: it's useful and I'd recommend trying it, but just know that it may bore you. Also, considering it doesn't really teach vocabulary--it just expects you to know vocab--then you may be better off using a different course first.

[Ingaræð]

I'll expand upon that quote of me a little...

I think FSI French Phonology is a pretty good course. It covers the basics of intonation, has minimal pairs (including comparisons of French and North American sounds), and provides a considerable amount of targeted speaking practice. I also think it tackles the French 'r' quite well. [Edit (2021): In hindsight, IMO it doesn't teach the 'r' correctly at all. I recommend A Practical Introduction to Phonetics by J.C. Catford for this instead - dedicated forum thread here.] Where I feel it's particularly lacking is its coverage of vowel sounds. As far as I can remember it introduces them all, but promptly 'simplifies' things by not using some of them for the remainder of the course, which in my opinion would only lead to problems in the long run if the user does no further work in this area. It could also have covered prosody and intonation in more depth. However, as this was intended to be a starter course, these 'deficiencies' may be covered in FSI French Basic (which I have yet to use). To follow on from Fortheo's comments, I personally did not find it boring. It doesn't teach much vocabulary, but then that is not the aim of this course. There are some vocabulary exercises however, and English translations are provided for the sentences used.

CLE's Phonétique progressive du français is extremely thorough in its coverage of phonemes (with extensive use of minimal pairs and indicators of mouth position)) and syllabic stress, prosody, intonation etc. One edition (possibly the original? ISBN: 209033880-6) even has a section on which areas might be the most problematic for the user, based on his/her native language. It is entirely in French, so a dictionary may be required depending on how much of the language is already known. However, I'm not sure whether the series provides enough exercises to fully automatise everything. If the CLE series only were used, it could be useful to do multiple repetitions of the exercises provided, or do some focused pronunciation practice with a course such as Assimil, for example (and by this I don't mean shadowing).

Overall, I think FSI French Phonology covers these areas better than your average French course, and it's free to boot. It should give the user a solid foundation to build upon. Phonétique progressive du français is very thorough indeed, but not perfect, and not free. If you are an absolute beginner, FSI will probably be the easier of the two to use. I would recommend using both, as I feel they complement one another very well.

Here's a link to a preview of Phonétique progressive du français intermédiare : http://widget.editis.com/cle/9782090381672. You can see previews of most of their other editions/publications by substituting the relevant ISBN in the url.

[BOLIO]

Thank you for the replies. I keep thinking French is a valuable language to learn. Whatever second L2(3) I choose, I want to really work on listening and pronunciation from the beginning.

I get a few compliments on my accent in Spanish as to it being clear. However, I feel I am playing catchup due to my lack of listening and speaking correctly from the beginning.

Thanks for the link and the recommendations for the other program.