Le groupe français 2016 - 2023 Les Voyageurs

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PeterMollenburg
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:00 am

Speakeasy wrote:....while French orthography is frequently the subject of well-deserved criticism, English orthography is not much better.


Indeed. In fact, in my experience French pronunciation is predictable, provided one has thoroughly learned to associate the phonetics with the various orthographic representations of each phoneme. And that's actually not that difficult, really. There are few exceptions in French once one has the phonetics-spelling under control. Most of the exceptions (unpredictable pronunciation) in French in my experience come from foreign introduced (often English) words relatively recent arrivals in the language.

Those who don't agree have either not learned enough French yet or did not/ have not learned to associate the phonetics with the various spellings as already mentioned. Oiseau(x) may look daunting to the uninitiated, or inexperienced, but in reality it's just two syllables [wazo].

English is nowhere near as predictable. Like French (and the majority of languages), it has an orthographic system a.k.a. spelling system which seeks to represent the phonemes of the language. However, as Speakeasy has noted, it is far from perfect. Unlike French it is not predictable, in that, if you work out how a certain phoneme is represented in writing (even if this is involves several variations) it should become predictable and be written in one of the few predictable ways elsewhere. Nope, English is full of inconsistencies and exceptions where pronunciation is concerned.

French may have tons of grammatical exceptions, but phonetically it is not what the uninitiated may believe. oi is [wa] as in je vois, on voit, une oie, une bte, quelque fois, moi, toi, des oiseaux, etc. Pretty predictable. [o] is des oiseaux, eau, un seau, haut, bientôt. Might be more. Again, pretty predictable stuff. In other words, don't let the succession of vowels frighten you, it's all pretty workable.

Almost all phonemes in French are predictable. Again, English is not predictable like this. Okay, it is, but then it's not because there are inconsistencies and numerous exceptions (that French does not have). What Speakeasy mentioned already, illustrates this. There's no reason serious or experienced learners should be finding French spelling unpredictable.

On the other hand, it can be tricky sometimes knowing how to spell French word you're hearing for the first time as, like my examples of oi show above, the same sound can be written several ways. Anyway... walks away holding a pancarte (or pencarte?) - in English, a placard with "Stop the French bashing" scrawled on it - "English is worse!".
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jeffers
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby jeffers » Fri Mar 13, 2020 8:25 am

Speakeasy wrote: Here is an example of the vagaries English orthography: “ghoti” could be pronounced as “fish” under the following rules (or exceptions to rules) …

gh = "f" as in enough
o = "i" as in women
ti = "sh" as in nationi


That's a familiar example, but I've never liked it because actually the "rules" aren't being followed. gh only = "f" at the end of a word, never at the beginning. ti only = "sh" when followed by 2 or 3 specific pairs of letters (on, an, and maybe one or two I can't think of).

That's not to disagree that English orthagraphy is difficult. For example, I used the word "only" in both cases with a bit of trepidation. :lol:
Last edited by jeffers on Sun Apr 12, 2020 2:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tomgosse
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby tomgosse » Fri Mar 13, 2020 3:24 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:
Speakeasy wrote:....while French orthography is frequently the subject of well-deserved criticism, English orthography is not much better.

English is nowhere near as predictable. Like French (and the majority of languages), it has an orthographic system a.k.a. spelling system which seeks to represent the phonemes of the language. However, as Speakeasy has noted, it is far from perfect. Unlike French it is not predictable, in that, if you work out how a certain phoneme is represented in writing (even if this is involves several variations) it should become predictable and be written in one of the few predictable ways elsewhere. Nope, English is full of inconsistencies and exceptions where pronunciation is concerned.


This is my favorite example of English words using the letters ough. As native speaker of English I find this difficult.

Though he hadn’t thoroughly thought it through, the ploughman felt that sleeping rough by the lough had made him hiccough and cough.
This sentence contains nine different pronunciations of ough
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Rejoignez notre groupe français ! Les Voyageurs

Speakeasy
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Mar 13, 2020 4:26 pm

tomgosse wrote: This is my favorite example of English words using the letters ough. As native speaker of English I find this difficult.

Though he hadn’t thoroughly thought it through, the ploughman felt that sleeping rough by the lough had made him hiccough and cough.

This sentence contains nine different pronunciations of ough
Absolutely fabulous! I suggest (quite seriously) that you create an “English Study Group” and that you post this example on the homepage. Although such a group might attract novice learners of English, it could also serve as a place for native English speakers and advanced learners alike to expose their frustrations with the language and discuss matters touching upon English usage which frequently show up in the "General Language Discussion" and "Practical Questions and Advice" sub-forums.
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chove
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby chove » Sun Apr 12, 2020 2:52 am

Any advice for getting started with pronouncing/spelling French?
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DaveAgain
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Apr 12, 2020 10:26 am

There's an Easter service on the France.tv website.

https://www.france.tv/actualites-et-soc ... aques.html

En Eurovision. Célébré dans le temple protestant de Martigny (Suisse). La célébration est dirigée par les pasteurs Pierre Boismorand, Hélène Küng, Agnès Thuégaz et le diacre Armand Bissat. Musique et direction du choeur : Léonard Muller.
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jeffers
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby jeffers » Sun Apr 12, 2020 2:40 pm

DaveAgain wrote:There's an Easter service on the France.tv website.

https://www.france.tv/actualites-et-soc ... aques.html

En Eurovision. Célébré dans le temple protestant de Martigny (Suisse). La célébration est dirigée par les pasteurs Pierre Boismorand, Hélène Küng, Agnès Thuégaz et le diacre Armand Bissat. Musique et direction du choeur : Léonard Muller.



Whenever I try to watch anything on the France TV website with French subtitles on, the subtitles are around 15-20 seconds behind the speaker! Is this a problem with the website itself, or an issue at my end? I'm using Chrome to watch.

I'd really like to watch a lot more French TV with French subtitles, but that delay just doesn't work for me!
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

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DaveAgain
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Apr 12, 2020 3:12 pm

jeffers wrote:

Whenever I try to watch anything on the France TV website with French subtitles on, the subtitles are around 15-20 seconds behind the speaker! Is this a problem with the website itself, or an issue at my end? I'm using Chrome to watch.

I'd really like to watch a lot more French TV with French subtitles, but that delay just doesn't work for me!
No I get that too with Firefox on a Mac.

Other subtitle options are Arte.tv (with Arte France productions) e.g. Le dessous les cartes, or the live stream of TV5Monde.
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jeffers
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Re: Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

Postby jeffers » Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:22 pm



It looks like La pronunciation française pour de vraie is difficult to find nowadays, which is a shame because it's quite good. I bought a copy from Amazon about 5 years ago, but as it is all in French it requires a basic understanding of the language, so I left it on the shelf. I pulled it out near the beginning of the last Super Challenge and did the first few lessons. I found the lessons interesting, but it was clear the course was designed to be a CD-ROM (in an age when CD-ROMs were all but gone), and so some things did not work the way Penny Sewell said they would in the videos. One thing that I found surprising is that it begins with rhythm rather than pronunciation, but especially for understanding natural speech in French that is actually a useful place to start. I intend to pick it up again during the upcoming Super Challenge.

I am currently working on spelling by doing dictations using French Without Toil (the old Assimil course). I've been learning French for a good 7-8 years now, but I recently realized that when I try to write I make loads of errors on basic things. For example, I might write "tu habite" instead of "tu habites" because they're both pronounced the same way. Dictation is a good way to develop both your listening skills and your spelling.
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)


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