TEFL Rabat

There are many advantages that french people have in learning english. The biggest advantage being that the languages share a common heritage. Much of the english vocabulary comes from the french language, having been brought to england in 1066 with William the Conqueror. But despite the similarities in vocabulary, our ways of pronouncing are vastly different. Many problems arise for the Francophone wanting to pronounce english correctly. Pronunciation problems arise because of the habits formed since childhood regarding the way one shapes one’s mouth when speaking. That is why young children can learn languages without accents, their mouths are more flexible. The french mouth has a difficult time pronouncing a number of english sounds. One of the most difficult sounds for a french person to pronounce is the english “th”. This sound does not exist in french. The action of putting one’s tongue between one’s teeth and making a sound is unknown to a Francophone. It feels very awkward to them, they don’t like it. Much repetition and practice is needed to learn how to make this sound correctly. Often, when a french person speaks in english, the “th” sound comes out like a “z”. The word “the” sounds like “za”, “this” sounds like “zis”. And there is no way for them to make a distinction between the voiced and unvoiced “th”. It all comes out the same for most french speakers. Thankfully for Francophones, Anglophones are quite familiar with this tendency and can understand what is being communicated. Another common mistake in pronunciation for french speakers is the way they pronounce the short i sound in words such as ship, hit, slip. The short i sound doesn’t exist in the french language. The usual occurrence is for a Francophone to replace the short i sound with a long e sound because that is how the letter i is pronounced in the french language. The word “is” is pronounced “ease”. The word “ship” is pronounced “sheep”. But still, most Anglophones, when hearing these mistakes can understand what the Francophone is trying to say. However there is one major pronunciation problem that can cause communication difficulties. This is the letter H. The Francophone leaves off the aspirated h sound when it needs to be produced. In the french language, the letter h in the beginning of a word is silent. The name Hélène in french sounds like the name Ellen to the Anglophone. The word hélicoptère in french is pronounced élicoptère. So because french speaking people have the habit of dropping the h in their mother tongue, they carry this habit into english. This can cause problems in english. If they try to say “I hate you”, it comes out “I ate you”. But on the other hand, Francophones will unknowingly add an aspirated h sound in front of a word that begins with a vowel if preceded by a word that terminates with a vowel. In english when this happens we place a slight pause before pronouncing the second word. “Let’s go out to the cinema.” Between “go” and “out” the Anglophone separates the words with an almost unperceivable pause. french speakers don’t have this habit. Their words always flow from one word to the next. They make what is called ‘liaisons’ between words. We also make liaisons in english. For example, when pronouncing “my girl”, an Anglophone will pronounce and carry the y sound just until it connects with the g sound. But in english, we place a slight separation if one word ends with a vowel sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound. french people do not know how to do this. They automatically place an aspirated “h” sound in between the vowels to create a liaison that does not exist. The phrase “Let’s go out to the cinema.” becomes “Let’s go hout to the cinema.” They do this automatically without thinking. So a french speaker has to learn how to add the h sound where it is needed and to drop an h sound where it is not needed. Another english sound that is very difficult for the french speaker is the english r. A french r is made in the back of the throat. The english r comes from the front of the mouth, with the lips slightly puckered and rounded and the tongue elevated. french speakers have difficulty shaping their mouth to make the english r sound. They tend to pronounce the french r instead. In addition one area of pronunciation that tends to be a difficulty for the french speaker is in the area of syllable accents. In french, most words that are more than one syllable in length take the accent at the end of the word. english is not like this. In english, the name Jacki finds the stress on the first syllable, like most two syllable words. french people pronounce this name with the stress on the second syllable. In the sentence “I am going to the store,” an Anglophone would put the accent on the first syllable of the word “going”. A Francophone would read that sentence and say “going” with the second syllable stressed. Although this difference in pronunciation makes it evident that the speaker isn’t a native speaker, it doesn’t usually cause communication problems. There are other pronunciation difficulties for french speakers, but the most obvious ones have been covered. The french speaker has one major advantage over other nationalities when speaking english. Anglophones love to hear english spoken with a french accent. We forgive all kinds of language mistakes when it comes out of a french mouth. We can be very forgiving because of stereotypes we hold to. When one hears a french accent an english speaker suddenly thinks of vacations in paris and romance. But for the Francophone wanting to pronounce english correctly, he/she has a lot of work to do.