If French is your native language, you may be using the French
“sound” system when you speak English.
You may not have learned much about this if you studied English as a
foreign language. Some of these
differences won’t have great impact; some may give you a charming accent, but
others can interfere with your ability to communicate.
You may get feedback that listeners can't understand you, or they may ask you to repeat yourself. You may find this upsetting; French speakers are very proud of their language and enjoy the way it sounds. Perhaps you've gotten feedback
at work that your speaking style seems rather intense, ardent, forceful, or impassioned, even though you don't want to communicate these attitudes. You may have heard that your sound is monotonous or staccato. These, and other problems, result from applying what you know and use successfully in French, to
English, where it doesn't work as well. You are applying a set of French “sound rules” to English, which has its own sound rules.
Some common interference points between French and English:
- Vowel differences, in particular the most forward vowels, but also the nasal vowels
- A few consonant differences, such as [th] for /s/ and /f/; and how we create [r]
- General sound production (we create our sounds differently)
- Stress placement at the word level is different
- Rhythm of the languages differs
A potential source of distraction for your listeners is a basic difference in intonation; where we must our emphasis when we make statements. Intonation
and sentence stress carry layers of meaning or speaker attitudes that are not
conveyed in the words themselves. Your listeners may be waiting for those cues and not hearing them.
In our work together, we will diagnose your current pronunciation
habits, define our goals, determine your skills and knowledge in target areas, and
create a curriculum that guides your accent reduction coursework and leads you
to a better sound in English.