Introduction

This chapter is devoted to the three French glides, [j, Ч, w] (miette [mjεt] ‘crumb’, muette [mЧεt] ‘mute’, mouette [mwεt] ‘seagull’). In particular, we shall focus on how the glides are represented in the orthography, on their distributional properties and their functional relation with the closed vowels [i, y, u], and on remedies for the pronunciation difficulties that the existence of [Ч] often creates for English-speaking students.

The front rounded glide [Ч]

There are two glides in English, [j] (yes [jεs]) and [w] (we [wi]). When learning French, then, the English speaker must learn to produce a third: [Ч]. The goal of this section is to facilitate the acquisition of this sound.

As already mentioned in Chapter 2, p. 30, [j] is the front unrounded glide that corresponds to the closed front unrounded vowel [i], [Ч] is the front rounded glide that corresponds to the closed front rounded vowel [y], and [w] is the back rounded glide that corresponds to the closed back rounded vowel [u] (see Table 7.1). Given these correspondences, it is not surprising to find, in connection with the existence of the glide [Ч], pronunciation problems similar to those due to the existence of the vowel [y] (see Chapter 3, p. 42), i.e. an inadequate pronunciation of [Ч] and in particular some confusion between [Ч] and [w].