Introduction

The object of this chapter is to compare the vowel systems of French and English, to identify the pronunciation problems that a native speaker of English may in principle encounter in the production of French vowels, and to propose a number of remedies to resolve these difficulties. In the next chapter, we shall focus on two specific aspects of French phonetics, vowel length and the distribution of mid and open vowels. Questions relating to nasal vowels and the so-called ‘mute e’ will be treated later, in two separate chapters (Chapters 5 and 6).

Stress and rhythm

Before we draw up an inventory of French and English vowels and embark on a detailed contrastive study, a few preliminary remarks are necessary concerning stress and rhythm in the two languages, because the fundamental differences separating English and French in this area are the source of a number of traits characterizing an English pronunciation of French and a French pronunciation of English.

By stress (‘accent’) is meant the effect of relative prominence that distinguishes one syllable as salient in relation to others. For example, in the English word photographer, the second syllable is stressed, the other three are not: phoTOgrapher. In the corresponding French word photographe, the last pronounced syllable is stressed, the other two are not: photoGRAPHe (the final e is not pronounced).