Introduction

In this chapter, we shall address questions purely internal to French concerning vowel length, the distribution of the mid vowels, and the distribution of the two as. From a pragmatic perspective, we shall also try to establish a number of useful correlations between the pronunciation of the mid and open vowels and their representations in the orthography.

Vowel length

It is a general phonetic fact across languages that, all else being equal, vowels are longer in front of voiced consonants than in front of voiceless consonants. For example, in English, the nucleus of the diphthong [at] is longer in ride and rise than in rite and rice. Likewise, in French, the vowel [a] is longer in rade ‘anchorage’ than in rate ‘spleen’. This type of distinction does not require any particular effort in the acquisition of English or French pronunciation, because it is a universal phenomenon.

There exist in French, however, specific cases of vowel lengthening which go beyond universal tendencies. As a rule, French vowels can be lengthened in this specific way only if they are both stressed (thus, normally in the final syllable of a word) and in a closed syllable.