French Video 2: The French Vowels

[@is88uu]

I have to say, this is the best way to learn pronunciation of a language. Lots of students do not emphasize the pronunciation, but they forget that sound is the origin of language. If someone cannot make the right sound, it is difficult to deliver the right information too.

[@thewolfgodoflight1559]

It seems so obvious, but people don’t do it

[@thewolfgodoflight1559]

When I took Spanish class, the only background I has was pronunciation, and I learned twice as fast as everyone else

[@TwistedThunderKittie]

Same. I know children learn by imitation and with justs sounds first, but I find it goes so much quicker if I can systematize and analyze a language through the IPA, and THEN learn vocab/grammar/spelling.

[@bernardoabf]

3:50 i->y 4:15 ɛ->œ 4:22 ɔ 4:51 e->ø 6:05 ã 6:25 ɛ~ 6:28 ɔ~

[@joseitoito]

This is what I needed. Thanks

[@davidzubiria3783]

You´re a hero

[@SonGoku-uv4pk]

Thank you. The video is confusing without this

[@TheStranger255]

It's the first time to see a French phonetic tutorial that I like. Thanks for sharing.

[@MrUidX]

Finally a quality video that actually focuses on how to make the sound with the tongue positions and proper IPA symbols! Thank you so much, this has been really helpful!

[@jackbaker7232]

I think these concepts and illustrations are invaluable ! For me 80% of learning pronunciation is knowing where I tongue should be. I just wish the narrator/teacher would slow down some, its like they are in a hurry to get through the lesson.

[@sachaweb]

Excellent of course, as it's difficult to find explanations on the physiological aspects of pronunciation elsewhere, and yet they're essential to most learners. I wish however that there was more of that on the nasal vowels. It should be something like: pull the back of the tongue further towards your throat and tighten your sinuses, so that some air flows towards your nose. Autrement, ceci est très apprécié et je me réjouis d'avance de lire le livre "Fluent Forever"!

[@jakethesnake95]

I'm currently learning Polish, which has 2 nasal vowels, ą and ę. My fluency in French helped me a lot when learning to pronounce them.

[@michaelfrazier7234]

I speck Bulgarian but have studied Persian and English in the past due to the alphabet differents with The cyrillic I fell in love with IPA quickly. When I start with French I was baffled with fact that no video used ipa and just made the sound and went on. This videos is a god send thank youMerci beaucoup

[@epona374]

Video approved by a French native speaker ! 1 of the best videos to learn the French sounds ! Brilliant idea to use IPA and compare the sounds of the 2 languages ;-) Nevertheless, nowadays there are not clear differences between the sounds of "pâte" & "patte" (there's only 1 unique "a" for most of Frenches!) and in most of the areas of France, no differences between the sounds of "queue" & "pelouse" !

[@skrivbordslampan6923]

Are all french vowels short?

[@thewolfgodoflight1559]

“Can’t” sounds kind of funny, that cracked me up

[@SQLBucketHatGirl]

This is exactly what i need. Merci beaucoup!

[@bkhoavo]

Sing a french song!

[@farawaykin]

I still don't understand all of it but this vid made my studying a bit easier, thanks. although I still think French is gonna kill me

[@phoebephoebe3037]

The tips on tongue positions for vowels are amazing! They help a lot. Thank you!

[@diegowilsonhuamanrodriguez492]

thank you so much ,Gabriel to know this really accelerate the learning process almost 75% .greetings from Peru

[@radio_annae]

Thank you a lot for the best and the most clear phonetics lessons :)

[@edwardfan3052]

The older I get, the more difficult I find it to distinguish between nuances in the pronunciation of certain vowels.

[@jakethesnake95]

Une merveilleuse introduction dans la phonétique du français. Ayant déjà un niveau élevé en français depuis très longtemps, je n'en ai pas besoin, mais je ne suis pas mal certain que cette série serait très utile pour les débutants!

[@callmeswivelhips8229]

WHY IS IT SO COMPLICATED!!! I want to learn French, but how in the world am I going to get a handle on all this pronunciation?

[@docholl93]

The french schwa has indeed the same quality of a french “eu” sound, the difference is “e” can be dropped most of the times while “eu” can’t. One thing, the open “o” as in “donne, homme, bloque” is usually unrounded, so that these words sound VEEERY close to how an American would pronounce “done, hum, bluck”

[@Mamonoui]

5:19 Actually, there are four nasal vowels not three, /ɛ̃/ /œ̃/ /ɑ̃/ /ɔ̃/ (you didn't say /œ̃/)

[@Onbehaard]

Interesting that the video only distinguished 3 nasal vowels. When I did French, I was taught there were 4 and was given the nmeonic "On en a un à la main". When I go to the South of France, I hear that they go further and disinguish "an" from "en", so that "en France" is said with different nasal vowels.

[@leplusgrandsoin8656]

hi, french filk here :) differences between un and main, or in and un are not made anymore in France but they still are different sounds in Belgium or Quebec (I can not hear them myself). I was never told there was any differences between en-an. Maybe it used to be but is no more :)

[@pierrebotella3603]

I am French (from Brittany) and I distinguish by speaking [œ̃] (un, eun) from [ɛ̃] (in, ain, ein ...). In the national media in France (radios, TV, etc.) for "un" I always hear [œ̃] and not [ɛ̃]. For me this sound [œ̃] is part of what is called standard French. A French word like "humble" in my opinion best represents the phoneme [œ̃] when compared with the pronunciation of the word "simple" ([ɛ̃]). In fact there are plenty of examples ("un instant", "un", "quelqu'un," chacun"," aucun "," jungle "," parfum "... where you can clearly hear the sound [œ̃ ] and not [ɛ̃]) It may all depend on the region, but I speak of so-called standard French that of the media.

[@gide5489]

@@leplusgrandsoin8656 Gros menteur.

[@MrMirville]

If you start with GA accent, french u is best approximated by English u as in occupy, education, where the "you" sound of English long u reduces to yw, where the w reduces to just a rounding of the mouth. It is actually now a more and more frequent vowel in AE. The closet thing to French eu is American er, ur or ir as in singer, burst, first with the tongue pointed towards the upper lip rather than to the front palate. When the final r is non rhotic (not grumbled) in GAE it is practically the same sound, which generally happens when that vowel if off the main stress, as in curfew. The muted e sound of French is the same as in the or behind. The more open œu as in oeuf is practically the same except that you can imitate the er sound as in verse in a non-rhotic accent of English.

[@latinar8558]

omg ,it’s useful,thanks a lot.I think the key to the perfect pronunciation is the right position of the tongue!!

[@mohamadaminabdolahzade1205]

[ø] is still unclear to me as a non-native English speaker, why soooo complicated vowels???

[@Jennie_Zhi_Tv]

Every student need to watch this video, exactly what i needed. Thanks to whoever came up with the wonderful ideas.

[@maikersanchezleon8686]

Excellent videos, I always follow your work. Only one thing I think it's important to highlight: these two sounds /ə/ and /ø/, aren't the same. Now that I have been studying french for a while I can notice the difference between them. And basically for the first one /ə/ your tongue stays low and your lips are kinda round but relax and ofc the pronunciation is quicker than the other sound.

[@FluentForeverApp]

Hello there! Thank you for the comment. We wish you continued success in learning French!

[@doraledesma9248]

This is so helpful for an English speaker trying to learn French! Thank you so much!

[@FluentForeverApp]

You're very welcome! We're happy to know this was helpful to you 😃

[@saladedefruit2529]

2:25 In Quebec, Pâte is prenounced with a low-pitch a

[@ramzy-6566]

Thank you, all of your video amazing.

[@FluentForeverApp]

We are glad to hear you like them!

[@Mary-np2cu]

Thank you so much for showing which sounds are shared with English and then moving on to ones slightly different from English. It helps it stick in my brain and find the sounds so much easier! Will be rewatching this one a lot

[@FluentForeverApp]

Happy to help!

[@espiritufati]

The visual placement of articulation is soo helpful I've been looking in so many places, thank you!!❤

[@FluentForeverApp]

Happy to help!

[@andyedwards9011]

I don't know where the heck you heard people pronoucnce shoe as [ʃʊu] (Australia or something??), it doesn't seem to match your American accent. Also you pronounced foot weirdly when explaining that :P

[@giantandomniscientlevitati8969]

lol, I'm french trying to learn how to pronounce the english vowels, I'm such a criminal

[@FluentForeverApp]

😀 It's perfectly ok! We just hope that you enjoyed the video and found it useful!🙂

[@MarcoVenustus]

That open nasal E sounds a lot like "ã" to me. So to all Brazilians. Can someone help me? I can't say it right.

[@MarcoVenustus]

I'm managing to speak it by pronouncing an open "e" and then making it nasal. I think it's working, but I'll only know when I speak with a french person.

[@evermorevictorious2742]

I agree with you.

[@LeandroMeneghin]

There are even more nasal vowels in portugues and, in addiction to it, there are nasal dithongs and trithongs. The pronunciation is quite similar to French, cause the M and N arent pronounced after vowels.

[@Mercure250]

Be careful with English vowels though, as accents can be really different from country to country...and even from region to region, especially in England. For example, the phoneme /ʌ/ being realized [ʌ] is not universal in the English-speaking world.

[@Pi3C35]

Excellent video, but I was actually looking for a video with a real person pronouncing them so I could mimic them. Technology is a blessing, but I miss human interaction.

[@caninbar]

It's curious how you say the 'um' in parfum is pronounced with the E nasal sound, while other dictionaries say it is pronounced with the oe nasal. Furthermore, I understand the o with the line through it as a 'longer' sounding or stressed schwa sound. The schwa sound is unstressed. I've also noticed the nasal E sound as sounding more rounded in many native French speakers like the guy on the InnerFrench videos.

[@LeoUnlion]

Quelques erreurs : insect -> "insecte" éviér -> "évier"

[@tatjy93]

Finally! I have been searching for a video that uses linguistics techniques! Merci beaucoup

[@taylorgordon4632]

i love the phonetic instruction!! I am majoring in Spanish (yes, I speak it), but I am taking a French elective (always wanted to learn it to go to Paris someday) and I took a phonetics class in Spanish and it helped me with the dialects and such I have a video project for french due and I am happy I found this!

[@patriciacharnet]

une très bonne vidéo explicative des phonèmes francophones - j'aime beaucoup la série de Gabriel Wyner et les recommande chaleureusement à tous mes étudiants anglophones - ayant le dialect parisien, je dois dire que je ne fais pas souvent la différence entre un brin d'herbe et un homme brun ou la patte du chien et j'aime les pâtes italiennes - très bon explicatif - je renvoie souvent mes étudiants britanniques sur les pages de Gabriel Wyner - une très belle contribution à l'apprentissage du français par un maître de la phonologie de la langue française - très beau travail!

[@szymonbaranowski8184]

nasal o and nasal a are really hard to distinguish despite being native sounds in polish too haha i heard in every nasal a nasal o or your versions are so close to each other lol insect also doesn't sound as nasal e hear

[@FluentForeverApp]

It gets easier with practice! 😀

[@roisela3441]

is the eu sound in the french words "heure" and "leur" and "veux" really is the same? sounds a bit diffirent.. can someone help?

[@FluentForeverApp]

Hi Roi! The sounds of these words should be different. It might help by using an online phonetic dictionary that can confirm the sounds for you but you should be able to differentiate. 😊

[@roisela3441]

​@@FluentForeverApp thank you very much, i do have one more question if you could spare the time, in the alphabet french song kzbin.info/www/bejne/a6nYi6t9nteKh6s when they sing the letter 'e' (singing the name of the letter), it sounds like the eu sound in your video, are they really the same sound or am i hearing it wrong? i am trying to get an answer to this question for the last year.. i asked a ton of people but no one can give me a straight answer, i will be forever in your debt if you can help. So to sum up, the question is: Is the name of the letter 'e' equivalent to the sound "eu" in the words "queue" and "feu".

[@jimnewton4534]

Did you skip the open o sound which is difficult for English speakers? Asin rose?

[@gladysma308]

3:36 rounded vowels 5:20 nasal vowels 6:20 review

[@helenchen4725]

Is there a fourth nasal vowels - œ̃ and how to pronounce it

[@gide5489]

Yes, there are a lot of BS on YT on this pronouncitation, including this video, but you can find a few ones that explain it correctly. If you know how to pronounce the "u" sound, the mouth position, forwards, is the same.

[@stoiclady3529]

Very wise and insightful way of teaching. It suffices to say it's my fourth video in a roll, and as if it was not enough you have a very charming voice! Merci!

[@blanchehermine]

I've read that [oe] and [ə] are similar, not [ø] and [ə]: the [oe] is long, but [ə] is always short. But they both are rounded [ɛ]. Whereas ø sound is rounded [e]. And there are also forth nasal sound [œ̃].

[@andrecastanho3186]

He probably hasn't mentioned the fourth nasal vowel because there's a discussion nowadays among experts that states the vowel [œ̃] is also disappearing in modern French. I've been studying French and this vowel is not anymore distinguished from the vowel [̃ɛ̃] by many speakers in France (including the region of Paris), specially the younger ones. So, words that in the past would be pronounced differently, like "brin" /bʁɛ̃/ and "brun" /bʁœ̃/, are now pronounced the same. But this is not widespread yet.

[@friedrichnietzsche7805]

I see you are a native US citizen. How's your French accent though?

[@thisisangellorenzo]

4:17 4:54 6:10 6:17

[@mikedragonlord07]

Thank you very much for making this excellent video. I was having some troubles trying to figure out how to pronounce that œ but now it looks so simple.

[@joshuapommet6113]

can you give me the ipa for immature in francais? I cant find it on the wikitionary

[@chilipepper2696]

your videos have been amazingly helpful! thank you!!!

[@mariarobinson4619]

One sound at the TIME will really help me!!

[@betina...]

Thanks a lot for this video! Very clear and helpful.

[@redfruit1993z]

I read a book of psychology and it said that English could never pronounce the u of aigu. Just like the French has difficulties with th. Don't know where is the psychology in that.

[@M_Julian_TSP]

Red Fruit Pure bullshit. I'm French and I can perfectly pronounce the th sound (which is way easier to pronounce than other English sounds imo). On the other hand I have some English speaking friends that can perfectly pronounce the French U.

[@szymonbaranowski8184]

how do you know which e read which way in French lol

[@FluentForeverApp]

Hi! 🙂 There are a few rules for the letter E in French. You can find more information about this here: grammar.collinsdictionary.com/pronunciation-guide-fr/letter-e

[@tsubasa123ist]

Omg i cant differentiate between oe and e upside down help me

[@RzSnR]

Just the a's are confusing lol

[@brianrahadi5469]

Now i can spell 'tu' properly :D

[@rdd90]

Very helpful video, merci! 5:51 So what's the difference between nom and non? Are they homophones?

[@blaiddrunner348]

David Dunphy yes they are

[@yordysanchez2991]

I really love the explanation

[@FluentForeverApp]

We're happy you loved the videos! 🙂

[@maikosot]

FABULOUS VIDEO!!!!, MERCI

[@FluentForeverApp]

We're happy you found this video helpful!

[@jilliangoodwin4287]

This is excellent thank you!!!!!!

[@TheShamansQuestion]

Tres bien! Merci! Great video for learning my French.

[@paulthomas281]

Aren't there 4 nasal vowels in French? That is what I've always seen and heard in lessons on French phonology.

[@FluentForeverApp]

Hi Paul, that's correct! The 4th one is mainly used in the South of France so mastering the 3 covered in this video is absolutely enough to be able to nail French pronunciation. We hope this helps clarify!

[@gide5489]

@@FluentForeverApp French is also spoken in Québec, Belgium, Switzerland, Africa, DOM-TOM... Limiting the correct pronounciation of the un sound to south of France is wrong. Why teaching something if you don't want to do it correctly?

[@FluentForeverApp]

Indeed, French is spoken in many countries. At the time of publishing these videos, we focused on the standard Parisian accent from France. Our point above is that the fourth nasal sound is most common in France, in the south, and therefore is the reason it is not featured in this video. We have not covered other French accents found across the world in our pronunciation training videos as there would be too many to cover. That's not to say they are any less important! We've just focused on the accent most requested by our learners. We hope this helps to clarify 😊

[@gide5489]

@@FluentForeverApp It was certainly too big an effort to respect French language considering 4 nasal sounds instead of 3! Btw I have my family in Paris and they all pronounce the un sound correctly. And listen to the song "Jour un" from Louane who is from the extreme North of France. She sings Jour Un not Jour In. Or Saez from Savoie, is it the South for you?

[@FluentForeverApp]

We understand your concerns and will pass this on to your language development team for review. Thank you for the feedback!

[@luisperezmedina6724]

Hi! I thought there were 4 nasal vowels? I thought the "un/um" spellings made the [œ~ ] sound. Is this not the case in standard French?

[@Sarangsa_96]

My dictionary shows that there are four nasal vowels as well...

[@M_Julian_TSP]

Most of the French doesn't pronounce the /œ̃/ sound, they pronounce /ɛ̃/ instead. I personally differenciate "un" and "in" (it depends on the region).

[@aarongj1563]

this is the best french pronunciation video I've found.

[@FluentForeverApp]

Happy to hear that! 😊

[@jt1962]

Interesante forma de aprender las vocales

[@marcellocapone4925]

I like the sound of those shortcuts. Thanks.

[@MsSkuzi]

It's so informative, and it simplifies so much!

[@antonioneto9681]

Excellent !

[@wtfcomments2585]

shat?

[@stevo728822]

Yes, shat.

[@doctorstrange2750]

So much helpful!

[@alexwentoutside6843]

it is soooo helpful for my Philology exam !

[@FluentForeverApp]

😍

[@IamChandEvil]

Shat. Haha

[@wenkai2907]

I like it Thank you~

[@jumbuinruthmaya128]

I love this

[@SnakeyJakob]

It would be awesome if there were a visualization of "rounding your lips"

[@notnono5342]

Jake Ramsey you asked this ages ago but it helps to say o silently. that's most likely the position