Lesson - French Sounds (Pronunciation) - Introduction
 

One of the benifits of being a substitiute teacher is that you are exposed to a wide variety of educational settings and teachers. In a recent two-week assignment in a high school, I had the fortune of having my desk in the teacher's office placed across that of a French-language teacher. I was able to borrow some instructional materials, including a set of old lessons I hope to reproduce here in a series of posts about French pronunciation.

For me (since I don't feel I have time to learn the whole language) I am most concerned with being able to look at French text and be able to pronounce it correctly (mainly so I can learn Alizée lyrics and be able to sing along :) ). However, these lessons should be helpful to any English-as-a-first-language beginning student of French, which is why I am reproducing them here. They have certainly been helpful to me.

All of the lessons are extracted excerpts (taken word for word) from a small and old book of duplication masters for an old printing machine that was in use in schools prior to photocopy machines! I intend to reproduce the text of the lessons here but not the flashcard-like practice dittos. I'm almost certian the book is no longer in print. Even so, I know the copyright issues may be a little bit "iffy" and I will ultimately leave the judgement call to Brad; if he feels their presence is unwarranted I will understand if they are removed, no hard feelings. In anycase, APA citation information is below:
Badino, M. J. (1968). French sounds. St. Louis, Missouri: Milliken Publishing Co.

The lessons in this series are:
1. French Sounds
2. au, eau, oi, ez, er
3. Final Consonants that are Pronounced
4. More French Consonants
5. French Nasal Vowels
6. Open o and Closed o – The Letter u
7. Accent Marks; é, è
8. Vowel Combinations
9. c, s, g, gn, j, x
10. Endings; Remaining Sounds
11. Syllabication; Unstable e
12. Elision, Linking

I hope others find these useful! I will try to post a new lesson each day or every other day until finished, but we'll see how schedules interfere.

Thanks! I too am compelled to learn French & for the same reason

Thanks a bunch man! Its very helpful :) I'd really like to learn french properly, but I'm just too lazy to make an effort :( I've always thought that english will do. Before october this year, it was absolutely impossible to even think about learning a language, not to mention french. Any subject related to french or France in general has a totally different tone to it nowadays :wub:

CFH,
Thank you for all you and the others are doing.
I am copying down each lesson to place it in a folder. I have no one to practice with, but I am going over the lessons as they are written.
The memorization is what will take the most time for me.
I have no where to go but up and if it takes me years to learn French, I will stick with it.

Great job CFHollister!
Just a little problem: you should edit all your posts in each Lesson thread and manually add yourself a space character in all your lines containing lots of dots. vBulletin randomly adds one to avoid too long lines and it does it even inside words, which gives something wrong as a result!
For example this:
Pau.....................beau...................aus si
faut....................seau....................au tel
maux...................Meaux.................drape au
chaud.................chapeau...............bateau x
should be:
Pau..................... beau................... aussi
faut.................... seau.................... autel
maux.................. Meaux................. drapeau
chaud................. chapeau............... bateaux

Thanks a lot aFrenchie! Those extra spaces were really irritating but I couldn't figure out why they were there or how to get rid of them. I just wish I could tab over to make my columns like I do when I first type up each lesson in word. I'll take care of it.

merci cfhollister

Fed up with this CFHollister?

Not in the least, it's just that I actually got some work this week (as a substitute teacher I never really know when I'm gonna be working). I try to get a new one up every 2-3 days; I know I'm behind. Though, it's nice to see that someone's keeping close enough tabs to notice when I have posted a new one recently :)

I just want to post to tell you that I haven'e forgotten about this series. I just haven't had the time to type up the new lessons, with my current teaching position and all. New installments will be returning by early March at the latest. Sorry guys :o