How to Pronounce All of the Most Difficult Sounds in French (R, U, EU, L, LL, nasal sounds)
2024 ж. 15 Мам.
33 534 Рет қаралды
This video is a compilation of all of the most difficult sounds to pronounce in French and the methods I used for learning them. The video covers mouth shape and the letters/sounds R, U, EU, L, LL, and nasal sounds.
Use the timestamps below to skip to any particular letters or sounds that interest you most. Hope this is helpful in your French language journey!
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:14 Why Learn Pronunciation from a Non-Native Speaker
01:22 Mouth Shape English vs French
03:37 Letter U
05:26 Nasal Sounds
06:37 EU Sound
07:47 Letter R
09:36 Letter L
10:56 LL Sound
11:34 EU + IL(L) Sound
12:22 Pronouncing Écureuil (Squirrel)
12:52 Outro
#french #learnfrench #frenchpronunciation #frenchlanguage #frenchtips #frenchforbeginner
I'm a french native speaker and I never realized the sound "eu" made your diaphragm move ! You have a very good pronunciation, also your explanations show you have given it a lot of thought and thus can explain it I think better than the natives can. I could never !
Thank you so much! I really appreciate this feedback 🫶
Same, agreed 100%!!!
Based on your stuck up attitude you are probably French Canadian.
Same in German, many languages and also French try to avoid the glottal stop in most cases, German does the opposite - the glottal stop is a natural part of the pronunciation. Many foreign speakers pronounce everything correctly except the glottal stop, which sounds very strange. However, I never saw this being taught in schools. Also true in the opposite direction - none of my English teachers ever mentioned that one important thing for not sounding German is to never do the glottal stop. Also in pronunciation notation is the glottal stop often omitted.
@@royaventurera Are you Persian?
Damn, I'm French and watched a lot of your short videos, I've always thought you were a french native faking the American accent! Congrats
Wow what a compliment! Thank you so much 🫶🫶
You can tell she's native US and not french tho...
@@milantehrandubai did you even read the comment
Derpy @@milantehrandubai
@@elliotarundella7581 Did you even understand his reply though?
I’ll probably get lambasted for admitting this but I’m on a 500+ day streak on Duolingo and am realizing now how limited it is, particularly with phonetics and phonemes. Thanks for being one of the “next” steps in my concerted effort to learn French!
Duo is very good as a supplement..you still need to do your own practice/research though
Firstly, congratulations on the streak. It means that for over 500 days, you have done some French study. And doing study everyday is key. The problem is you're not getting enough French. You will get vastly more French watching a 15 minute French podcast, than 15 minutes Duolingo study. (15 minutes = 2000 words more or less). The problem is that you will probably not understand someone talking in French for 15 minutes unless it's at your level (this can be extremely discouraging). I would recommend - Continue Duolingo (as it will help with motivation). Then 15 to 30 minutes of French comprehensible input (google and youtube search this term) every day. Slowly, you will begin to hear the patterns in the language and understand more and more. It is estimated by 1000 hours (1500 hours) you will be fairly fluent. (not native). Bear in mind, this will take 3 years at 1 hour per day. However, as your French improves, you will become more comfortable with more difficult input (eg Netflix series etc) and can easily replace your English tv watching with French. Lastly, if I am going to watch a show in English anyway (not part of my French study), I often watch it in French and put on English subtitles. I don't include this in my study time, but I am still getting input.
I've studied phonetics, and here is my tip for "u": try saying eeeeee and as you're saying it, round/ purse your lips. In phonetics, French u is considered the "rounded" version of "i," and eu is the rounded version of e.
Exactly. Looking at a vowel chart they are the rounded/unrounded equivalents.
this works! It became easier for me to pronounce this correctly when I learned Haitian Creole, which generally does not differentiate between the French "i" (eeeee) and the French "u"
J’ai aussi étudié la phonétique, la phonologie et l’orthoépie, et je suis de votre avis.
Le a de pâte et le un de brun sont en train de disparaître du français hexagonal.
Le R, en revanche, ne fait pas de différence qu’il soit apical ou uvulaire, et il tend à s’ amuïr en hexagonal.
I’m a native French-speaker from Switzerland and also a certified french language teacher (FLE). You’re French is absolutely mind-blowing ! Your prononciation is close to perfect (99% native like). Can’t wait to show your video to my students, so inspirational !
If you can say "l'association des serruriers de Rueil-Malmaison" three times in succession, you've truly arrived.
I just tried now. I haven’t arrived
kessé ça rueil-malmaison?
@@roe_kUn patelin d’Ile-de-France
Not only do you have excellent French pronunciation, your English with the French accent is absolutely beautiful.
Thank you sm ☺️
I’m a native french speaker from Canada and I get ask all the time how to pronounce this and that by anglophones and most of the time my answer is “it’s just something you know because you know”. You’re right, when you grow up speaking a language it is sometimes harder to really explain it to others.
OMG, I've needed this video for so long! I'm a native English speaker from the Seattle area and have been studying French on and off for almost twenty years now (since 9th grade) and I KNOW my pronunciation is terrible (your short video on speaking French in France for the first time... this is me, lol), but I just never had any of these lessons on how to actually make the sounds. Please make more of these! Also, I love all your videos! I just stumbled on your channel today and binge watched everything!
Thank you sooo much! I’m glad to hear how helpful this is and that you like my channel. Sounds like we have a lot in common too😊
Your English/American descriptions of how to move your mouth for French is so incredibly helpful! (And btw you still smile a lot even with the French shape of your mouth! You’re so cute!)
I agree - learning pronunciation from a non native speaker makes a lot of sense. Your tip about the shape of the mouth is great. I had not thought of it before, but you are so correct. Even trying to speak English with a closed mouth makes the sounds so different.
Honestly the best explanation of french phonetic.
Thank you! That means a lot 🫶
Please put some more of these educational videos. Much appreciate your courses...😊
Thanks for the feedback! I’m definitely working on making more of them. Please let me know if you have any specific requests 😊
Hopefully it will help everyone who needs help. For those who try to learn and speak French do not forget that you don't have to sound perfect or to speak perfect French. Accents are not a bad thing. Mistakes are not a big deal. I am French and I do not care AT ALL if foreigners have an accent or make mistakes or misuse a word or don't know everything about my language. It is absolutely fine. Most French will actually be suprised by your level. We do not expect you to speak like a native speaker. So just breathe and feel free to be you. Most French speakers do not even master their own language.
Yes! This is absolutely a great reminder too and applies to all languages 🫶
Wow! I’ve worked for two French firms and spent a good deal of time in France. Girl you can do a French accent that is amazingly real! Great job teaching pronunciation which is critical to having French folks understand you.
Yes, please, please make more of these videos! I'm a 40 year old adult trying to learn, and your video helped so much! This might sound weird, but I'm also from Western Washington, and it's encouraging and comforting coming from someone fluent in our neck of the woods...our accent, culture, humor, etc.
Ayo! Ditto, or pretty damn close. 44ish/french/oregon Good luck! Enchanté
So glad to hear it’s helpful! PNW French speakers united 🤝
That is fantastic Roya. Extremely helpful. French pronunciation is so difficult to get right. Here is a summary (hope you don’t mind) (Use smaller mouth than English) ======================= U - Monkey sound + ew - (so gross) Nasal - eg Pa(IN) - Basketball buzzer R - (hawk up a loogie) Exaggerated practice L - Tongue further back than English (top tongue middle roof) LL - Y sound
These are difficult letters for English speakers. I am a native Dutch speaker and we have all the exact same sounds you taught in French in Dutch as well (except the nasal ones). What is most difficult for Dutch speakers in French is s/ss/ch sounds. For example, trying not to pronouce national like nachonal.
My favorite part about learning French in college were these sounds. My prof would point to them on the wall with a stick and the whole class would be making these noises in unison and it was amazing! As an American with a passion for the French language I feel like I have just found a friend! I am a little rusty but I'm still good enough I am back to practicing and I subscribed to you! I used to teach these sounds to kids too!
I never even realized I was changing my mouth shape when I change languages. Cool.
Hi Roya, would you do a video recounting your journey towards becoming fluent in French (and passing the DELF B2 test). When did you start studying French, how long did that take you, did you take group or individual classes, what tools did you use, how many hours did you spend per day studying and what helped you master each area of the language (reading, writing, listening comprehension). And how did you master “everyday French” vs textbook French.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’d be happy to go through my process. I’m wondering what elements to include that would be most helpful for people - I’m happy to tell the full story but I’ll need to think on it a bit
You are so angelic, Roua! Angelic face, voice and good will. This was excellent! Such talent! You do have THE best pronunciation, as close as I have ever heard to native in an American. Yes please, do an entire series! Save French ears! 😅 Thank you for sharing your gifts!
I didn't have any specific interest in learning French but I love your videos! I watched the whole thing! So fascinating!! ❤
This is really helpful!! Thank you for sharing!
This was so incredibly helpful! Thank you!
Merci Beaucoup! You are so so helpful! I just had a French lesson today and I mentioned to my tutor that I adore your accent. Plus some of your postings are so so funny. I am a fan!
I am very happy to have found your video. I was born in Montreal, QC but raised in Ontario. I am in my sixties and am now living in Quebec. Your tips on how to shape your mouth is one of the most valuable tools needed for pronunciation.
I like the Quebecois accent
Also another suggestion: a video on how to improve intonation when speaking french? Even a quick 60 second short would be amazing, tysm ❤
Great idea!
FYI, her intonation is sometimes slightly off, though much better than most non natives. (Her vowels are perfect). A good idea in any language is to listen to nursery rhymes, which do give babies a sense of rhythm, and to listen to a lot of native speakers and potentially shadow speak. The rhythm in French is much more regular, one syllable = one beat most of the time, you could almost try speaking with a metronome The last syllable gets stressed unless you want to stress the word
You are brilliant. This is incredibly helpful.
Excellent. I always stress to friends learning other languages, to focus on the mouth shape. Such a good presentation. Merci
Excellent tips and explanations! Merci beaucoup!
This was so helpful, thank you! I would love to see more content like this!
Perfect timing I just restarted my French learning journey :)
I really loved this. When you pronounce squirrel (ecureuil} I think of it as ekyaroeil because you introduce a y between the e and the r. And having practiced L'oeil, I find it helps. Also in Hebrew, we uses a ch gutteral back of the throat sound as in L'Chaim! it helps me. Sometimes I may know something and apply another experience, rather than assume I am totally unfamiliar with what you are driving at. In the beginning your explanation of open and closed mouth was just wonderful. Chapeau bas.
I absolutely love pronunication. Nuns are lovely people.
Well done! Thank you for making this content. 💕
I have very little nack for language learning. It must be by practice. Duolingo supports me in that way. And then you were on my youtube Shorts timeline. Your stories are funny and now I see that you do more than give insights into French customs and habits. Your pronunciation video is helpful. Je travaille dur pour pouvoir un jour parler un vrai français.
Excellent guide. Thanks!
Thanks for the video Roya! For "u" I normally use give the example of "tu". It's less complex than "huit" which glides into am i sound, and of course it's one of the most common conversational words. But you really nailed it with the idea of using the monkey sound and the yucky sound ! Great to see the intro on mouth shape, too. It's so critical and yet often not really taught. A great example to contrast the languages is the hesitation sounds "ahhm" vs "euh" which perfectly exemplify the baseline mouth shape.
I just found your channel a few days ago and I've really been enjoying it. Thank you so much for the work that you do! While I did learn French in school over the course of several years, off and on, I did wind up moving to Germany when I was 12 and went to German schools until I left when I was 17. So in the meantime I did become pretty fluent. But what I want to really highlight here is your emphasis on the size of your mouth's motions, and of course where the sounds are coming from within your face (i.e. as far as I recall, German doesn't have any nasal sounds). Beyond the obvious differences between American English and german, such as are sitting in the middle of the tongue versus ours sitting at the back of the throat, they're quite a few other differences in how you have to use your mouth or other parts of your face really, to make the correct sounds. It wasn't until I traveled back to Germany with my husband that he pointed out that my pitch went down at least 1/2 or maybe even 1.5 octaves lower when I was speaking German.
Very very informative and well taught. You’re really detailed love it
Super helpful! I am studying Romanian, Spanish (Spain), and Italian and I’d never considered my American mouth shape in making the sounds necessary for other languages. I found myself shrinking the openness of my mouth with certain Spanish words (as well as a sort of smashing of certain consonants…hard to describe as well as you did). I intend to learn French as well and found your tips very useful. Merci!
This was *so* helpful! Please do more.
This is super helpful! Thank you!
You are amazing. I’m trying to learn European Portuguese and you seem to speak the language so effortlessly.
You’re so sweet! It may sound effortless but I promise it was many years and classes and travels in the making! You’ll get there 🫶
This was very very helpful. I have saved it and will listen to it again (and again).
Super helpful, thank you!
Fantastic !! Not normally discussed and so important!!😅
I'm not a native French speaker but I've been learning for a while and a lot of these I've been doing unconsciously. It's nice to see what I'm doing and to know I'm doing it right!
This was so helpful! Not just in speaking but understanding French. I am going to Paris in Sept and have been struggling to learn basics
I found a French teacher at a gathering place for immigrants trying to learn English. My Parisian teacher was formally educated as a physician before deciding to teach French. She was so stern that I dreaded going to weekly lessons. I was going to Paris only for a two week vacation. The most useful things I learned were to greet everyone before requesting information or service. Always say, “Bon jour, madam," (or afternoon or evening as appropriate). Then say "Je voudrais" (I would like) then point to what you want. Make sure you say, "Merci." after you get what you wanted. And learn how to ask, "Where is…" If your stay is longer keep watching these videos.
Great tips, very helpful. I was familiar with most of these except for LL, and have been really struggling to pronounce “accueille”. It was a major tongue twister because I was trying to make an L sound in it. Maintenant, je peux accueillir l’écureuil!
Thanks for the great video! My voice teacher always told me that when I sing in French, I should have a "kissy" face. She said that it alone corrects a lot of pronunciation problems - and it works like magic! I was hoping that you would talk about the é and è sounds. I remember struggling with words like les vs. lait, or mes vs. mais.
💙 Lovely! Thank you. Yes, the mouth formation. Yes, the slow speech, of early practice; with Yes, when no one around. & Yes, to practice with real French people. In my observing of names, when hearing & learning unknown sounding ones, I need to study their mouths & try to understand just how they pronounce it. Then, try to reproduce those same sounds myself. This video has helped me to understand some basic mouth formations, & the thoughts behind them, to use when beginning to speak French. 💗
Thank you so much for this video it was so useful! Could you maybe do one on the french subjunctive? Like just a quick overview of what it is and specifically *when* to use it?
I've just started learning French. This is very helpful, thank you
Happy to hear that!
Fantastic tutorial!!
These are veryyy good tips. The mouth shape tip is something I began to do after a few years without realizing it was helping pronunciation. I did feel like my mouth shape was changing tho in comparison to speaking English. One tip for the U sounds is to make sure you keep your top molars touching your tongue while the middle of your mouth stays open (obviously)
I hope you will post more videos🥳 I live in Germany and last week I visited France for the first time and I loved it, so I have to learn French. I already speak Spanish and Portuguese, so it shouldn't be too difficult:)
Really helpful. Thank you.
This helped me a lot. I am just starting to learn French. But practicing speaking helps a lot with my mouth more closed as you said. I will be revisiting this video frequently.
you explained the "L" sound so well! i love your videos :)
Thanks. This was very helpful!
So glad ❤
This video is sooo helpful!! Please make more videos on this
love this video - thank you
Thank you very much, I love your shorts they are painfully correct about America but funny! Awesome!
Please post more videos like this. I love your content so much!
Thank you!! And will do. Let me know if you have any specific requests 🥰
That's very good. Merci beaucoup.
Wow thanks for this video, very interesting even as a french native :) I really thought you were french in your shorts given how good is your "r". And just in case you'd like to improve a little more, I think your "u" "eu" etc sounds are a little too "open" to sound 100% perfect but this already so good. Like it's so difficult to pick up accents and you did a bery good job so far!
I’ve been learning French off an on for about 2 years, but haven’t had much help in trying to learn it 😅 other than my Pimsler cd’s I would listen to in my car, which has actually helped me a lot! My pronunciation actually isn’t bad! But I’m dying to really learn more, to one day become fluent in the language 🫶🏻 Please make more videos!!!
Excellent video!
One of my favorites was flat tire - pneu gonfle and the word for pneumatic - pneumatic
Wow these tips are amazing! I'm gonna be practicing my R's around the house like crazy lol
Great video! A precision, though... the "eu" sound in "heureux" is not the same as the one in "feuille". In french, we have two "eu" sounds, one is more closed (the one you are showing, I believe) and one is more open (closer to the shwa, maybe). "Feuille" is more open. Voilà, une petite précision de la part d'une Française native 😉
Hi Roya! Loved the video. Can you post a video on your experiences living in Europe? ❤️
Sure! Anything in particular you want to know about?
Great job Roya....👍
GIRL you were on my fyp so many times BUT BC OF THIS VIDEO IM SUBSCRIBING THANK YOU!
Thank you!! And let me know if there are any videos you’d like me to make in particular, I’m happy to help!
Wow ! This a great brief summary on French prononciation! I’m curious about your learning process! Did you go to language schools or online tutors ?
I really love your videos, and we (I'm Hungarian) have similar sounds to U (it's 'ü' for us) and EU (we write it 'ö') and I never realized how hard it can be to others.
Great video, Roya! Just wanted to share a tip I learned to better pronounce the French U. It's to place your lips as though you're going to pronounce OU, as in soup. When your lips are in this position, try saying the English letter E. The French U sound automatically comes out without any effort. I learned French as a kid and have never struggled with this sound, but my Anglophone wife became able to say the French U using this tip.
As a native French speaker I didn't realize all the efforts needed to pronounce all these sounds. And when I was teaching my children to pronounce correctly some words that they mispronounced I was only using one technique, which consists on repeating the word correctly myself and then ask them to make a new try. But maybe with your techniques, things would have taken less time and efforts. I remember my older son struggling with the word "dehors" that he was mispronouncing "deur". It took us almost months to get him pronounce the correct way. 😅
About the /l/ sound I believe what the lady describes is a palatalized /l/ as opposed to the velarized /l/ in American English, which is also pretty common linguistically. In fact you can make /t/ /d/ /p/ /b/ /m/ /n/ all with similar tongue shape to the so called French /l/ easily
Thank you so so much for this! Do you have any suggestions for French sentences and words that can help me practice these sounds more?
Merci ❤
You are also amazing speaking French and Spanish.
Thank you 🥰
love your content! thank you so much! something I'm currently trying to wrap my mind around is that for some verbs, the "je" form of the future simple and conditional sound exactly the same, but then for others, the ending is more of a "raw" vs "ray" ...is there an easy way to learn which verbs take the same sound verses those that change from the raw ending to the ray ending? ...and maybe my ear is just not trained enough and is playing tricks on me 🤷♀😅
Great advice. I agree that it’s better to learn from someone who is not a native speaker.
Great. Lots of fun. Just one thing to add that most English speakers don’t think about. Unlike many other languages, most English sounds rather vowel sounds that we think of as pure or actually diphthongs in most countries in most languages the long O sound. French ô is a straight o. In English it’s a o which t slides into a u sound. The u in English often s tarts. With.a y or I. Sound giving u=you. And it takes a while… even a French o changes from the o in sonar, Lorraine, to the o in tonne, môme, The tendency to go with the native diphthong shows up when an English speaker says oiseau or Roseau . Clipping the final vowel a bit helps i think. Anyway, love your videos .
Great video
My 9 year old is learning French from an app and I can't help her with this pronunciation issue she's been having. Thank you for this video
As a French speaker, I feel that ecureuil (squirrel) is one of the tougher words to pronounce correctly in English!
Also, I feel like you lose even more of the "smile" when speaking French Canadian
Quickest shortcut for "U" : do a simple whistle, then keep the same mouth shape and make a vocal sound. It should come out like a French "U". If it doesn't sound quite right, listen to native speakers and try to tweak the position ever so slightly. I'm a native speaker and I can very quickly switch back and forth between whistling and saying "U", the mouth shape is virtually the same for me. By simple whistle, I mean the kind where you round your lips and force the air through your front teeth.
Very good video
Very interesting video, like always. I thought you were a dual language native speaker. I’m only fluent in Dutch 😁 I’ve never thought of this but maybe it would be helpful for native English speakers to watch the TV series Alo Alo and listen how the ‘French’ characters pronounce English words. That will give you some clues too. For example ‘Rene’ is pronounced with the ‘g’.
This video is really helpful. I’m thinking about learning French soon but I just can’t find any good ways to learn. Do you have any recommendations?
New subscriber, Ill list what i want 🙂 - spoken french vs classroom french (speed, liaisons, emphasis) - common verlan and idioms - que vs qu’est ce vs quelle vs de quoi/qui and when to use - french practice tips as an intermediate (while using italki, hellotalk, omegle tv) - ranked french resources (i dislike duolingo and ive used flashcard apps like lingvist and anki with some benefit but nothing is better than reading, talking to natives) - sometimes they put en before a verb like en parlent to mean while/by talking but idk what tense that is - wtf is the subjonctif and when is it actually used - why is il faut used instead of ‘t’as besoin de kek chose ou tu dois’ in some situations - de faire vs à faire… when and why - your motivations (people or goals) for learning spanish and portuguese after french and how long it took before you got comfortable (fluent) from day 0 to day/month x - How long before you could think in a new language
Wow I feel early. But anyway, I hope you do more of these!
Love that squirrel and écureuil are equally hard to learn
Awesome video But could you show the words you name as example in the video? It helps a lot thanks
Amazing lesson! I am particularly struggling with 'eu' and this made it easier. I was wondering if you could cover the 'œ' in 'sœur' in a future vid. This has proved impossible for me to get right ;(
Soeur se prononce comme le "eu" de "feuille".
@@camillesolange182 Thanks for the tip! I will practice 🙂
your videos are so interesting :)
Thank you! So glad you think so 🥰