# je ne (prononciation)



## john_riemann_soong

Recently I've been noticing that some of my peers who study French pronounce "je ne" as "jeune", to the extent that "je ne sais pas" sounds like "jeune sais pas". It's a bit startling, because I've never done that, and I fear they may be correct. I do enjoin them both together quickly, but usually the second syllable is pronounced, ie. "jeuner". So which is correct? Are they both acceptable?


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## dohnut

I too, have heard that and then when I said it, i've been told it's wrong....so i'd like clarification too please


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## Franglais1969

Hello,

It could be down to regional dialect. I would say je ne sounds similar to jeune, but the difference should be evident, as you can hear the "u" in jeune. It makes the word just that little bit longer, even when speaking at speed.

Just my deux sous.


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## dohnut

In my case, which I assumed john was saying too, the sentence is shortanded to 3 sylabolls.


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## Franglais1969

dohnut said:


> In my case, which I assumed john was saying too, the sentence is shortanded to 3 sylabolls.


 
No, I believe, it should be four.


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## gilou

As a native speaker, I beg to differ.
Jeune is spoken with a longer vowel in dialects only, not in the standard (parisian) french.
Je ne, when the e of ne is cancelled (eg in fast speech)  is pronounced exactly like jeune.
To my ears, in fast speech, "un jeune" in "Un jeune sait tout" sounds exactly like "Un je ne" in "Un 'je ne sais pas'."  
A+,


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## Franglais1969

Okay, that's cool. It is me who says it incorrectly then. LOL


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## walkyrie

In the day to day talk, a lot of people don't pronounce the final "e"  of the negation "n" :
"je n'sais pas" "je n'veux pas"
a bit like "I don't wanna" instead of "I don't want to" in English


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## Franglais1969

Okay, if we drop "street talk." Imagine a scenario:

I wish to attend an interview.  Would I be incorrect in pronouncing all 4 syllables of "je ne sais pas," if I had to answer a question "I don't know?"


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## gilou

"je ne sais pas" is a famous example:
standard french: 4 syllables; je-ne-sais-pas
usual spoken french: 3 syllables: jen'-sais-pas ~ jne-sais pas (cancellation of one of two consecutives "e muets". In my speech, the first one is used)
fast french: 2 syllables: j'sais-pas ~ ch'sais-pas (j' becomes unvoiced before s and gives ch') [ne which is redundant with pas for expressing negation, is removed]
fast relaxed french: 2 syllables: chais-pas (ch+s gives a geminated (long) ch by assimilation, wich can be shortened to a standard ch. In my speech, it is geminated) 
A+,


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## Franglais1969

gilou said:


> "je ne sais pas" is a famous example:
> standard french: 4 syllables; je-ne-sais-pas
> usual spoken french: 3 syllables: jen'-sais-pas
> fast french: 2 syllables: j'sais-pas ~ ch'sais-pas (j' becomes unvoiced before s and gives ch')
> fast relaxed french: 2 syllables: chais-pas
> A+,


 
Bon.

Alors merci de m'aider.


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## dohnut

Is it the same as 

I don't know - I do not know? or is it more street talk, where my mother would scald me and tell me talk properly?


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## dohnut

I would be happy to say "don't know" - however I would never say "dunno" or worse write it!


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## walkyrie

"Je n'sais pas" is not street talk at all. Most people would say it that way in a "normal" conversation, unless :
- you speak very slowly (deliberately or not)
- you want to sound formal
- you are from the south of France, where they pronounce these "e"s (and others).
(I may have forgotten some of the exceptions  )


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## Franglais1969

walkyrie said:


> "Je n'sais pas" is not street talk at all. Most people would say it that way in a "normal" conversation, unless :
> - you speak very slowly (deliberately or not)
> - you want to sound formal
> - you are from the south of France, where they pronounce these "e"s (and others).
> (I may have forgotten some of the exceptions  )


 
Okay, maybe several years in Bordeaux corrupted me! 

I could be wrong, but I swear I heard people pronounce it with 4 syllables; maybe all my friends were posh. MDR


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## dohnut

walkyrie said:


> "Je n'sais pas" is not street talk at all. Most people would say it that way in a "normal" conversation, unless :
> - you speak very slowly (deliberately or not)
> - you want to sound formal
> - you are from the south of France, where they pronounce these "e"s (and others).
> (I may have forgotten some of the exceptions  )



Would you write it though?


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## gilou

Franglais1969 said:


> Okay, if we drop "street talk." Imagine a scenario:
> 
> I wish to attend an interview. Would I be incorrect in pronouncing all 4 syllables of "je ne sais pas," if I had to answer a question "I don't know?"


Not at all. It is the correct pronounciation in formal situations.
A+,


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## walkyrie

dohnut said:


> Would you write it though?


No, unless I'm writing a dialogue and I want it to reflect as closely as possible what is or will be said.


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## dohnut

_D'accord, je comprend maintenant, merci beaucoup!_


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## broglet

walkyrie said:


> "Je n'sais pas" is not street talk at all. Most people would say it that way in a "normal" conversation, unless :
> - you are from the south of France, where they pronounce these "e"s (and others))


Dans les rues gardoises tout le monde dit "Je n'sais pas" ou "shaipa" - mais c'est vrai qu'ils demandent "u-ne (2 syllables) ba-guett-e (3 syllables) Ma-da-me (3 syllables)" dans la bou-lan-ge-ri-e (5 syllables)


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## john_riemann_soong

gilou said:


> &quot;je ne sais pas&quot; is a famous example:
> standard french: 4 syllables; je-ne-sais-pas
> usual spoken french: 3 syllables: jen'-sais-pas ~ jne-sais pas (cancellation of one of two consecutives &quot;e muets&quot;. In my speech, the first one is used)
> fast french: 2 syllables: j'sais-pas ~ ch'sais-pas (j' becomes unvoiced before s and gives ch') [ne which is redundant with pas for expressing negation, is removed]
> fast relaxed french: 2 syllables: chais-pas (ch+s gives a geminated (long) ch by assimilation, wich can be shortened to a standard ch. In my speech, it is geminated)
> A+,



 Is this "e muet" similar to the "schwa" of linguistics, or the neutral vowel, when voiced? I noticed it does pop up it songs.   I guess this kind of resolves it, because I think the orthography for abbreviating something like "j'sais" is included in song lyrics and I was initially confused and wondered why it was written that way.


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## gilou

Yes,
The "e muet" is the traditionnal name of the schwa in french grammars.
The behaviour of the french "e muet" is a nasty linguistic problem, and I read various articles trying to explain it.
A+,


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## Qcumber

john_riemann_soong said:


> Recently I've been noticing that some of my peers who study French pronounce "je ne" as "jeune", to the extent that "je ne sais pas" sounds like "jeune sais pas". It's a bit startling, because I've never done that, and I fear they may be correct. I do enjoin them both together quickly, but usually the second syllable is pronounced, ie. "jeuner". So which is correct? Are they both acceptable?


 
Their pronunciation is correct. When the <e> of <ne> is dropped, its <n> closes the syllable <je>, and the resulting syllable <je n> is pronounced like <jeune> "young".


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## Qcumber

john_riemann_soong said:


> Is this "e muet" similar to the "schwa" of linguistics, or the neutral vowel, when voiced? I noticed it does pop up it songs. I guess this kind of resolves it, because I think the orthography for abbreviating something like "j'sais" is included in song lyrics and I was initially confused and wondered why it was written that way.


I already dealt with this in a previous post. 
There is no such thing as a schwa in French. Standard French has no centralized vowel like English; hence no schwa.
The schwa used in the "phonetic" transcriptions of French words in dictionaries is merely a convenient phonemic device indicating that the corresponding letter is a <e muet>. This means that either you pronounce it or you don't. If you do pronounce it, then it sounds exactly like the *[œ] *in oeuf, boeuf, coeur, neuf, etc.


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## broglet

Qcumber said:


> I already dealt with this in a previous post.
> There is no such thing as a schwa in French. Standard French has no centralized vowel like English; hence no schwa


How about M'sieu and p'tit?


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## Outsider

Here's the other thread where Qcumber 'dealt' with this issue.


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## CapnPrep

Qcumber said:


> There is no such thing as a schwa in French. Standard French has no centralized vowel like English; hence no schwa.
> The schwa used in the "phonetic" transcriptions of French words in dictionaries is merely a convenient phonemic device indicating that the correspond letter is a <e muet>.


I guess I can agree with that. But on the other hand I am very glad that dictionaries choose to give us a somewhat abstract, but useful representation rather than just an accurate phonetic transcription. The same goes for indicating "_h aspiré_".

As for the exact phonetic value of this schwa, I think we'd have to analyze recordings (and not depend on introspective/impressionistic data), and expect some variation from one context to the next, and from one speaker to another. Some examples to consider : Do "contrefaçon", "autrefois", etc. sound like they contain the word "œuf" in the middle? Does "le fléau" sound just like "l'œuf Léo"? Can "genou" be pronounced like "jeune où"?


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## gilou

Qcumber said:


> I already dealt with this in a previous post.
> There is no such thing as a schwa in French. Standard French has no centralized vowel like English; hence no schwa.
> The schwa used in the "phonetic" transcriptions of French words in dictionaries is merely a convenient phonemic device indicating that the correspond letter is a <e muet>. This means that either you pronounce it or you don't. If you do pronounce it, then it sounds exactly like the *[œ] *in oeuf, boeuf, coeur, neuf, etc.


Well, it is true that in modern french, the <e muet> is often pronounced as a *[**œ].* But in some contextes, it is a centralized vowel. e.g. the first vowel in _crevé._
_A+,_


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## Qcumber

Well, well, well. A long time ago, a French phonetician teaching in California, Dr. Delattre, was asked by his colleagues and students to show them the spectrographs of the various French vowels.  

At that time, such spectrographs were obtained thanks to a cumbersome electric machine with a cylinder and an in-built recording track round the cylinder. One recorded a word on the magnetic track, and in about 15 mn the machine traced a spectrogram of the word on the sheet placed on the cylinder.

One day, Delattre realized he had no schwa although he had always used the symbol in his teaching.  

Eventually he was fortunate to find a French Canadian who did produce schwas in French word, e.g. Catherine sounded ['katr@n]. Of course, he couldn't use this local pronunciation for standard French, so he left the matter aside and concentrated on the 16 vowels of French rather than arguing on this elusive schwa.


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## Qcumber

broglet said:


> How about M'sieu and p'tit?


 
There is no schwa either in m'sieur [msjØ] or p'tit [pti].
French has an amazing collection of complex consonant clusters.


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## broglet

Qcumber said:


> There is no schwa either in m'sieur [msjØ] or p'tit [pti].
> French has an amazing collection of complex consonant clusters.


I am finding this discussion fascinating although I have never heard of a schwa before! Sorry to ask what must seem to be elementary questions but when the first vowel of 'petit' is pronounced, is it an e muet? What is the difference between that and a schwa? And what is meant by a centralised vowel?


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## Qcumber

broglet said:


> I am finding this discussion fascinating although I have never heard of a schwa before! Sorry to ask what must seem to be an elementary question but when the first vowel of 'petit' is pronounced, is that a schwa? And what is meant by a centralised vowel?


Broglet, [ə] is the IPA symbol for schwa.

You can hear a schwa in the second syllable of the English words cat*a*pult and cin*e*ma.
When the first vowel of _petit_ is pronounced, it sounds [œ]. 

A central vowel is a vowel that is uttered while the apex (the highest part) of the tongue is about in the middle of the mouth. The position of the apex determines two chambers, a fore one and a rear one. The resonance of the air influx from the lungs produces the vowel.

If you make a chart of the apices for the various vowels of a given language as revealed by X-ray pictures, you obtain a sort of triangle put upsided down with it summit cut off in languages like English or French.

Sophisticated modern charts are based on formants (the frequency areas in the sonographs) and mapped on a logarithmic paper. Instead of a triangle one obtains a curve whose key points (the vowels) concur with what was found with X-ray pictures.

A centralized vowel is a vowel that becomes central when it is unstressed, e.g. 
*man* : stressed /a/ hence realized as [æ]
-man in mad*man* : unstressed /a/ hence realized as [ə]

P.S. The term schwa is borrowed from Hebrew grammar. As you can see its spelling is German. It is pronounced shvah, but you can pronounce it shwah if you want. Hebrew has several schwas.


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## broglet

Thanks very much, Q, so if I understand this correctly, the French "e-muet" is either not pronounced (giving rise to a consonantal cluster) or is the same sound [œ] as the vowel of boeuf. And the use of the schwa symbol in French dictionaries is just plain misleading! 
Is the fact that the schwa is so common in English, and absent in French, one of the reasons English people find it hard to achieve a true "French accent"? And is there an [œ] in English, or is its absence another reason?


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## john_riemann_soong

I'm thinking of "schwa" because that's the sound that gets released after some consonants. /j'n/, for example, is bound to have an ever so slight neutral vowel between the two consonants, or at least for me. I can't possibly imagine how that can happen as a true consonant cluster (e.g. /tr/).

In songs, they e-muet features heavily, in things like  "chaque" becomes two syllables, etc. (chaka), even when I assume it's standard French the singer is using. I find it quite natural if someone is going to sing words like "regarde-moi", there is going to be such a stress on the "d" that the release turns into a vowel. I assumed that is what the schwa signifies. 

Oh, and is it acceptable to use the "j'enne" pronounciation, in say, a job interview?


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## gilou

john_riemann_soong said:


> I'm thinking of "schwa" because that's the sound that gets released after some consonants. /j'n/, for example, is bound to have an ever so slight neutral vowel between the two consonants, or at least for me. I can't possibly imagine how that can happen as a true consonant cluster (e.g. /tr/).


/j'n/ is a true consonnant cluster. (there are languages with consonnant clusters that are much much worse, try georgian or kabyle).

A+,


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## Outsider

Qcumber said:


> Eventually he was fortunate to find a French Canadian who did produce schwas in French word, e.g. Catherine sounded ['katr@n]. Of course, he couldn't use this local pronunciation for standard French, so he left the matter aside and concentrated on the 16 vowels of French rather than arguing on this elusive schwa.


Perhaps you're right about Canadian  French, but in France "je ne" most definitely does not sound the same as "jeune" -- never!


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## Franglais1969

Outsider said:


> Perhaps you're right about Canadian French, but in France "je ne" most definitely does not sound the same as "jeune" -- never!


 
That's what I said too, but I got battered!


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## john_riemann_soong

I think it's just vowel length, right? Or is the /eu/ in "jeune" a dipthong? I notice it does curl up slightly (compared to the /e/ in "je") but I really can't tell ...


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## gilou

Outsider said:


> Perhaps you're right about Canadian French, but in France "je ne" most definitely does not sound the same as "jeune" -- never!


As a native speaker, it sounds exactly the same to me in fast speech, as in "Le jeune croit a ce qu'il a lu" and "je ne crois pas", where the red part sound exactly the same.
A+,


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## Fred_C

No, it is not a diphtong. The vowel length may be different, but in french, unlike english, vowel length is not a distinctive feature of phonetics.
and except for the vowel length, the vowel is exactly the same, as it has been said throughout this thread.


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## john_riemann_soong

So if I articulated both syllables in "je ne" in an everyday situation in France, would that seem out-of-place or overly formal? Is it comparable to substituting "do not" for "don't" in English?


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## Fred_C

It would not sound formal, nor posh. because even when you speak very slowly, or very formally, you do not pronounce the E of ne. when the previous word ends in a mute E.
It would just sound "foreigner".
Even in southern France, where people pronounce many many more Es than in northern France, they would not pronounce this one.
The restriction, is that they would if they want to speak very slowly, whereas people would not in northern France.

The other difference between northern and Southern france is that in southern France, pronounced mute E sound like [ø] in bœufs or yeux(pronounce [bø] and [jø]). whereas in northern France, they sound like [œ].

So as a summary:
When speaking normally (even formally), a northerner French would say "je ne sais pas" and "jeune" like [Zœn sE pa] and [Zœn], (same pronunciation), whereas a southerner would say : [Z*ø*n s*e* pa] and [Zœn] (different pronounciation, the differences have been put in bold).

When speaking very slowly, a northerner would not change his pronounciation, but a southerner would say [Zø nø se pa] and [Zœn].


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## Outsider

Eh bon, maintenant je suis complètement embrouillé ! Peut-être avais-je un accent suliste sans en m'appercevoir.


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## gilou

john_riemann_soong said:


> So if I articulated both syllables in "je ne" in an everyday situation in France, would that seem out-of-place or overly formal? Is it comparable to substituting "do not" for "don't" in English?


Yes, that is exactly the same kind of thing.
It is not overly formal, just formal (and may sound odd in an informal situation).
A+,


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## gilou

Fred_C said:


> It would not sound formal, nor posh. because even when you speak very slowly, or very formally, you do not pronounce the E of ne. when the previous word ends in a mute E.
> It would just sound "foreigner".
> Even in southern France, where people pronounce many many more Es than in northern France, they would not pronounce this one.
> The restriction, is that they would if they want to speak very slowly, whereas people would not in northern France.
> 
> The other difference between northern and Southern france is that in southern France, pronounced mute E sound like [ø] in bœufs or yeux(pronounce [bø] and [jø]). whereas in northern France, they sound like [œ].
> 
> So as a summary:
> When speaking normally (even formally), a northerner French would say "je ne sais pas" and "jeune" like [Zœn sE pa] and [Zœn], (same pronunciation), whereas a southerner would say : [Z*ø*n s*e* pa] and [Zœn] (different pronounciation, the differences have been put in bold).
> 
> When speaking very slowly, a northerner would not change his pronounciation, but a southerner would say [Zø nø se pa] and [Zœn].


Well, the main difference between northern accent and southern accent with respect to the <E muet> is the fact that northern accent cancels all cancellable <E muet> when southern accent keeps a lot of them (typically, most of the noun and adjective endings with a <E muet> are pronounced with the southern accent, when they are absent with the northern accent. rose: southern [Rozœ] ~ standard [Rôz] (o is the open o, ô is the closed one, the variation in the *o* sound follows the tendency to have opened vowels in opened syllable (ie ending with the vowel) and closed vowel in closed syllable. This variation in pronounciation of the vowel, caused by the presence of a non cancelled <E muet> and therefore different syllables (Ro-zœ vs Rôz) is typical of the difference between the southern and the (standard) northern accent).
For what I know, there is no difference in pronounciation between northern and southern accent when pronouncing a (non cancelled) <E muet>. It will be [œ]. Maybe in some contextes, the southern pronounciation has a slightly more opened sound (and slightly longer) than the northern one, but the difference is too small to be taken in consideration, unless you are a phonetician studying such minor variations.

A+,


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## john_riemann_soong

Now I'm confused. Which is correct?

"It would not sound formal, nor posh. because even when you speak very slowly, or very formally, you do not pronounce the E of ne. when the previous word ends in a mute E."

Why did my French teachers (on both sides of the globe) never tell me this?

Interestingly, Wikipedia gives me different vowel sounds for "je", "jeune", and then Wiktionary begs to differ (uses the schwa transcription).

Wiktionary tells me /ʒə/, Wikipedia gives /ʒʷɵ/ (oh the horrors of trying to figure out labialisation, I didn't even know what it was) and then some people here saying that it's the same as ʒø. Which is it? Have I been using the wrong vowel for four years?!!

So would "il ne" be pronounced as "iln", too? I suppose it would be impossible to pronounce the "iln" and the  e-muet as a single consonant together, right?


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## Franglais1969

I have to confess, all these phonetic symbols confuse me immensely. I only pronounce things the way I was taught by my mum, and I have never had a problem with making myself understood in France, be it Paris, Brittany, Normandy or Aquitaine.

My only complaint about the Northern French population is I wish they would speak just a little bit slower!


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## john_riemann_soong

I wonder what a French text-to-speech program would do.

I was rather surprised about "ʒʷ" myself, because "ʷ" is one of those fancy superscript symbols I associate with reconstructed languages like Proto-Indo-European and laryngeals (though I suppose they use an h.) Is "ʒʷ" part of that consonant cluster sound you being talked about?

Is /ʒʷn/  the one syllable "j'n" that was referred to earlier?

I was thinking about teaching my children (non-existent:I'm only 16 at the moment ) French in the future from infanthood, but now I'm afraid (on top of not being a native speaker myself) I'm going to teach them all the wrong things and then they'll be native speakers of non-standard French!



Franglais1969 said:


> My only complaint about the Northern French population is I wish they would speak just a little bit slower!



Hmm, so if I say, took a listening comprehension examination, if it was done in the south of France, it would be easier? All this time I thought it was just my poor listening comprehension skills. I must say with pronouncing the "e-muet" it makes it easier to distinguish what would otherwise be homonyms.


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## Franglais1969

john_riemann_soong said:


> Hmm, so if I say, took a listening comprehension examination, if it was done in the south of France, it would be easier? All this time I thought it was just my poor listening comprehension skills. I must say with pronouncing the "e-muet" it makes it easier to distinguish what would otherwise be homonyms.


 
I wouldn't say easier. In Bordeaux, at least, they have their own words for things, but they do tend to speak a little bit slower. Maybe it is just me, but it takes my brain a little bit longer to register what has been said by a Parisian than by a Bordelais.

I have immense trouble understanding a French Canadian, however, unless it is written.


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## Qcumber

broglet said:


> Thanks very much, Q, so if I understand this correctly, the French "e-muet" is either not pronounced (giving rise to a consonantal cluster) or is the same sound [œ] as the vowel of boeuf. And the use of the schwa symbol in French dictionaries is just plain misleading!
> Is the fact that the schwa is so common in English, and absent in French, one of the reasons English people find it hard to achieve a true "French accent"? And is there an [œ] in English, or is its absence another reason?


 
It is misleading if we say it is a [phone], i.e. a sound. It is not if we say it's a /phoneme/, i.e. a matrix of traits that can be totally or partially realized. In French, the schwa may be reasonably regarded as a phoneme, hence should be noted /ə/. This phoneme either is realized as the phone [œ], or has no realization at all, hence the formation of a consonant cluster.
 
[œ] is not one of the sounds of the English language. The closest English phone is [3] - sorry the real IPA symbol doesn't display - as in fur. But anybody car hear the difference. 
 
A true French accent is hard to get if you are not bilingual like me because English syllables are stressed from their onset whereas the French ones are stressed on their ends - the effect is stressed-unstressed in English, unstressed-stressed in French. For instance if you say Eng. lamb, stress hits the part of the vowel close to the /l/ whereas in French lame "blade" (the vowel is different) stress falls on the part of the vowel close to the /m/. In other words the basic "tunes" of the two languages are opposite! English is basically trochaic while French is basically iambic. This is quite clear in sequences of two syllables, e.g. Eng. manner "°, French manière °" etc.
Even if we take an iambic sequence in English like a lamb "° and the same in French une lame °", you can hear that in English, as I said above, stress is near /l/, while in French it's near /m/. etc.


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## gilou

john_riemann_soong said:


> Now I'm confused. Which is correct?
> 
> "It would not sound formal, nor posh. because even when you speak very slowly, or very formally, you do not pronounce the E of ne. when the previous word ends in a mute E."


 That is plain wrong. In very slow or very formal speach, you do pronounce the E of ne.
A+,


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## Qcumber

The syllables of e.g. Je ne sais pas. are uttered separately in particular circumstances. Here are a few.
1) intelligent passer-by answering a tourist
2) mother teaching her child how to talk
3) irritated information desk clerk to bothersome enquirer (with heavy stress on *pas*) 
4) reading poetry


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## gilou

Qcumber said:


> The syllables of e.g. Je ne sais pas. are uttered separately in particular circumstances. Here are a few.
> 1) intelligent passer-by answering a tourist
> 2) mother teaching her child how to talk
> 3) irritated information desk clerk to bothersome enquirer (with heavy stress on *pas*)
> 4) reading poetry


And any circumstance where you want your speech to convey an intellectual/litterary undertone to your audience.
(political speech on the TV, writer discussing his works in a radio interview, comment for a documentary film,...)
A+,


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## john_riemann_soong

Okay, I have been listening to several songs by a singer from Nice (didn't even realise this until today), and she pronounces "regarde-moi" as "regardez-moi" ... is this just because it's put into song, or does geography have to do with it? 

I do notice that "ne" is pronounced slightly in different ways ... the vowels in "p*eu*" and "j*eu*ne" (or j*eu*) are slightly different, are they not? ie. the one in "peu" is slightly more closed than the one in "j*eu*" ( I think that's why some of us disagreed with the "jeune" example earlier?) ... and both of these vowels I heard used with the "e" part of "ne". 

It's kind of funny because these are rather large vowel shifts from the pronounciations I have been usually taught, but I didn't notice it all. It probably doesn't help that having learnt French in both an American high school and a secondary-level government centre in Singapore, I've had teachers of Quebecois origin and then local Singaporean teachers who 
teach the Parisian standard. 

How do toddlers ever master closed vowels anyway? It seems trivial now, because I can barely feel my tongue, but to have the tongue poised like that so close to the roof requires some discipline. It can become tiring (try saying "pe_uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu_" for half a minute, I think one may find it isn't just breath that becomes the issue). English doesn't have so many closed vowels for elementary vocabulary,  but I imagine words for toddlers like "jeu" and "peu" in French would require more frequent usage of it.

I wish I could put myself into a French kindergarten and see how they do it.


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## john_riemann_soong

gilou said:


> And any circumstance where you want your speech to convey an intellectual/litterary undertone to your audience.
> (political speech on the TV, writer discussing his works in a radio interview, comment for a documentary film,...)
> A+,



So for example, in debate? Or perhaps talking to one's teacher? For example, in English I find that we use the full "not" particle in more situations than the set of situations described (and I don't mean the colloquial sense of "that was a fun class ... _not_!" ).


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## Gez

john_riemann_soong said:


> Recently I've been noticing that some of my peers who study French pronounce "je ne" as "jeune", to the extent that "je ne sais pas" sounds like "jeune sais pas". It's a bit startling, because I've never done that, and I fear they may be correct. I do enjoin them both together quickly, but usually the second syllable is pronounced, ie. "jeuner". So which is correct? Are they both acceptable?



It's incorrect.

Je ne should sound like "jeûne", not like "jeune." But many people do not know how to make proper rounded e anymore, so they'll say things like "jeune sais pas" and "le jeune du ramadan", and it annoys me but I can't do anything since they're TV anchormen so they don't hear me shouting about their crass mangling of my language.

TV news anchormen seems to be required to speak as bad as they can, I can't explain otherwise the staggering amount of faults they make everytime I look at a TV.


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## john_riemann_soong

Gez said:


> It's incorrect.
> 
> Je ne should sound like "jeûne", not like "jeune." But many people do not know how to make proper rounded e anymore, so they'll say things like "jeune sais pas" and "le jeune du ramadan", and it annoys me but I can't do anything since they're TV anchormen so they don't hear me shouting about their crass mangling of my language.
> 
> TV news anchormen seems to be required to speak as bad as they can, I can't explain otherwise the staggering amount of faults they make everytime I look at a TV.



What is "le jeune du ramadan" supposed to correlate to, anyway?


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## Qcumber

le jeûne du Ramadan is pronounced:
lœ žø:n dü ra ma 'dã


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## Qcumber

Soong, I didn't notice French kids had any problem mastering the vowels 
[ø] as in peu and [œ] as in jeune.

Here is a sentence for you to train.  
Il y a peu de jeunes dans ce village.
"There are few young people in this village."
pronounced : 
slow speech : i li ya pø dœ 'žœn dã sœ vi 'laž
rapid contracted speech: ya pød 'žœn dãs vi 'laž


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## john_riemann_soong

Qcumber said:


> Soong, I didn't notice French kids had any problem mastering the vowels
> [ø] as in peu and [œ] as in jeune.



I meant toddlers like two-year olds ... do they conflate the vowels at that age?


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## gilou

john_riemann_soong said:


> So for example, in debate? Or perhaps talking to one's teacher? For example, in English I find that we use the full "not" particle in more situations than the set of situations described (and I don't mean the colloquial sense of "that was a fun class ... _not_!" ).


in debate; yes. Talking to a teacher, well, as respect for teachers seems to be a rare item nowadays, I am not sure. But it was the case 40 years ago.
A+,


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## Qcumber

john_riemann_soong said:


> I meant toddlers like two-year olds ... do they conflate the vowels at that age?


 
Let's say kinder garten toddlers. I didn't notice they conflated the vowels. 
As far as I remember they just utter all the French vowels distinctly; they do not seem to mix them up. Their problems, as for all toddlers, are rather with some consonants because of the teeth, and the movements of the tongue.

These are just personal observations. I'm not a specialist. Of course, you'd need a serious scientific study on the acquisition of French vowels by native French speakers.

Now that I think of it, one of the first vowels mastered is definitely [œ]. They even produce it before they can speak (a re, a re, a re), whereas native English children produce [a] (da, da, da ,da).


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## gilou

Qcumber said:


> Soong, I didn't notice French kids had any problem mastering the vowels
> [ø] as in peu and [œ] as in jeune.
> 
> Here is a sentence for you to train.
> Il y a peu de jeunes dans ce village.
> "There are few young people in this village."
> pronounced :
> slow speech : i li ya pø dœ 'žœn dã sœ vi 'laž
> rapid contracted speech: ya pød 'žœn dãs vi 'laž


I found this pretty good phonetic description of the <e muet> in that paper: http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/mareuil/publi/SL021383.pdf


> 2.1. The schwa vowel​
> 
> The orthographic e, which is called mute (but also _decaying,_
> _unstable, feminine, dull, obscure, middle, neutral_ or _schwa_
> because it is often omitted in conversational or colloquial
> speech), when maintained, is somewhere, according to
> opinions, between the open /oe/ and the closed /ø/ — see
> references in [6]. But even if these phonemes are its closest
> neighbors, and even if the pronunciation /oe/ appears to be
> preferred nowadays, the realization of schwa does not merge
> exactly into the archiphoneme /OE/, owing to the absence of lips
> rounding in the case of / / [7]. The multiplicity of
> denominations, as well as the doubts concerning its color
> support the shifty nature of this e, which is defined more by its
> phonological behavior than by its timbre.​




A+,​


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## Qcumber

Thanks a lot, Gilou. Very interesting. Unfortunately they muddle the issue. Besides they do not know the difference between a /phoneme/ and a [phone]. Look at what they write: "the pronunciation /oe/". For CNRS scholars, of all people, .... what a shortcoming!


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## broglet

I first visited this forum 2 days ago and immediately became addicted, in no small measure thanks to fascinating threads like this one.  Thanks everyone!


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## CapnPrep

Qcumber said:


> Besides they do not know the difference between a /phoneme/ and a [phone]. Look at what they write: "the pronunciation /oe/".


You can criticize them for not using the standard notation consistently (and for writing very poor English throughout the paper), but it is clear from these few sentences that they _do_ know the difference, since they contrast œ and Œ. And in the rest of the paper they even go beyond a simple two-level phoneme/phone distinction.

What makes you say that they "muddle the issue"? What they say in this paragraph seems perfectly reasonable (if you can get past the notation issue), and they provide references.


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## john_riemann_soong

So would it be natural for "tant que" to be pronounced as one syllable? I just realised this, because in one song, the artist barely articulates the [k] and it becomes sort of like a  /tonk'/. I mean this radically changes my outlook on things.


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## gilou

john_riemann_soong said:


> So would it be natural for "tant que" to be pronounced as one syllable? I just realised this, because in one song, the artist barely articulates the [k] and it becomes sort of like a /tonk'/. I mean this radically changes my outlook on things.


This can happen in fast speech indeed: Tant que tu... [tãkty...] but it is not very frequent (it occurs in very relaxed speech), probably due to the fact that it sounds exacly like the word tank.
A+,


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## Qcumber

I agree with Gilou, except that I find it very common. Here is another example.
Tant que tu dis la vérité, je te crois.
"So long as you are telling the truth, I'll believe you."
rapid speech :
tã ktü di la vé ri té štœ krwa


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## Fred_C

Posté par *john_riemann_soong* 

 
So for example, in debate? Or perhaps talking to one's teacher? For example, in English I find that we use the full "not" particle in more situations than the set of situations described (and I don't mean the colloquial sense of "that was a fun class ... _not_!" ).



gilou said:


> in debate; yes. Talking to a teacher, well, as respect for teachers seems to be a rare item nowadays, I am not sure. But it was the case 40 years ago.
> A+,


 
Gilou,; I strongly disagree with you. Nobody pronounces the e of ne in je ne sais pas, except , in my humble opinion, when these two conditions are met : 
1- The speaker is a southerner french,
2- He wants to speak slowly, or formally.

In my opinion, a northerner french (And what is called the standard french pronunciation takes many features from their pronounciation), never pronounce the E of Ne in je ne sais pas. 

This remark is only valuable for Ne in Je ne sais pas, because it is a very short word, which can be called "enclitic" by grammarian and phonologists. For other words, the pronunciation may be more free.

About the pronunciation by the southerners, many errors have been said :
They pronounce many mute Es, but not all of them. they pronounce many of them like [ø], but not all of them : in the end of words, they pronounce them like real schwas, that northern french speakers just cannot pronounce. So the southern french are indeed able of pronouncing a real schwa.


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## Qcumber

Fred_C said:


> About the pronunciation by the southerners, many errors have been said :
> They pronounce many mute Es, but not all of them. they pronounce many of them like [ø], but not all of them : in the end of words, they pronounce them like real schwas, that northern french speakers just cannot pronounce. So the southern french are indeed able of pronouncing a real schwa.


 
This is fascinating, Fred. Would you be so kind as to give us one specific location where the elusive schwa can be heard as well as a short list of ordinary words where it will occur?


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## gilou

Fred_C said:


> Gilou,; I strongly disagree with you. Nobody pronounces the e of ne in je ne sais pas, except , in my humble opinion, when these two conditions are met :
> 1- The speaker is a southerner french,
> 2- He wants to speak slowly, or formally.
> 
> In my opinion, a northerner french (And what is called the standard french pronunciation takes many features from their pronounciation), never pronounce the E of Ne in je ne sais pas.


You may strongly disagree, but I stand on my opinion.
A northerner french will pronounce the e in "je ne sais pas" when he wants to speak slowly, or very formally.

To my ears, the pronounciation of the schwa at the end of the words by southerners (as in rose) is a closed [œ], not a [ø] which is more closed and rounded. 

A+,


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## broglet

gilou said:


> To my ears, the pronounciation of the schwa at the end of the words by southerners (as in rose) is a closed [œ], not a [ø] which is more closed and rounded.


I'm sure I have heard the final e pronounced practically as [ø] in the village of Montfrin, Gard. Attention! Le mot anglais est écrit pronunciation et pas pronounciation! (Même si trop d'Anglais – même dans la BBC - le prononce mal comme "pronounciation")


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## Qcumber

broglet said:


> I'm sure I have heard the final e pronounced practically as [ø] in the village of Montfrin, Gard.


Whatever the language, if you start dealing with dialectal variations, you'll find many. This is the reason why I'd rather stick to the standard language.


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## john_riemann_soong

What about object pronouns? I've heard "j'l'aime", but what happens when one starts dealing with "lui", "leur", "la" etc.? I assume "nous" doesn't undergo the reduction that "ne" does? 

And this should be a trivial question, but I'm beginning to be a doubt after reading so many things that challenge my previous dogmas concerning pronounciation! In the case of the "e muet" at the end of a verb, etc. what happens when a vowel follows it, and this "e muet" is pronounced, whether it's the case of it being sung or being in Southern France and such? 

I assume that in a phrase like "(re)garde avec", the /a/ in "avec" supplants the /e/ in "garde" totally, right? I'm looking at a song like "regarde-moi" in which the e-muet is being pronounced quite heavily (and in fact receives the primary stress).  

[p.s. "regarder" has nothing to do with the verb "garder", right?]


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## gilou

One comes to mind: In fast relaxed speech, je lui ai > j'lui ai > jüi ai (in very relaxed speech > jüai) where ü notes the special glide that you can hear between the l and the i in lui.



> I assume that in a phrase like "(re)garde avec", the /a/ in "avec" supplants the /e/ in "garde" totally, right?


 yes

A+,


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## Qcumber

john_riemann_soong said:


> What about object pronouns? I've heard "j'l'aime", but what happens when one starts dealing with "lui", "leur", "la" etc.? I assume "nous" doesn't undergo the reduction that "ne" does?


 
Only the _e muet_ can become silent.


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## Outsider

john_riemann_soong said:


> I assume that in a phrase like "(re)garde avec", the /a/ in "avec" supplants the /e/ in "garde" totally, right? I'm looking at a song like "regarde-moi" in which the e-muet is being pronounced quite heavily (and in fact receives the primary stress).


Yes, "regarde avec" is pronounced "regard'avec".



john_riemann_soong said:


> [p.s. "regarder" has nothing to do with the verb "garder", right?]





> Regarder, et l'anc. verbe esgarder, faire attention à (voy. ÉGARD) ; Berry, argarder, argader ; bourguig. regadai ; provenç. regardar, reguardar ; ital. riguardare.





> Égard: Provenç. esgart ; catal. esguard ; espagn esguarde ; ital. sguardo. Ce mot est le substantif de l'ancien verbe esgarder, *de es- préfixe, et garder* (voy. GARDER), qui signifiait avoir soin, surveiller, regarder.


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## john_riemann_soong

That's surprising! I thought of the connection earlier, but then I know that the current sense of "garder" comes from Frankish Germanic, hence the English cognate "ward" . Or is it that the Frankish _garder_ (definitely not Latin) merged into the existing _garder_ in the French language? Does _regarder_ predate the Frankish garder? I suppose this is out of the scope of the thread and I really should ask this in another thread, but it was spontaneous and was inspired by this thread. Anyhow.


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## Qcumber

You're right, Soong.
Germanic *ward-
> Eng. ward
> Fr. garde > Eng. guard
> Germ. wart-


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## john_riemann_soong

I just realised the phoneme /w/ doesn't occur in French very often ... virtually all the words starting with "w" in the dictionary are loanwords: no wonder it got converted into /g/. 

Checking the etymology some more, it occurs to me that a major verb like "regarder" then, would not come from Latin. "Regarder" is related to "garder", I just didn't expect a Germanic loanword to come into such prominence.


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## titi22

Hi all !
"chépa" or "j'en sais rien" are common in french. As well, say boulan[jrie] and not boulan [ge] rie. The example is the same with "cheminée", "cheveux"... "je veux",.      :    chminée       chfeux             j'veux


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## titi22

un'ba-guett ma-da-m'     bou-lan [jrie]
other examples :  che-veux  :     chfeux
                        je veux :    j'veux
                        che-minée :  chminée


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## OlivierG

Je pense que tout le monde a eu maintenant la possibilité de s'exprimer à propos de la question d'origine.

Ce fil est maintenant fermé.
Olivier
_Modérateur_


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