# How does French sound



## xav

Hello, everybody !

Having enough debated about how English sounds  , I'd like now to read a bit how French does to foreign ears, especially to non-speakers. 

I think you no longer can hear the music of a language as soon you understand -or try to understand- what is said. So it is for me... You still can hear some accents, but it isn't the point here : I'd like to know your opinion about the music of the "normally pronounced" French, I mean the French of France. Anyway, if for example you, dear northern American friend, want to write about Canadian or Haitian French, just mention which one you're writing about ; I'm very much interested by your general opinion, but not so much by comparisons between French accents, which could be the subject of another thread. On another side, comparisons with other languages would be very interesting, I think.


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## Ratona

Hello Xav,

French, to me, has a kind of boiling or bubbling sound. Imagine a hot pan of thick soup on the stove, there are always bubbles appearing here and there, some small some large, some bubble and disperse others bubble and pop. A general simmer is a general chat, turn up the heat and you have a serious discussion! The speech never sounds flat and montonous as English can, there are always bursts of expression (hence the bubbles etc.).

I hope that doesn't sound too odd! 

By the way, I agree with the music going (to a certain degree), once you understand a language.


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## Lizziewoo

I can speak only a very small amount of French, but I love the language and the accent too. 
French, to me sounds very 'blurry'... that's the first word that comes to mind (maybe because I cannot understand it all!) but in the way that words are linked and the flow of speech. I am muttering some french phrases outloud now (in the office, I look a bit mad) and the pronunciation of words sounds very closed and tight.... this isn't coming out very well... But I will say this, that from my experience, French is one of the most beautiful languages to listen to. It's lilting and light!


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## Mei

Hi there,

It sounds so difficult to me! 

Mei


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## Milla

I think that the main difference between Spanish and French it is that the first one is a nasal language and the second is guttural.

So for us is like in French people were be sort of (in the lack of a better word) "gasping" the words, but not in a bad way, as they were speaking with their mouth almost close.


(aaah and I am not american or a native english speaker, as I said in other post I have never been in a english spoken country)

I have posted without read the original post, and coincidently said something about me hearing french songs. Though I didn't quite understand what you where talking about,  netherless what I get from it sounds interesting.... here's what I wrote about it 

Even when I'm learning by studying on the internet and can practice a little of phonétique I can pronounce near to correctly the lyrics from Edith Piaf that I love to hear and try to sing (I love the language too by the way... almost all languages) or Bruni or Brell, Aznavour, etc...


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## Kelly B

As you suggested, Xav, now that I know the language reasonably well, and listen more for understanding, I've lost all objectivity about the sounds of the words. But I can still hear the music of the phrasing, which swoops up, then up again, ... then down, like this: .../'''.../'''.../'''\. depending on the number of phrases, of course.
I found on a visit some time ago that an awful lot of French women speak in the upper register of the voice, like a falsetto, which I found a little odd at the time. Then my friends told me I was doing it too....


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## diegodbs

The first words that come to my mind when I'm listening to a French person speaking are: nasal (on-en-in, etc) and guttural (r).
I don't think Spanish is nasal, as Milla said. Nasal languages are French and Portuguese.


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## JazzByChas

I will agree with Xav and Kelly...once you start understanding, or trying to understand a language, the "music" tends to fade...Overall, French sounds smooth and gutteral, mostly because it is... Spanish, by comparison, sounds fast and stacatto...like all words are being shot at you...although, I did hear two gentlemen speaking it last night, and it sounded as matter of fact as English...maybe because I am beginning to understand it too.... 

And I don't know if women speak it in their upper registers, because most of the women speaking French spoke, at least to my ears, normally.

I like French, always have...which is why I have studied it since High School (about 10th grade)


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## marinax

diegodbs said:
			
		

> The first words that come to my mind when I'm listening to a French person speaking are: nasal (on-en-in, etc) and guttural (r).
> I don't think Spanish is nasal, as Milla said. Nasal languages are French and Portuguese.


 
agree on those.
also, to me, is a very feminine language. you have to use your lips to speak so much... it is funny to hear/see men speak french...  

have you ever watched "Friends"? there was an episode where Joey had to pretend he spoke french fluently... well, there you have how it sounds for us, not-native speakers...


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## Milla

yes, you're probably right Diego, but does the Spanish sound stacatto as Chas said? what is stacatto? Sorry I'm not an expert


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## Lizziewoo

Stacatto is a musical term which means jerky, cut short crisply; detached.


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## VenusEnvy

French, at first, sounded like a song, like music. Like the others have described, it sounded like a rollercoaster of ups and downs. The throaty r's and oin's always made my ears prick up. It's difficult to describe the way it sounds! Comparing it to bubbles is good! Every now and then, there is a _pop!_ when a really throaty letter is pronounced. It is basically very soothing to listen to.

But, I know some Frenchies that can make it sound very harsh, too! When I heard French people fighting verbally, they can be very expressive and sort of... tear their words apart! Very expressive indeed!  

After learning it, its mysterious nature faded, as I began to pick apart the language as a series of words, not sounds. It has, however, been a long time since I've spoken it or heard it.


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## Milla

Thanks !! but I have another dubt ... are you talking of Spanish spoken in Spain??, because to me Caribbean or CentralAmerican Spanish sounds like people were talking over their noses even when they "bubble" the words as ratone said before... i don't know if I made myself clear


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## Amityville

Just to be different, I still hear the music, and I find French spoken by a  relaxed ior bored man still gives me a frisson.  I think because French is so much more fine-tuned in the mouth than English, to hear the oral skill and finesse done with effortless ease and buffered  in velvety virile tones is just delicious (getting carried away). Maybe because of the higher register of the women, or something else, their way of speaking, feminine French sounds more effortful.


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## jester.

The adjective which comes to my mind about French is "soft".

I think that French in comparison to many other languages really sounds quite "soft".
Take Spanish as an example: it mainly sounds "hard", if you know what I mean...


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## marinax

j3st3r said:
			
		

> The adjective which comes to my mind about French is "soft".
> 
> I think that French in comparison to many other languages really sounds quite "soft".
> Take Spanish as an example: it mainly sounds "hard", if you know what I mean...


 
hard?  
hahaha... i would have said that about german...


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## nichec

xav said:
			
		

> I'd like now to read a bit how French does to foreign ears, especially to non-speakers.





			
				xav said:
			
		

> Hummmm....so I guess I'm not welcome here, how about helf-speakers, or a quarter speakers, maybe? (maman, il est mechant, le monsieur )
> 
> I'll speak from my own experience. When I arrived to Paris, I couldn't speak a word in French. At that time, I loved particularly the sound of French spoken by kids. It's so soft that you feel you can melt in it.( I heard the sentence in French above one day in a bus spoken by a girl after a guy refused to give her the seat, and I swear I'll never forget the sound of it. ) I thought French is a very soft and tender language at that time, though most of the time they sounded like a blur to me because I didn't understand anything...But I did remember I found it very funny to hear French rap at that time. It's just my own opinion, but I've always thought that French is too soft a language to be used in raps or rocks.
> 
> Then I started to study French in the school, and I started to try to talk to French people and make French friends. As I began to understand the language more and more, I found out some very interesting things, like the fact that the Parisians love to skip their words, which makes it sound rougher and difficult to understand.( c'est parce qu'on est toujours presse, madamn! ) And the language itself ( and the people also ) requires you to be very polite all the time ( at least to the strangers ), I guess that's one of the reason why it's so soft. The French have a lot of beautiful words to express their feelings and emotions, but sometimes in French songs you can hear that the singers are trying to sound tough( especially the young ones )
> 
> [QUOTE:XAV]
> On another side, comparisons with other languages would be very interesting, I think.
> Oh, dear xav, what can I say to that after you broke my heart by saying you can't stand the sound of English spoken by a Chinese? I'll be a nice lady and tell you that in comparison to other European languages I've ever heard, French is really a beautiful language. ( I'll put it just after Italian )
> ( hummm, elle est vraiment gentile, la dame la )
> 
> Bonne journee/soiree, Nicole


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## jester.

marinax said:
			
		

> hard?
> hahaha... i would have said that about german...



I think that is correct, too 
Anyway... it was just a comparison

(and it is not negative, if anyone thought so...  I like both French and Spanish)


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## marinax

j3st3r said:
			
		

> I think that is correct, too
> Anyway... it was just a comparison
> 
> (and it is not negative, if anyone thought so... I like both French and Spanish)


 
i know, i know... you didn't mean it in a negative way.  
it was just funny.
i've been told that spanish is heard as if "you were fighting with the other person", may be that is why... has to do with the way we speak and not the language.
and maybe that is why french sounds soft.


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## Outsider

Standard French sounds like a language of artists and intellectuals. Other than that, I have a little trouble finding appropriate adjectives to describe what a language sounds like to me, so I'll just borrow some of the words that other posters have used above:



			
				Ratona said:
			
		

> [...] has a kind of boiling or bubbling sound.


Yes!


			
				Lizziewoo said:
			
		

> 'blurry'... that's the first word that comes to mind [...] but in the way that words are linked and the flow of speech


Agreed! Perhaps because of all those contractions (and colloquial French has even more contractions), French sounds like a fast, continuous, laid back speech. Sometimes it sounds a little carelessly pronounced, but in a stylish, _négligée_ sort of way.


			
				marinax said:
			
		

> a very feminine language. you have to use your lips to speak so much... it is funny to hear/see men speak french...


Agreed also! It must be because of all those rounded vowels. Maybe the French don't use as much body language as Southern Europeans, but they sure use a lot of 'lip language'! 

When I speak French for a long time, it's a strain on my mouth. I can end up feeling my jaw muscles tired! Part of it is simple lack of practice, no doubt, but I think it's also because French has a few difficult vowel sounds.

I don't know as much about French accents as I do about English accents, although I've started to be able to noticed some of them. The Southern French sound like Italians, Spaniards, or Portuguese speaking French, which is funny.  
I think it's due to the way they pronounce the _r_ and the _u_.

I've heard Quebecan French a few times, and it sounds very, very different from European French! I can't understand much of it without subtitles, but at the same time it's fascinating, because in some ways it's closer to what European French sounded like a couple of centuries ago!


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## xav

Wow ! Thank you so much ! I've learned a lot of vocabulary !!!
If I try to resume, I see that French sounds

- blurry, smooth and even soothing, because of its lack of word stress which gives a continuity to the speech and gives all the place to the music of the sentence, as Kelly drew it for us

- and in the same time lilting or bubbling ("bubbling" was exactly my impression ... about Bayrisch, because of all its "uo" diphthongs !), since certain sounds suddenly emerge ; some of them sound throaty, like "oin" or "r"... I thought French "r" were light and nearly inaudible, as they have become in créole or were in France in 1795 - it probably depends who speaks, of course some French pronounce them throatily

How can it be both on the same time ? Probably it isn't, probably it depends on the energy of the speaker, of the strenght he puts on stresses.

- spoken with the mouth almost closed, with a strong (and apparently funny ) use of lips ; I've already heard French-speaking trumpetists, hornists or flutists enjoyed a big advantage from this training.

I'm very surprised some people may find French guttural, since we hate so much gutturals that even the "h" has completely disapperead, like in the other Latin languages (while Spanish, under Basque influence, invented la jota).

I like much the subtle remarks of Amityville :
- French is fine-tuned ; is it rather in its vowels or in its consonants ? (maybe both !). I'd have thought "in its vowels", but the tuning of English vowels is still finer, since they are more numerous...
- his love for a relaxed pronounciation is very interesting, since it shows that the "lazy" pronounciation of English (see http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=62973&highlight=lazy) isn't a matter of carelessness or idleness, as we feel it, but an aesthetic choice.


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## Outsider

Allow me to add some remarks. I can't speak for others, but when I say that French speech flows in a continuous way, this does not mean that it's monotonous. On the contrary: it is very dynamic, full of stresses here and there. Perhaps not word stresses, but stresses within sentences, in any case; rises and falls, as Kelly B wrote. For example, in a phrase such as _'Voici le Roi'_, the word _Roi_ stands out from the rest quite clearly. It can be a very emphatic language!

The fluidity of French may have to do with its contractions and its _liaisons_, though I'm only guessing.



			
				xav said:
			
		

> I liked much the subtle remarks of Amityville :
> - French is fine-tuned ; is it rather in its vowels or in its consonants ? (maybe both !). I'd have thought "in its vowels", but the tuning of English vowels is still finer, since they are more numerous...


But English has few pure vowels. Most of the 'vowels' of English are diphthongs, and some are long vowels. Although French has a few diphthongs, as well (_-ai(l), -ei(l)..._), it has many pure short vowels (_è, é, i, u_, etc.), most of which you won't find in English.


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## BasedowLives

i like the flow of french.

but i have to say, the R doesn't sound all to pleasant to my ears.


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## Isotta

xav said:
			
		

> - blurry, smooth and even soothing, because of its lack of word stress which gives a continuity to the speech and gives all the place to the music of the sentence, as Kelly drew it for us
> 
> - and in the same time lilting or bubbling ("bubbling" was exactly my impression ... about Bayrisch, because of all its "uo" diphthongs !), since certain sounds suddenly emerge ; some of them sound throaty, like "oin" or "r"... I thought French "r" were light and nearly inaudible, as they had become in 1795 or in créole - it probably depends who speaks, of course some French pronounce them throatily
> 
> How can it be both on the same time ? Probably it isn't, probably it depends on the energy of the speaker, of the strenght he puts on stresses.
> - spoken with the mouth almost closed, with a strong (and apparently funny ) use of lips ; I've already heard French-speaking trumpetists, hornists or flutists enjoyed a big advantage from this training.


ok, so though I spoke French as a child, there was a period during which I rarely spoke it such that I forgot most of it. I remember wishing I could still still decipher the crisp, hushed, constrained sounds. To this day French sounds a bit maladroit to me, I suppose as they speak in "tense mode." When it's very cold outside, I find it more difficult to pronounce certain sounds fully. And French is lippy; I can remember my lips hurting when I began learning to speak it again.

On the "r." I think this is a big misconception with the French language, which I believe is rooted in education. I remember French teachers in America and Hong Kong (American and English, respectively) pronounced a thick, heavy "r" that I was hesitant to imitate at first, for it felt foreign to what I remembered as a child, but I adopted it. Turns out it was indeed too heavy, and it slanted my accent until I got rid of it. In France there are people who pronounce a thick, throaty "r," but with the majority of speakers it's very light such that sometimes it's barely audible.

Also with nasals--many Anglophone French teachers exaggerate this. I can see why--otherwise students don't hear it, but French people talk about how nasal Anglophones are, when we aren't the ones with the nasal vowels (I remember something to do with "m" and nasality in English, but I've forgotten). Plus then Anglophones think French is inherently nasal, but you can hear breathy, deep voices as well.

The "music" of French. Well, for me French intonation isn't its best point. The rhythmic groups are repetitive for me--phrase up, phrase up, phrase down to end sentence. So for me it's too predictable and repetitive to lilt all that much. 

I had to laugh at Kelly's observation of women's high-pitched voices, for the same happened to me once. A French boy I knew mentioned that American girls had high-pitched voices, whereas French girls had deep, warm ones. I think that it's likely the same in both, but that a shrill voice will leave more of an impression if it speaks a different language than you do.

French people do speak more softly in general, and that has its charm. Though when I first arrive, I find I can't hear them, and my ear must adjust while I repeat, "Comment?"

Like most any language, French sounds as pretty as the speaker makes it. 

Z.


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## tvdxer

To me, French has a soft and liquid sound to it.  Kind of like the opposite of German


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## blancalaw

I know nothing of French besides some expressions that if I write I know I would butcher the spelling. To me French sounds rather sophisticated, like one of the upper class, and a language of love. With the actual sounds, I hear a lot of “jsha” and a lot of nasal that I can not reproduce.


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