[Blazkowicz]

in German as well every letter or couple of letters always sound the same, so you mostly have to learn vocabulary. after two years with great teachers, I went to high school and had three years with two terrible teachers who were obviously waiting for retirement, they would give us grammar tests and show us VHS tapes. I stagnated and worse, just forgot nearly everything.

We mostly pronounce English trademarks the english way but there may be exceptions. as for the "flood" word it's used in French, for the "IRC flood" meaning. Nobody knows it should sound as "flud".

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by nightshade

My Parisian friends kept telling me how they thought my friends from southern France had a very heavy accent which made it tough for them to understand sometimes.

My opinion is unreliable, I can understand nearly everyone (a 80-year-old in the country can be tricky) and my brain tunes it out and doesn't even know it. Now being in the regional city, there are many people who moved in from other regions too so the accent is not so much all over the place. I was born in the north too. Sometimes people notice I have no accent, sometimes they notice I'm speaking with the accent (because I'm doing it, that time)

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by nightshade

Still better than French though, I'm having a God awful time learning what to pronounce and what not to. Sometimes (for the same word) they just will and sometimes they won't, why ? Cause that's just how it is...no explanation at all.

Here comes the explanation, then!

Now I assume you're talking about liaisons. There are words like nous where the final consonant (S here) is typically not pronounced. For instance, in nous sommes, it is not pronounced.

However, when the word precedes another word that begins with a vowel, then the general rule is that you may pronounce it, but don't have to. It's all about euphony, but there are exceptions. Some sequences of words, like nous avons, or les enfants are so common that they have become set in stone, so to speak. So in these cases, the bold Ss have to be pronounced (as a Z) otherwise it would sound very strange. That pretty much applies every time you have a very common word like nous, vous, ils, elles, les, mes, tes, ses, ces… followed by another word that begins with a vowel.

But these are the exceptions, the general rule is that liaisons are optional. So if you say:

(1) Tu es intelligent.
(2) Il est intelligent.

You don't have to pronounce the bold consonants. If you choose to do so, however, be aware that the red S is never pronounced, only the bold S (as a Z) and the T. Here is where you should thank the God of French that liaisons are optional, because otherwise, es and est are pronounced exactly the same, so if you want to faire la liaison, as we say, you have to think about how the verb is spelled. If you don't and you screw it up, you get something like this:



By the way, there's a name for a wrong liaison, in fact it's a rather delightful word: pataquès. It is a wrong liaison itself, pas à pronounced as pa-t à, plus "qu'est-ce" which is actually fine, but I guess the word would have been too short otherwise.

Pataquès, by extension, also means something like "messy mistake", and in fact every French person knows this meaning, but few know the first one.

That was today's 5-minute French grammar lesson. Thank you for your attention.

[Davros]

French is easy, speak english with a french accent pull some funny faces and wave you hands about a lot
dont forget to shrug your shoulders a fair bit also add Haw, Haw, Haw to the end of every other sentence.

[zed]

dont forget to shrug your shoulders

mate a shrug of the shoulders aint french unless u also bring down both sides of the mouth

[Davros]

My god thats it, thats the french face
you must master this to speak french

why have you posted a pic of jean alessi