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The phonemes /u/ and /uː/ are not distinct in modern French of France or in modern Quebec French; the spelling <oû> was the /uː/ phoneme, but croûte is pronounced with a short /u/ in modern French of France and in modern Quebec French. In Quebec French, the phoneme /uː/ is used only in loanwords: cool. The phoneme /ɔ/ is pronounced [ɒː ...
All the words in the left-hand column have tense vowels, and the right-hand words have lax vowels. Look at this pair of words, lunettes (glasses) and lune (moon). If we just look at the surrounding consonants, it looks like both the tense and lax vowels can appear in the same environment — they both have an [l] before them and an [n] afterwards.
- Catherine Anderson
- 2018
In final syllables, speakers of Canadian French produce predictable variants for high vowels: high vowels are tense before specific coda consonants (³lengthening consonants, /v z ʒ r vr/) and in open syllables, otherwise high vowels are lax (Poliquin 2006), as in (1). In non-final syllables, however, laxness is highly variable.
- A, E, I, O, U
- Are Vowels Lazy?
- Pouting For A Purpose
- The Nose Knows
I will admit: vowel sounds are extremely hard to master in French, especially in a long-winded sentence! So what makes French vowels so different from English vowels, you may be wondering? Well, in a general sense, English vowels are more lax or short than the French tense or long vowels, and the French have many vowels which use rounded lips. Fren...
Not exactly! But they are described as being lax or tense. One of the best examples is the vowel /i/ articulated at the front of the mouth, in contrast with the lax version /I/. This is the difference, for instance, between ‘heel’ and ‘hill’. We have this distinction in English, but just pronounce the tense version in French si you can! Try with th...
The hardest vowels to pronounce for English speakers are the rounded vowels, which can be at the polar ends of articulation, such as /y/ and /u/ (as you can see in the table above). These sounds create the difference in common words such as /ty/ ‘tu’ and /tut/ ‘tout’. Firstly, /y/ doesn’t exist in English, and although /u/ does, as in the word ‘foo...
Nasal vowels are not so foreign, as they do exist in English, although they are different. Vowels are nasalised in English when we have a nasal consonant (/m/ and /n/) preceding a vowel. Such as the word nose! Whereas in French, a vowel can be nasal on it’s own accord. If you ask a French person to pronounce the nasal vowels, they will eagerly repr...
But for [i], the muscles are more tense than for [ɪ]. The same is true for the vowels in late and let, [e] and [ɛ]. And also for the vowels in food and foot, [u] and [ʊ] It can be hard to feel the physical difference between tense and lax vowels, but the distinction is actually an important one in the mental grammar of English.
- Catherine Anderson
- 2018
quality, syllable structure and cooccurrence restrictions between vowels and consonants that one observes in French makes it an ideal language for exploring the interactions between the two kinds of constraints. As a general tendency, it can safely be assumed that tense vowels appear in open syllables and lax vowels in closed syllables.
People also ask
Which French words vary between tense and lax vowels?
Are high vowels tense or lax?
Can tense and lax vowels appear in the same environment?
Do all words have tense and lax vowels?
Does onset predict tense and lax vowels?
Do tense and lax words exist in English?
In final syllables, speakers of Canadian French produce predictable variants for high vowels: high vowels are tense before specific coda consonants (“lengthening consonants”, /v z ʒ r vr/) and in open syllables, otherwise high vowels are lax (Poliquin 2006), as in (1). In non-final syllables, however, laxness is highly variable.
