5 Key Areas of English Pronunciation the French Commonly Find Difficult

French originates from the Romance group of Indo-European languages, and has close linguistic ties to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian for example. Belgium or Canadian French have differences to standard French of France, but these variances are no greater than those between British and American English.  

Interestingly, with French being an Indo-European language and the Normans’ contribution to the English language, there are some similarities that exist, both in vocabulary and syntax. Phonological systems, (the ways in which we understand patterns of speech sounds in a language in order to convey meaning), identify some important differences which often present challenges for French speakers in understanding and producing sounds in spoken English.  

 While French speakers generally do not have difficulty in pronouncing most English consonants, it is some of the vowel sounds that present the problems. Perhaps most importantly, the variations of word stress and rhythm between French and English systems are the biggest ‘offenders’ for the French in understanding and producing spoken English.

-       Variations in stress patterns - All French words of two syllables or more are stressed in a regular way, unlike in English where the stress patterns on words need to be learnt, and ultimately lead to a lack of comprehensibility from native English speakers.

 -       ‘Swallowing’ our words – unstressing a syllable in English means reducing the time given to pronouncing the word with little vowel reduction when this occurs. This often gives French speakers the impression that English speakers are swallowing their words, and that the English spoken by French speakers sounds monotonous to English speakers.

-       Variations in positioning of the lips, tongue and jaw – French requires more tense, rounded lips with more frequent jaw opening. With no use of the tip and more of the blade (the part behind the tip) of the tongue, this gives a ‘softer’ sound to certain consonants in English.

These sounds in English have varying degrees of difficulty and, although there are many I could talk about, I would like to highlight 5 common errors of English pronunciation that lead to a ‘French accent’ in English.

1.     th

French does not contain dental fricatives (the ‘TH’ sounds θ or ð), so speakers will often replace these sounds with /s/ and /z/.

2.    Vowel rounding

Many French vowels sounds (at the centre and front) use rounded lips, whereas in English they would use more neutral lips, thus creating a very different sound.

3.    Minimal pairs eg. /ɪ/ vs. /i:/

French has just one close front vowel [i], English has two: /ɪ/ and /i:/. When the /ɪ/ sound is spoken it requires a slightly lower jaw positioning, but French speakers often just use one position for both these vowels.

4.     /r/ vs. sound ‘r’

French ‘r’ is a voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/, made at the back of the mouth, whereas the English /r/ is made near the front of the mouth (an ‘alveolar approximant’). An easy mistake to make!

5.     Word Stress (& rhythm)

As explained above, French tends to stress the last syllable of a long word, English is not as predictable unfortunately!

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