The Syllable

Please be mindful of the fact that all the French sounds are produced with greater facial, throat and other phonatory muscle tension than any English sound.

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The French language is syllabic whilst the English is stress-timed. Take the following cases;

The French will say dé-par-te-ment the English dpartmnt
gou-ver-ne-ment govrnmnt

The French syllabize, that is they pronounce each syllable and in principle do not omit the vowels in the syllables ( there are exceptions).

By contrast, the English will focus mostly on ONE syllable, that is ONE vowel in the whole word and the others are more or less neglected in speech.

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Legend: v = vowel c=consonant

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In French there are:
Open syllables:

·	v :the syllable is a vowel or vowel cluster - a à ai au aoû oe oeu e é ei eu etc
·	c+v :ends in a vowel - le te ne de de que la ma ta sa etc

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Closed syllables:

·	v+c : the syllable starts with a vowel and ends with consonant/s or semi-vowel/s - on en août art
·	c+v+c : the syllable starts with consonant/s followed by a vowel and ends with consonant/s - part tram pour chien chatte patte

NOTE: the silent final [-e] is considered to be part of the previous syllable. SO DO NOT PRONOUNCE IT until you learn more about it.

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Mono-syllabic words

·	there are open monosyllabic words: le te ne de de que la ma ta sa

·	There are closed monosyllabic words: on en août art

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Poly-syllabic words:

NOW is the TIME to learn to SYLLABIZE. Here follow some quick rules:

·	if v+c+v then [-c-] goes with the following vowel:
·	if v+ double c+v then OBSERVE THE RULE which says that you write double consonants in French but you sound only ONE. So virtually this means that the previous principle applies: . BUT in writing the double consonants will be split eg. af-faire, ad-dition
·	if v+c+l/r+v then c+l/r will go with the following vowel. BUT if [-rl-], they are separated: NOTE:
·	ALSO any other than [-rl-] or [-lr-] consonant group is separated :

 

Copyright 2002 AntWise

Frank ANTAL 

Page updated 04/07/02 Brisbane Queensland Australia