a à â emme


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 [â] [à] [a] sounds. Similar to the English [a] sound in [arm] without the [rm] of course.


As a practical proposition, we are not going to make the traditional linguistic distinction here between the pronunciation of palatal /a/ as in , etc. and the velar /a/ as in the classical standard linguistic pronunciation of words like or as it should be in the following uttered minimal pairs:

Click the buttons to hear the classical palatal versus velar distinction:

 ·      
·  
·  
In today's practice, very few native French users would be aware of such distinction and most would accept instead the palatal /a/ ( but short or long as required ) as the norm,
 ·short like in and most unstressed open syllables ( that is when the syllable ends in a pronounced /a/ and usually not the last syllable of the word)  
 

 ·but long in stressed syllables ( remember that in French such tends to be the last syllable )          
 
1. long where the /a/ is followed by a gap sound, like in , etc.
   
2. long or where the a is written with a circumflexed , as in the examples, further above , of the minimal pairs

3. long or again when the /a/ is followed by /l/ or /R/ in stressed syllables like in .


The sound's written representations are: a -ail/aille à â e/ê emme

·a - pronounced [arh] without the [r] when no other vowel surounds it  
·à - as the [a] above  
·ail/aille - the [a] is sounded as above followed by a [y] sound as in [yes]  
·â - as the [a] above  
·e/ê - as the [a] above  
·emme - exceptionally is pronounced as [aam], similar to the English [arm] without the [r].  
 




 

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Frank ANTAL 

Page updated 04/07/02 Brisbane Queensland Australia