Go ahead. Say the French word for street. Now! Oh, dear. I don't know why I get so overbearing on this blog. Je suis désolé. Perhaps I'm absorbing some of the Latin temperament. :)
Anyway, I was instructed as an undergrad French student, to assume that I've just bitten into an unripe lemon or a green persimmon when I pronounce any word with the 'u' sound that occurs in rue and similar words. The other 'u' is a piece of cake (Jeez, another worrisome English idiom) sounding very much like 'ou,' but there is really no equivalent to the vowel in rue and plus. Perhaps the closest is the sound in the English word 'pew,' but a native Frenchwoman would immediately know that you're from out of town if you pronounced it like that.
As with a lot of French, if you want to reproduce this sound, you have to make a face. In other words, you can't be shy and you have to be willing to momentarily feel silly. Now, rest assured I'm not saying that French is a silly language, far from it, but that the uvula, throat muscles, facial muscles, and lips need to be utilized in ways different from the way English speakers normally use them. It helps a little if you watch a French TV program or movie and mute the audio. Watch the lips and facial expressions of the speakers.
Meanwhile, back on la rue, many students of French just end up pronouncing all "u's" like 'ou.' This may allow one to get herself understood, but we don't really want to sound like tourists forever, now do we? And yet so many French people speak English with that ubiquitous 'accent,' having special difficult with the 'th' sounds. Some say that it's necessary to have begun speaking the language as a child in order to conquer the accent problem. But I think that if you really work at it, it's possible to speak a foreign language with some accuracy. This all comes later, though. If we expend a great deal of effort in trying to pronounce every word perfectly, we'll end up sounding artificial and stilted. Better at first to simply speak. Inky dinky parley voo.
How do the French view English-accented French? As you doubtless know, French-accented English has quite the cache on this side of the Atlantic (and this side of the Channel?). But when going in the opposite direction, is it all downhill?? Do the French run in horror at the first 'rue'?
ReplyDeleteJe ne sais pas, mais je poserai cette question à mon correspondant français, Denis, quand je lui écrirai au'jourd'hui.
ReplyDeleteThe French are notorious for recoiling in horror at Americans who butcher their language (parlezz-vooz frawn-say?), but I think it's mostly Parisians who feign indignation at every gaffe. You can't help but wonder what French with an Anglisized accent sounds like to them. I even wonder how English sounds to them--sort of like German with a slight Latin accent?