The cats on the pew purr, plus meow

J'ai un peu de peur des rues françaises .  If I didn't complete botch it up, that means 'I'm a little afraid of French streets.  French has so many 'unEnglish' sounds.  I've already mentioned the travails of trying to pronounce the French word for 'street,' rue, which is double-trouble.  First, you have to deal with the throaty 'r' sound and then with one of the many possible pronunciations of  'u.'  So, a neophyte has to avoid the tendency to anglicize the word and pronounce it 'roo,' which is wrong on two counts.  Then there's the problem of the 'u' sound in a word like peu (a little or a little bit).  If you were to pronounce it like the English word 'pew,' you'd be close enough that you just might be understood by a Frenchwoman, if she takes the word in the context of the rest of your sentence.  But that's not quite right.  To me it sounds as though you're starting to say 'pew' but sort of chop it off at the end.  It always sounds like it has an almost imperceptible 'r' sound in there somewhere, sort of like the British often tack on a faint 'r' sound to some words ending in 'a' (though they would rigorously deny that they are doing such a thing).  But if you put too much of an 'r' sound on the word peu, it would sound dangerously like peur, the French word for 'fear.'  Damned if you do; damned if you don't.  And then there's also the word plus to deal with.  What it takes to get this right is listening and repeating the correct sounds ad infinitum. Here's a little video that deals with some of these problems: 

Well let's switch gears for a moment.  All this talk of the subtleties of French pronunciation is giving me un peu de peur.  Fortunately my local library carries copies of the CD's for Pimsleur's French.  I believe they have levels from beginner to advanced.  The problem is that it appears that there is no way to change the format of the CD materials to mp3's that I could save them on the device I use to listen to French when I do my daily exercise.  Presumably, that's technically illegal anyhow.  So, I do have a portable CD player, but the issue is that it seems to require a huge amount of battery energy, and I'm forced to replace the batteries so often that it gets to be rather expensive.  I suppose I need to start buying rechargeable batteries, since I think I do have a charger somewhere.  Anyway, the Pimslear CD's are very good, I think.  native speakers introduce a series of conversational type dialogues, so that you learn the right pronunciation in small, manageable chunks.  I also like the way it makes you participate in the dialogue.  Nothing but listen-and-repeat can be counterproductive.  One needs to be ready with a quick, unforced response to typical conversational questions.  I can't afford to buy the CDs, though I do think they are worth the price for serious language learners.

A la prochaine...