Hearing JP
At work today we had a CIA (not the CIA you know) webcast on seg funds and hedging, and turns out the fourth speaker was a francophone. Now, I don't know much about seg funds, so other than perking up at the occasional Greek letter I could recall from one of my exams, I really couldn't follow much, so instead, I decided to focus on the francophone accent and picked up a few things.
Now this guy is very educated and smart, and clearly has a good grasp on english grammar, but his accent was also decently thick, and I rather thought he sounded a lot like Northstar would sound. (And, I suspect Northstar would have been able to follow the lecture far better than I could, but give me a year or two, and I'll catch up.)
1.The dreaded dropped s.
Francophones tend to drop there s's. These letters aren't usually pronounced in french and that tends to carry over. What sounds like bad english...
- we drove three car to the office.
is actually just a silent s on cars. (In fact, we could tell this speaker was reading most of the presentation and could see the s's he wasn't pronouncing on the screen.. it wasn't a grammatical error.
There is an exception. In french, if the word ending in s is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, then the s is sounded out. This came across in the presentation. For example,
- There were three cars at the office."Cars at" would be pronounced properly.
This dropping of s extends to the sound s, not just the letter.
"the defense went well".. would be pronounced "the defen went well" (I'll get to the th sound momentarily)
while "The defense of the man" would be "the defense of the man"
I think this change up with the vowel has thrown me off in the past, just because I never quite caught on to when it was being said correctly and when it wasn't.
2. "Th"
Words like the, there, them, that are pronounced de, dere, dem and dat, while words like thief and method become t'ief and met'od, where the t sound can really lie anywhere between d and t.
3. "ed" and "ted"
like the s, "ed" tends to be dropped. So, dropped for example will shorten to drop. But if it's a word ending in ted, it's the opposite, where the ted tends to be pronounced quite carefully. (eg: excited)
5. tempo.
I think the most noticeable thing about a francophone's speech, and near impossible to denote in writing is the tempo. I tried very hard to analyze that, but found it hard to decide for certain if it was that different syllables were being emphasized or something else altogether. In the end, I decided that it was that the francophones give every syllable the same care. So where an anglophone might pause slightly longer on a syllable, a francophone will not. (Perhaps this is exactly what emphasis is, in which case, they don't seem to emphasize syllables.) This is most noticeable in multi-syllabic words
6. vowels.
Most accents are really about the vowels, and Francophone is no different, but pinpointing every vowel distinction is very difficult. What I did notice was that the vowels in general were more carefully pronounced. Where we might get a bit lazy on an e sound or an o, a francophone is more likely to pronounce it the way were were taught to pronounce the sound in grade school. Of course, this isn't always the case. I noticed with this particular speaker, for example, he struggled on the word project (as in project one's voice) where he pronounced it as one would in the sentence "a project I did at school". He stumbled a bit on it, so I think he knew it was wrong, but not how to fix it.
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment.
Now this guy is very educated and smart, and clearly has a good grasp on english grammar, but his accent was also decently thick, and I rather thought he sounded a lot like Northstar would sound. (And, I suspect Northstar would have been able to follow the lecture far better than I could, but give me a year or two, and I'll catch up.)
1.The dreaded dropped s.
Francophones tend to drop there s's. These letters aren't usually pronounced in french and that tends to carry over. What sounds like bad english...
- we drove three car to the office.
is actually just a silent s on cars. (In fact, we could tell this speaker was reading most of the presentation and could see the s's he wasn't pronouncing on the screen.. it wasn't a grammatical error.
There is an exception. In french, if the word ending in s is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, then the s is sounded out. This came across in the presentation. For example,
- There were three cars at the office."Cars at" would be pronounced properly.
This dropping of s extends to the sound s, not just the letter.
"the defense went well".. would be pronounced "the defen went well" (I'll get to the th sound momentarily)
while "The defense of the man" would be "the defense of the man"
I think this change up with the vowel has thrown me off in the past, just because I never quite caught on to when it was being said correctly and when it wasn't.
2. "Th"
Words like the, there, them, that are pronounced de, dere, dem and dat, while words like thief and method become t'ief and met'od, where the t sound can really lie anywhere between d and t.
3. "ed" and "ted"
like the s, "ed" tends to be dropped. So, dropped for example will shorten to drop. But if it's a word ending in ted, it's the opposite, where the ted tends to be pronounced quite carefully. (eg: excited)
5. tempo.
I think the most noticeable thing about a francophone's speech, and near impossible to denote in writing is the tempo. I tried very hard to analyze that, but found it hard to decide for certain if it was that different syllables were being emphasized or something else altogether. In the end, I decided that it was that the francophones give every syllable the same care. So where an anglophone might pause slightly longer on a syllable, a francophone will not. (Perhaps this is exactly what emphasis is, in which case, they don't seem to emphasize syllables.) This is most noticeable in multi-syllabic words
6. vowels.
Most accents are really about the vowels, and Francophone is no different, but pinpointing every vowel distinction is very difficult. What I did notice was that the vowels in general were more carefully pronounced. Where we might get a bit lazy on an e sound or an o, a francophone is more likely to pronounce it the way were were taught to pronounce the sound in grade school. Of course, this isn't always the case. I noticed with this particular speaker, for example, he struggled on the word project (as in project one's voice) where he pronounced it as one would in the sentence "a project I did at school". He stumbled a bit on it, so I think he knew it was wrong, but not how to fix it.
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment.