Difficult english words to pronounce...

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Frenchnoob

Frenchnoob

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English Australian
Just a little point of humour...

A french guy at work told me he completely avoids english words he finds really difficult to pronounce properly like the word "focus" ... (just think how would this be pronounced with a heavy french accent :D).
He used this in a very serious/boring business presentation to top executives &, as you could guess, the class erupted in laughter.

I think the line he used went something like "You need to focus hard on this issue".

Naturally he didn't make that mistake twice. :eek:

What are some other words that French people try to avoid?
 
    • yes, it is very different because actually the 'ths' is quite a long sound.

    Months is almost like saying month-eu-s (but quickly at the end)
    for me anyway, this is the closest I can explain!

    (by 'eu' I mean the french sound 'eu' as in 'j'ai eu' ("I have had")

    I can see how it would be tricky to say this :)
     
    I remember having trouble with slot.
    A girl at the office took offense at the way I pronounced it.
    A famous story I was told involved a Frenchman who could not properly pronounce taking into account.
    It sounded like talking into a c*nt.
     
    My biggest achievement in English was to properly pronounce were and where.
    It took me a while just to hear the difference!
     
    Hehe, great to hear the funny stories!
    Actually were & where gets everyone (ie all non english speakers), not just the french, as well as walk & work.

    My favourite french word is "la fac" for university ... so just like in l'auberg espagniole, I love saying "I'm going to fac" =).
     
    English was never my strongest subject at school. I'll have to protest & say that what I wrote still makes sense even though yours sounds so much better.

    "Beach", "sheet", "slot", "taking into account" ... they really are classics!
     
    Reminds me of Churchill's apparent speech to the French National Assembly after the war: "Quand je regarde mon derrière, je vois qu'il est divisé en deux parties". As for the French friend who can't say focus, I'd suggest he simply say "faux" + "que" + "ce" with the "e caduc" on "ce" dropped off to near nothingness.
     
    No not at all pieanne, no offence taken whatsoever, the thought didn't even cross my mind. I was speaking in jest. I was thinking maybe I should've added some smilies to my comments. You have to do quite a lot to offend an Aussie =). Btw, all my friends hated english at school, shakespear, essays, eekh!
     
    Many French people, even fairly good English speakers, can't seem to get 'development' right.
    I invariably hear devel'opment and to devel'op instead of development and develop.
     
    After years of trying to improve my spoken English, I came to realize that the real issue is not pronunciation but accentuation.
    You can pronounce a word or a sentence perfectly, you will always sound like a foreigner if you stress the wrong syllable.
     
    Personally, I would always discourage a french person from trying to lose their french accent because it sounds so lovely.
    You could be the ugliest person on the planet & yet people will gather just to hear you speak in a french accent.
    DON'T LOSE YOUR FRENCH ACCENT, WHATEVER YOU DO, PLEASE!
    Unless of course, you're very particular & have a need to get it right or parfait.
     
    I would like to have my English accent as parfait as possible! But on the other hand, I know I'll always have that -more or less- slight hint of a lovely French accent. Which is quite fine by me! :)
     
    doodlebugger said:
    Frenchnoob, the attractiveness of the French accent wanes pretty fast in a business environment!
    Click to expand...

    Yeah, but nobody will complain if its not perfect.
    If you speak fluent or very close but just with an accent, there should be no problem unless the accent is too strong that it causes confusion.

    Not to have a go at the Scottish, but just as an example, when they speak, I am completely baffled, and yet they have just spoken english to me. Quoi????

    Juliette Binoche really speaks with a perfect british "royal" accent in movies such as Damage & the English Patient. And I know I waffle on about the gorgeous french accent a little too much on these forums but I don't see why it needs to be perfect for business.
    As long as its clear, then that should be fine.
     
    In my experience, the difficulty lies in large part in the inconsistent pronunciation of similarly spelled words or, even worse, in the different pronunciation depending on the context of words that are spelled identically. I remember reading poems on the subject while learning English and I found a few of them on the web at the following address:

    http://home.planet.nl/~blade068/languagefun/pronunciation.htm

    Here are a few excerpts from that page:

    The bandage was wound round the wound
    The farm was used to produce produce
    The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse
    We must polish the Polish furniture
    He could lead if he would get the lead out
    ...

    Dearest creature in Creation,
    Studying English pronunciation,
    I will teach you in my verse
    Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
    It will keep you, Susy, busy,
    Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
    Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
    So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,
    Pray, console your loving poet,
    Make my coat look new, dear, sew
    it! Just compare heart, beard and heard,
    Dies and diet, Lord and word,
    Sword and sward, retain and Britain,
    (Mind the latter, how it's written);
    Made has not the sound of bade;
    Say - said, pay - paid, laid, but plaid.
    Now I surely will not plague you
    With such words as vague and ague,
    But be careful how you speak,
    Say break, steak, but bleak and streak,
    ...

     
    Oh yes, so true, its the ugly side of the english language.
    Does this duel or multiple pronunciation of the same word exist in french?
     
    Re the poems: Wow! It's a very good thing for me that I was born to English and am learning French, instead of the other way around. I had no idea there were so many such problems.

    But to get back on-topic, one of the problems I've had is that some French vowel sounds don't seem to exist in (my version of) English. The "u" in "tu", the "o" in téléphone, etc. Are there vowels sounds in English that don't exist in French that contribute to these pronunciation problems?
     
    The French are not always very discriminative in the way they pronounce some sounds. For example, to them, "je viendrai" and "je viendrais" sound the same, which it normally doesn't.
    On the other hand, the Belgians make the difference: "je viendrai" = [é], "je viendrais" = [è].
    Belgium is north of France, and the more you go to the north, the more people you find who can adapt their tongue (if I may say that) to foreign sounds.
    Scientists say their "pronounciation basis" is "impure", but in fact they are more prepared to acquire and produce foreign sounds.
     
    Old Novice said:
    Re the poems: Wow! It's a very good thing for me that I was born to English and am learning French, instead of the other way around. I had no idea there were so many such problems.

    But to get back on-topic, one of the problems I've had is that some French vowel sounds don't seem to exist in (my version of) English. The "u" in "tu", the "o" in téléphone, etc. Are there vowels sounds in English that don't exist in French that contribute to these pronunciation problems?
    Click to expand...

    We have that problem with some English consonants, especially th (as in the or three) and the "r" sound. All the English vowels, however, exist in French but many are modulated differently (focus is a good example). It is when you don't modulate them properly that you produce the typical French accent.
     
    I'm afraid I have to disagree, Iznogood...
    I always have a hard time trying to teach students how to make the difference between, say, "bought", and "boat", "row" and "row", "slob" and "focus", "bomb" and "comb"...
     
    Iznogoud said:
    We have that problem with some English consonants, especially th (as in the or three) and the "r" sound. All the English vowels, however, exist in French but many are modulated differently (focus is a good example). It is when you don't modulate them properly that you produce the typical French accent.
    Click to expand...

    I've been told that there are actually two "th" sounds in English, which you can hear by saying "The [pronounced "thee"] theater" [theatre for our BE colleagues]. The tongue moves differently, touching the teeth for the "the" but not for the "theater", which is more breathy. Anglophones tend to be unaware of the difference, akin to the difficulty in hearing the distinction between the English "r" and "l" if you're raised speaking Chinese. So perhaps English teachers may not focus on it enough for their francophone students, contributing to your difficulties with "th" words.
     
    Yes, there's a difference between "the" and "thick"
    The [th] sound in "the" is breezing, the one in "thick", well, is thicker!
    Same as in "moth" & "theatre"
     
    pieanne said:
    Well, "eau" is a straight [ô]
    "Go" is more [Ow]
    Click to expand...

    Sorry, I don't know the phonetic symbols. Go, row, sew, so, show, flow, owe, toe, and chateau all end in the same "long o" sound, to my ear. Is this another thing like the "th" difference that I just mentioned in another post? Is there a difference in the long o sound that anglophones have trouble hearing (or at least that AE anglophones do)?

    Edit: Oops! Did you mean ô as in bientôt? :eek: I've been pronouncing that the same way, too.
     
    pieanne said:
    I'm afraid I have to disagree, Iznogood...
    I always have a hard time trying to teach students how to make the difference between, say, "bought", and "boat", "row" and "row", "slob" and "focus", "bomb" and "comb"...
    Click to expand...

    Yes, I completely agree with you and it is one of the most difficult aspects of English pronunciation (see my earlier post with the poems), but at least those vowel sounds exist in French and are easy for French speakers to reproduce. The difficulty lies in choosing which sound to use depending on the word and the context.

    By contrast, the th sound does not exist in French, which is why many beginners say it as a z or an s. The same thing happens with the u sound for English speakers, who often say it as ou.
     
    pieanne said:
    Yes, there's a difference between "the" and "thick"
    The [th] sound in "the" is breezing, the one in "thick", well, is thicker!
    Same as in "moth" & "theatre"
    Click to expand...

    The 'th' sound in moth and theatre is the same - they are both harder 'th' sounds than previously mentioned 'the' or 'there'...
     
    When you say chinese, there are actually a lot of different dialects.
    People may or may not know this but the mainland chinese speak mandarin (the official language) and their dialect is noticeably heavy on the R and SH pronunciations. So for them it should be easier to pick the english curled R pronunciation. Its the cantonese speakers from Hong Kong & the rest of most of Asia that don't have the curled R pronunciation. So for them its really hard to make the curled R sound & they try to make up for it by using a flapped R sound which sounds like a soft L (ie when you hit the palate with your tongue very quickly). Of course some just find making an obvious L sound much much easier & just end up using the usual L pronunciation instead. Its also less confusing, whether they do it consciously or not.
    You must be very careful when saying Chinese because of the many different dialects.
     
    Iznogoud, You would help me tremendously if you provided the French words with the sounds corresponding to all the words in my previous post...
    Would you, please?
     
    Frenchnoob said:
    When you say chinese, there are actually a lot of different dialects.
    People may or may not know this but the mainland chinese speak mandarin (the official language) and their dialect is noticeably heavy on the R and SH pronunciations. So for them it should be easier to pick the english curled R pronunciation. Its the cantonese speakers from Hong Kong & the rest of most of Asia that don't have the curled R pronunciation. So for them its really hard to make the curled R sound & they try to make up for it by using a flapped R sound which sounds like a soft L (ie when you hit the palate with your tongue very quickly). Of course some just find making an obvious L sound much much easier & just end up using the usual L pronunciation instead. Its also less confusing, whether they do it consciously or not.
    You must be very careful when saying Chinese because of the many different dialects.
    Click to expand...

    Point taken, and I hope I gave no offense. The explanation I gave was one given me by a colleague born and raised in China, which is how I first learned of the "th" distinction in English. It would have been more accurate for me to have made reference to the possibility that the r-l issue might not arise in all dialects.
     
    Actually pieanne is right on a technical basis.
    But its very hard for english speakers to pick this up & is not really if at all emphasised at school.
    Our teacher happened to use the example of "cloth" and "clothes" or "breath" and "breathe". Like pieanne said, you basically breathe more air out as you say the 2nd examples. But its very technical in my opinion & most english speakers wouldn't even know there was a difference.
     
    Old Novice said:
    Point taken, and I hope I gave no offense. The explanation I gave was one given me by a colleague born and raised in China, which is how I first learned of the "th" distinction in English. It would have been more accurate for me to have made reference to the possibility that the r-l issue might not arise in all dialects.
    Click to expand...

    Not at all, no offense whatsoever. But I merely wanted to point out that it wasn't so much that they couldn't hear the difference but rather that they find it hard to make the sound because they're not used to producing that curled R pronunciation.

    I have to admit, I find it hard to make the french R sound comfortably.
    It just doesn't roll off my tongue very well. I'm generally okay except in words like "grand". I tend to break the 2 apart and pronounce G and R distinctly whereas the french make a very clean single GR sound.
     
    Frenchnoob said:
    Not at all, no offense whatsoever. But I merely wanted to point out that it wasn't so much that they couldn't hear the difference but rather that they find it hard to make the sound because they're not used to producing that curled R pronunciation.
    Click to expand...

    Well, I'm afraid that that's not the way it was explained to me, :) but I have no personal knowledge one way or the other. The explanation I received was that the anglophone's difficulty in distinguishing the two sounds of "th" was the same issue. Maybe this was intended just as a methaphor, however, or maybe I simply misunderstood. Again, if my earlier statement was inaccurate, I apologize.
     
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