วีดีโอ

Thanks for your comment. glad you enjoyed the video.

David, thanks for contacting me, and it is a good question! I'm not sure I have a perfect answer, but here are some thoughts. The French have traditionally had a great respect for their language and emphasize its mastery a lot more in schools than we are exposed to in our schools. Perhaps for this reason French people are not too eager to adapt to another languages' sounds. Because French has such a melodic sound, people always say, "French is so beautiful". And so when we hear a French person speaking English with their French accent, we find it charming. Now, personally, I have never found it charming to hear an English speaker speaking French with their English accent! Although several of my students and others have said that their contacts in France do tell them they love their English accent. My teaching centers on the ways that we hold our mouths to produce our sounds in both languages: English very relaxed, more open spaces, and French very tense and more closed and everything said more in the front of the mouth. When we speak another language by saying the words as we would place them in English, we have an accent in the other language. I now offer private lessons to help students make these corrections.

I'm so glad you found this video helpful.

So glad you found this helpful

thanks for that added information

Thanks for this great question. The "i" in he word"vin" is not a stand-alone vowel; it combines with the following"n" to form what we call a nasal vowel in French. The nasal vowel in a word like"vin" or "impossible" sounds, as you said, a lot like the"a" in "salut," but the sound is projected into the nose to make a nasal vowel.There are 3 nasal vowels in modern French: "an "or "en" gives the sound as in "France," or "enfant." and "on" gives the sound as in "bon". In all these cases, the n or m is not pronounced--it has made the vowel nasal.

@@PronouncingFrench Oh ok. Thank you.

No it is not necessary, but it is helpful. When we look up a word in a dictionary, it shows how to pronounce it in phonetic symbols. Phonetic symbols represent the sound instead of the spelling.

Keep watching my videos on TH-cam--they may help you keep up with your French. I also offer private lessons. You can find that information on my website, pronouncingfrench.com under "tutoring".

thanks for the video in any case, very helpful :)

If you speak a little Spanish, this sound is a bit like the "jota" in Spanish, in words like "Jose" La "Jolla." Or play around with the English "h" as in "ha". The air you feel with the "h" is close to where the tongue hits for the French "r. Best wishes!

No, not me!

Sorry I don't understand your comment. There is no "an" nasal in the word Reims, but the traditional "in" sound as in "pain" or "vin". I know that that vowel has evolved and many French speakers now say something closer to the "an" nasal vowel, but I prefer to teach non-native speakers the traditional sound so they can avoid being misunderstood.

As you know, in general final consonants are not pronounced in French. Usually students are taught that an exception to that are the 4 consonants in the English word "careful". So: donc, mère, neuf, seul. Of course, there are exceptions to this, too, but this little rule will cover most cases. For proper nouns like Reims or family names, there is no way to know; a lot depends on tradition and ancient spellings, etc. I hope this was useful.

Hello Said, Thank you for your blessing and your kind words. I am delighted that someone from Algeria discovered my You Tube channel. My best wishes to you.

I am so glad you found it useful.

So glad you found this video helpful.

Thanks for your kind words. I am so glad you enjoy my teaching

Thanks you so much madam and I am new student who learn French in France

the "m" makes the vowel in front of it a nasal vowel. so that gives you the sound that you have in "vin" or "fin" or "pain". Once giving its nasality to the vowel, the "m" or "n" disappears from the pronunciation. Hope this is helpful

Glad I could be helpful!

I hope the lesson was helpful.

I’m not sure what you are referring to, but “bien” along with other “ien” words (rien, vient etc.) are pronounced as this: bjɛ̃ vjɛ̃.ʁjɛ̃ The nasal vowel is the same as the vowel in “vin”, but for the "ien” words it is a bit more open. There is a bit of flexibility for this particular sound.

Glad you enjoyed this little lesson. You may want to check out my video course too at pronouncingfrench,com

So glad you found this lesson useful.

So glad it helped!

Thanks for you kind words. I am so glad that you found this video helpful.

So glad the lesson was useful to you. You may want to consider taking my course at some point, or even some private lessons which are very helpful. Best wishes..

yeah that was the point she was making..

@@exaggeratedswagger7485Her accent is not good.

She was using the passe compose .

Thank you so much for these kind words. It's true: this subject is foundational in French, and other teachers don't seem to mention it!