Word of the Week #29 - Formidable- Open “O” & “I” - Mastering French Pronunciation w/ Geri Metz

WORD OF THE WEEK #29-formidable! A great word with lots of interesting features of vowels and consonants
Bonjour! I'm Geri Metz and this is the "Word of the Week!" A mini video lesson in French Pronunciation!
Please visit pronouncingfrench.com and sign up for a free French pronunciation lesson, phonetics chart and many other useful learning tools for teachers and students alike! Enjoy!
The purpose of PronouncingFrench.com is to improve the quality of spoken French among teachers, students and
all who wish to sound more authentic when speaking the beautiful French language.
If you enjoyed this video please click the "thumbs up" button on the bottom right of the video, subscribe to my channel and share with your friends! Merci!
---------------------------------------­--------------------------------------
Word of the Week #29 formidable
Bonjour. This is Geri Metz of Pronouncingfrench.com, and I’m here with Word of the Week # 29. This week our word is a fun word, “formidable”. This word can be used to mean “formidable” as in English, but in ordinary conversation it usually means something like “fabulous”, or “teriffic”. It has some interesting elements, so let’s take a look.
Remember the French anticipate the vowel, so even before making the “f” consonant by placing the teeth against the lower lip, start forming your lips to say the “o”. Now this is going to be an open “o” like the sound in “Paul” or “brosse”. To make this vowel, we keep the tongue tip as close to the lower teeth as we can, and we round the tongue toward the back of the mouth. But perhaps most important is the lip position. We round the lips as in English to say “Paul”, but for the French sound we need to draw in the corners of the lips: “for”, “for”, with the sides of the lips drawn together.
Now with open syllabication as we have seen before, we divide the word after the vowel, ending the syllable in the vowel “aw” and we put the “r” onto the next syllable with the “m”. fo-rmi. I admit that putting “r” and “m” together is a little harder than some consonant combinations, but make the effort to not divide the word by closing the syllable with the “r”.
For the vowel in this next syllable, you will make a quick transition from the back vowel “aw” with the tongue raised in the back of the mouth and the lips rounded, to the front vowel “i”, and for “i” you will round the tongue in the very front of the mouth and have your lips spread.
The last syllable of this word is “dabl”. When you say this syllable you will notice there is a little sound after the “l”. Do not think that this sound is the pronunciation of the mute e at the end of the spelling. If that were the case, the word would have an additional syllable: for-mi-dab-le. And that is not how it is pronounced. What you hear at the end of the word is the détente of the “l”, where the tongue separates from its contact point; the release of the consonant.
If you haven’t already gone to my website pronouncingfrench.com, please do so. Put in your email address and you will receive helpful information and also get the Word of the Week delivered to your inbox weekly. Here’s hoping you have a week that is formidable. Enjoy this word, et à la prochaine.