Discussion
strongpigeon: As a native (Québécois) French speaker who's been living in the US for most of my adult life, something I miss from French is that once you've learned the (many) rules, you can be pretty confident about how to pronounce a given word.English on the other hand has so many exceptions (usually based on the origin of the word), that I still encounter words that I'll mispronounce at first. I can typically pass as a native speaker, until I "leak" by tripping on one of those.
freedomben: Native English speaker, but yes this is something I love about Spanish. There are rules to learn (sometimes quite variable depending on Mexico vs. Spain, etc) but once you learn them, pronunciation is usually pretty confident.Though one downside which I've gleaned from friends who are non-native English speakers, is that the variance in pronunciation in English does sometimes lead to native English understanding what you meant, whereas in Spanish if you're pronouncing it wrong the listener often has no idea what you're trying to say. That's heavy anecdata though. I'd be super interested to hear from others if that's been their experience or not.
tombh: "Hey", /ˈheɪ/, has a dipthong /eɪ/, so é is precisely the first half of that dipthong. It may feel like it's between the “e” in “bet” and “ee” in “see”, but using the dipthong you don't have to guess it.
bloppe: I've been speaking French since pre-school (albeit in North America mostly) and to me é always sounds more like the English short i (as in "tip"). I'm becoming increasingly convinced that everybody on Earth but me is wrong about it.
nathan_douglas: I'm trying to get to B2/C1 in French and intend to move to France in 2028. Over the years I've picked up a little Spanish here, took a few years of German there, etc.Recently I read _Erec and Enide_ [1] and it was really cool to be able to find the original Old French version of it and read large parts of it (not the whole thing) and find it so much easier to read than Early Middle English like the _Ancrene Wisse_ [2], etc.One of the things I've really appreciated about LLMs is to be able to ask about the divergence of the Romance languages, e.g. "why does 'y' mean 'there' in French and 'and' in Spanish?" and get a legible response. It's really enhanced the learning experience by taking seemingly arbitrary differences and situating them in historical contexts, etc. I think it makes more connections somehow and helps me build fluency faster.IDK what my point is, I just find this stuff fun to think about, even if you're not a French language learner. I'm gonna have to dig deeper into this site, thanks for sharing.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erec_and_Enide [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancrene_Wisse
khancyr: French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care.For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)
tombh: They're extremely close! /ɪ/ literally sits next to /e/ on the vowel chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_diagram#/media/File%3AIP...
m132: Only if your accent is relatively close to General American or Standard Canadian :)
tsss: French is such a shitty language. I've been learning Polish lately and every word is spoken exactly as you write it. A real breath of fresh air.
kreyenborgi: Cześć!
amelius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
werdnapk: I'm a native English speaker who's very exposed to French, but doesn't speak it, I find the use of accents in French very welcome to getting the pronunciation right when exposed to a new word. English is just a mess in comparison and I wish it had made use of accents as well to avoid a lot of the ambiguities in pronunciation. Perhaps some of the old English letters that are no longer in use helped a bit, but I'm not familiar enough with those to know if it used to be better.
rkomorn: You mean kinda like how (as I recently was informed) "ye olde" is actually pronounced "the old" but written "ye" because of printing issues, and consequently mispronounced by almost everyone?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde
Amorymeltzer: >Ê with the circumflex accent marks an “e” after which originally some other letter was written (usually an S), but this letter is no longer present in its modern spelling.[snip]>By imagining “es” instead of “ê”, we can often deduce the meaning of unknown words; for example, forêt = forest, fête = “feste” = fest(ival); intérêt = interest and many others. The circumflex accent is used in the very same sense also for other vowels, for example île = isle, hôte = “hoste” = host, hâte = haste.I will always remember this, thanks to my high school French teacher who, knowing her audience, gave us a few examples like "hôpital," and then said "So you can probably guess was 'bâtard' means..."
strongpigeon: I would say I agree. That being said, my experience is biased from working in Big Tech where the accents are on such a wide spectrum that people have no choice but to develop a "flexible" ear.
rkomorn: With the exception of some annoying ones like "fils" (son or sons) and "fils" (threads).
rkomorn: I think you're right that working in certain areas (geographical or professional) gives you an ability to grasp all kinds of English.I've worked in universities and in tech, in New Jersey, LA, and Silicon Valley, and I feel like I can understand just about anyone's English.Ironically, the ones I have the hardest time understanding are almost always Brits.
Joker_vD: Yep, a common anecdote from European science conferences is that by the second day, everybody do settle into the thick, averaged Spanish/German/French/Italian/Russian accent of their English which is pretty much equally understandable to everyone present except from the actual guys from Oxford, England.
1-more: > one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitlesOne friend of mine once had to translate English-to-English in France. A French policeman or taxi driver or something knew English as a second language. My friend is from New Jersey and sounds like what I might call CNN English (is there a name for roughly "unaccented" Northeast/West Coast/DC English?). The other person he was with had a thick Alabama accent. The Frenchman could not understand what he said directly, but could understand it when repeated by the New Jerseyan.
abrowne: The other way – trying to spell a word you hear – is harder, since many sounds have multiple possible spellings. Hence la dictée.
isolli: While helping my children learn French spelling, I was horrified when I realized that there are 6 or 7 ways to write the sound [ɛ̃]: un in (im) [i]en ain aim ein
elric: Having grown up in two languages where dictée is a thing, I was always bemused by spelling bees. You have to spell one word? And have loads of time to do so? Pah!
Joker_vD: Like, "passage" and "massage", why do they not rhyme in English? They're both borrowed French words! And don't even start me on how English pronounce "hangar"... that's like, what if you tried to pronounce this word as differently from the original as possible while still plausibly having the same spelling.
icegreentea2: For anyone wondering, passage and massage entered English at very different times. Passage entered in middle english (around 13th century), while massage entered in the 19th century.
Tyrannosaur: No, you are correct.Dr Geoff Lindsey on youtube:short version: https://youtube.com/shorts/GF1gIaxnULc?si=d4jFC-rLOC5dww-8long version: https://youtu.be/GNpbv7hJf6c?si=xNz1UjeLY0Ch9eDv&t=366
skydhash: The first one (un) is different from the others.
isolli: So I've been told... but I could never hear the difference myself!
yakkomajuri: The most phonetically consistent language I know is Finnish. I believe there is exactly one way to pronounce every word and it's clear to all speakers.And the least phonetically consistent is English.
kulesh: Polish s, ś, sz, z, ź, ż, rz, c, ć, cz, si, zi, ci – what's the difference?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533035:)
ghewgill: I had that "a-ha" moment not at first by learning that "fenêtre" means "window", but later when I learned the German word is "Fenster".
embedding-shape: > but later when I learned the German word is "Fenster".Swedish word for it is strikingly similar, but with a hint of being more "hip and trendy restaurant in gentrified neighborhood": Fönster.
xvxvx: If the ‘e’ is pronounced ‘ah’ then just change the damn spelling of the word to reflect it then.
thiht: > French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care.No we don’t, wtfé and è (as well as e but it goes without saying) are very clearly distinct sounds.
gitarre: I think "General American English" is the term for that.
skydhash: The first one is pronounced with an O shape with the mouth (like you would do with the word oh), and the others with more of a smile shape (like with the word see). It’s impossible to pronounce one like the other.I’m not a native English speaker and I gave up trying to pronounce th (father, through). Although I can hear the difference.
huhtenberg: If there's one thing I wish someone pointed out when I was just starting learning French is this: é - the accent is pointing up, so it's a higher-pitched e è - the accent is pointing down, so it's a lower-pitched e That's it. That's how it should be explained.* It's also in their names - aigu and grave, but this requires knowing what these words mean.
maelito: > no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care.Non.
agluszak: It's my go-to (pun intended) whenever a native English speaker complains about other languages being "hard to pronounce" :)
monsieurgaufre: Non. Personne ne prononce tous les accents de la même manière.
