LESSON NOTES

Ultimate French Pronunciation

Guide S1 #10
French Rhythm

CONTENTS
2 Vocabulary
2 Sample Sentences
2 Grammar

# 10
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VOCABULARY

Fr e nc h English C lass Ge nde r

prends ton temps take your time expression

je suis I am phrase

une fille a girl, a daughter noun feminine

SAMPLE SENTENCES

J e suis la maison. Excusez -moi, je suis maladr oit e.

"I'm at home." "Excuse me, I'm clumsy."

J 'ai un fils et une fille. C'est une fille for midable.

"I have a son and a daughter." "She is a great girl."

GRAMMAR

T he Focus of T his Lesson Is St r ess, Int onat ion and Liaisons

Speaking French involves adding intonation and rhythm to speech to give it some life.
Listening to someone speaking in the same rhythm and without any intonation rising or
falling feels boring and lifeless. Without rhythm and intonation, language does not express
emotions or intentions.

Both the English and French languages possess a rhythm and stress, but each language
applies them differently.

St r ess

When speaking a phrase in French, we stress only the final syllable and our intonation falls.
This may seem very monotone, as in English, each individual word keeps its stressed
syllables. However, when a French speaker varies the usage of rhythm in the language, it can
translate into a different meaning for the same phrase depending on the speaker's intention.
For example, we can pronounce the phrase La belle ferme le voile with two different rhythm
patterns and cause it to have two distinct meanings.

Let's say we want to mean that a farm hides a beautiful tree or landscape. When we say La
belle ferme le voile ("The beautiful farm hides it."), we would stress the noun ferme by saying

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the word for a longer time frame than the other words, and we would raise our intonation. At
the same time, we would also pronounce the noun voile for a longer time, but we would allow
our intonation to fall.

However, if we wanted to say that "the woman closes the veil" with la belle ("the beautiful
one") and the conjugated verb ferme ("close"), the words to stress are belle with a rising
intonation and voile with a falling intonation.

Int onat ion

There are many different intonations in French: interrogative, affirmative, irony, anger,
sadness. Since many of these look like one another, context and body gestures help to get
the exact meaning across.

Int er r ogat ive

The pitch rises at the end:

1. Vas-tu la piscine dimanche ?

"Do you go to the swimming pool on Sunday?"

Affir mat ive

The intonation falls at the end of the sentence. It's the same with sadness, but in this case,
the sentence can end with a sigh:

1. Vous ne pouvez pas encore reprendre le travail.

"You can't go back to work yet."

Ir ony

Irony is an affirmative sentence ending with a rising pitch, or sometimes it can be a

monotonous affirmation:

1. Tu as vu ? Ils ont fait de nouveaux Pokemon !

- Oh, oui... C'est... fou...
"Did you see? They created new Pokemon!"
- "Oh yeah, that's...hmm, craz y..."

Anger

The intonation rises at the end in the case of a burst of anger.

In case of cold anger, the speaker will speak with a monotonous but firm tone.

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For example:

1. Et tu ne pouvais pas mettre ton clignotant ?

"Couldn't you put on your turn signal?"

Liaisons

When you listen to someone speak French while you read along, you've probably noticed
that French pronunciation doesn't match what you see written. One reason for this is the way
words are linked together one after the other with la liaison or "linking sounds," which we saw
in the previous lesson.

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