French has 26 letters,
37 phoneme (sounds)
and 130 graphemes.
A grapheme is defined as a depiction of a sound in writing. In English for instance there is the same ending sound in cough, deaf - the writing is different.
In French there are 37 phonemes with 130 graphemes
- meaning different writing for the same sound and this in quite many cases. We have mentioned this already in chapter 1.
Vowels: There are 19 vowels.
Of these there are 4 nasal sounds. These four are quite a challenge. Another challenge is the different sounds of the vowel e,
the sounds are quite similar, which does not make things easier.
The 'Umlauts' in French are another problem for English speakers. However, before we have a closer look at all of them we should define: What actually is a vowel?
A vowel is a sound that can stream out unimpededly. Only the size of the room for resonance in your mouth decides upon the sound that will be made. A nasal sound is a vowel that uses the nose as resonance room. The function of a vowel is that the tongue has the possibility to return into a position to form the next consonant. Trying to pronounce the following acronyms without a vowel you will see:
Examples
FTP -
File Transfer Protocol
HTTP -
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
www - world wide web
LC - Letter of Credit
As a summary you will find the following overview. As you will see we use the phonetic script. This will enable you to know the pronunciation of a new word when looking it up in a dictionary.
