What Is Phonetics & How Can It Improve Your French Pronunciation?

In my last article, I talked about how to improve your French pronunciation. In this article I am going to expand on this topic by talking about phonetics. Phonetics is the “bread & butter” of having good pronunciation in French. The deeper your knowledge of phonetics, the easier it will be to improve your accent. For those of you who don’t know, phonetics is the study of pronunciation. In this article, I am going to introduce you to French phonetics by explaining three crucial terms. These terms are:

1. Voicing
2. Place of articulation
3. Manner of articulation

All sounds are categorized by these three characteristics. Therefore, understanding these three concepts about each sound will help improve your pronunciation.

Why does understanding phonetics matter?

I often compare understanding phonetics to doing push-ups correctly. A lot of people learn how to do push-ups simply by observing other people and copying them. Although their technique may not be perfect, they can perform the push-up acceptably well. However, due to their lack of technique, it might take longer than it should to build up their muscles. On the other hand, if a qualified trainer showed and coached you on how to do push-ups correctly, you would likely avoid the above-mentioned problem and achieve faster results.

Phonetics and pronunciation work the same way as learning to do a push-up properly. Most people learn pronunciation by listening and trying to copy what they hear. That being said, they don’t have a detailed understanding of what to do with their tongue, lips, and vocal chords to pronounce speech sounds like a native. Luckily, by studying phonetics, you can learn to manipulate your tongue, lips, and vocal chords to make the sounds correctly. This, in turn, reduce your chances of making mistakes and helps you perfect your accent faster.

Voicing

Some sounds in French are voiced while others are voiceless. Simply put, when saying a voiced sound, your vocal chords are vibrating. When saying a voiceless sound, your vocal chords are not vibrating. The easiest way to demonstrate this concept would be to whisper and place your hand over your throat. Notice that your vocal cords do not vibrate when you are whispering. However, if you place your hand against your throat while talking normally, you will feel your vocal chords vibrate.

Here is a chart of voiced and voiceless consonants in French. 

Place of Articulation

A place of articulation describes where to put your tongue and/or lips to produce a specific sound. To clarify this concept further, I have included a list below of the most important places of articulation. Please note that there are more places of articulation than these, however I have only included the ones that are the most relevant to learning French.

Place of Articulation #1: Bilabial

These are sounds that are made by using both of your lips. In French, we have four major bilabial sounds. These sounds are:

Notice that you are using your top & bottom lips to make these sounds.

Place of Articulation #2: Labiodental

These are sounds that you make using your top teeth and your bottom lip. In French, the two labiodental sounds are:

Place of Articulation #3: Interdental

Interdental sounds are made by taking the tip of the tongue and placing it behind your top two middle teeth. In English, the two interdental sounds that we have are the ‘TH’ sounds in the words “the” or “thought”.

Interestingly, French does not have any interdental sounds. However, some French speakers will pronounce the letter T and the letter D in a slightly interdental way.

Place of Articulation #4: Alveolar

This is a little bit harder to describe. In the mouth, there is something called the alveolar ridge. The alveolar ridge is located slightly behind your top two middle teeth. To find it, say the ‘N’ sound like in the word ‘not’ in English. Notice that the tip of your tongue touches a spot just behind your top two middle teeth. Any sound that is pronounced by putting your tongue in this spot is called an alveolar sound. In French the alveolar consonants are:

Place of Articulation #5: Post alveolar

Post alveolar sounds are pronounced ever so slightly behind alveolar sounds. To pronounce these sounds, take the tip of your tongue and bring it back a couple of centimeters behind the alveolar ridge. In French, the post alveolar sounds are:

Place of Articulation #6: Palatal

Palatal sounds are somewhat different. They are not overly difficult to pronounce, however you need to use a different part of your tongue. With interdental, alveolar, and post alveolar sounds, we were using the tip of our tongue to pronounce the consonant. However, we need to use the middle of our tongue to make palatal sounds. Palatal sounds are made by placing the tip of the tongue between the bottom two middle teeth. You will then take the middle of your tongue and raise it up towards the roof of your mouth, also known as your hard palate. The only sound in French that is palatal is the Y sound like in the word ‘yeux’.

Place of Articulation #7: Velar

Velar sounds are used by taking the back of the tongue and placing it against the soft palate in the very back of your mouth. The velar sounds in French are:

Place of Articulation #8: Uvular

Most non-native French speakers struggle with uvular sounds. Uvular sounds are made in the very back of the mouth. The most well-known uvular sound in French is the French R (as in the word “regarder”). We are going to come back to this when we discuss trills further in the article.

Manner of Articulation

Unlike the place of articulation, the manner of articulation is unrelated to the positioning of your tongue and lips. Instead, it describes airflow and vocal chord use. Here are the major manners of articulation in French. Please note that there are others, however I have only included the ones that are the most relevant to learning French.

Manner of Articulation #1: Stop

A stop consonant is a consonant where your tongue or your lips momentarily “stops" the airflow from your lungs in order to create the desired sound. For instance, when saying the ‘CH’ sound in French, there is a constant flow of air escaping the mouth. With the sounds below, you will notice that this is not the case. 

Manner of Articulation #2: Fricatives

Fricatives are created by pumping a constant flow of air from your mouth through an obstruction created by the tongue or the lips.

Here are the fricatives in French: 

When you say these sounds, notice that there is a consistent flow of air leaving your mouth, despite the fact that your tongue or your lips is partially obstructing the airflow.

Manner of Articulation #3: Trills

Trills are often difficult for non-native French speakers. The easiest way to understand the sound of a trill is to think of a rolled R in Spanish. In Spanish, the rolled R is called an “alveolar trill”. This is because your tongue is “flapping” rapidly against the alveolar ridge. In French, the R is also trilled, however, it is an uvular trill. This means that the back of your tongue is “flapping” against your uvula in the back of your mouth to produce the French R sound. The easiest way to think of this is to imagine gargling water. To gargle water, you are required to perform a uvular trill.

Manner of Articulation #4: Nasality

All sounds in French are either oral or nasal. Unlike all of the previous manners of articulation, this one applies almost exclusively to vowels instead of consonants. Nasal vowels are produced by directing air through your nose when speaking. Here is a chart describing the nasal and oral vowels in French.

We’ve now covered a few basic concepts about phonetics. To review, all sounds will be classified under three categories:

1. Voicing
2. Manner of articulation
3. Place of articulation

For instance, the letter ‘B’ is a voiced oral bilabial stop. If you start to apply the knowledge in this article, you will be able to accurately identify the errors you are making in pronunciation and correct them.

In conclusion, I would encourage you to study phonetics in more depth. It is a fascinating field, and this article only scratches the surface. The more you understand phonetics, the easier it will be to perfect your pronunciation in French, or any other language that you choose to learn in the future.

Hero image by Jake Young (CC0 1.0)