En entendant à La Marseillase chanté par Mireille Mathieu, j'ai perçu que son prononciation de la lettre R se ressemble plus à la prononciation italiene (alvéolaire) que à la prononciation francese typique (uvulaire). Dans quelle region de la France cette lettre est prononcé comme ça?
Désolé pour mes erreurs.
From a forum:
1. r fricative uvulaire sonore
2. r fricative uvularie sourde
3. r uvulaire roulée (celui d'Édith Piaf)
4. r battu alvéolaire voisée (comme l'italien, ou chez certains paysans francophones)
1 & 2 are used by most native European French speakers. The only difference is whether the voice is used (sonore) or not (sourd). Sometimes people vary between one and the other--and probably don't realize they are doing it.
3 is what you hear when Édith Piaf or Mireille Mathieu sing (they are "rolling" their uvulas, not their tongues)
4. isn't heard very much anymore in Europe except in the countryside and usually just older people. African French speakers often use it, and I think it is used in some regions of Québec as well.
Now it's clear to me.
According to this page, it's an ancient way to pronounce R:
http://monsu.desiderio.free.fr/curiosites/r-phono.html
Nowadays, it's used mainly in an artistic and posh way. It's what I understood.
Watching the video again and looking attenciously at her tongue, really it's not an alveolar trill, but a uvular one. Her tongue keeps stationary. It's so amazing. I want to be able to do it. I have to practise this phoneme.
And yes, Edith Piaf makes the same R sound.
Is there uvular trill in Russian? The letter P (cyrilic alphabet) sounds like an alveolar trill and the letter X sounds like a velar fricative, don't they?
Thank you.
I'm curious myself as to how it is distributed geographically, socially and temporally (as I don't hear it that often listening to modern French people).... There must be some works dedicated to this.
