pronunciation.

M Sheffield

Message 21431 · 4 Jun 2000 12:38:01 · Fixed-width font · Whole thread

At 11:13 03/06/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Years ago when I learned French I was told that French doesn't have
>stress or emphasis on syllables
(...) Perhaps things have
>changed in the last half-century or so.

Thnigs haven't changed. In spite of the fashion of copying English
mannerisms of speech and sprinkling their sentences with English words
(usually with a meaning quite different from the original), the French have
still not adopted the tonic accent (stress).

And just as the Americans put stress on the final syllable of French words,
the French tend to pronounce foreign words -- or even unfamiliar French
place names -- as if they were English, pronouncing all the consonants (in
French, one does not) and lengthening the vowels.

The few times I have heard the word "tourbillon" in GB, it was spoken with
the untranscribable vowel also heard in "bird", and a consonant as in
"low". In its native land, it has a long "u" or "oo" sound, and the "l"
sounds like a "y",of course.

Martin,
in Grenoble, France.

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/scots.in.france/scd.htm
(dance groups, some new dances ...)