How French pronunciation of English words can help you to speak a better French.

French people have hard times to pronounce English words. Not only the phonetic system is very different, but also the rhythm and stress is completely different. When French people pronounce English, it shows the French pronunciation system pasted on English words. And that’s something we can use to discover some differences and improve our French pronunciation!

I’m not sure Jean-Pierre Raffarin will help you to be a YES MAN…but still he tried.

First, French tend to raise the voice at the end of the sentence. Just impersonate a French speaking English, you will be half the way of a perfect French pronunciation. French accent is so strong when it comes speaking English.

Try to say these words with a French accent (it means stress only the last syllable):
Hillary Clinton / Beethoven / Garcia Marquez / Vladimir Poutine / Hugo Chavez /Barack Obama

You can also try with transparent words (international words, mostly coming from English)
parking, sandwich, taxi, television, hotel, restaurant…
It’s always the last syllable that we stress in French and you notice that in French

• no “H” in Hillary and Hugo “
• all “A‘s” in Barack Obama, and Hillary sounds exactly the same.

You can also listen to real human pronunciation on Forvo.

Sarkozy helps you to believe in you when you feel your French is a failure. And he’s asking money for it.

Beside this stress, French have a lot of difficulties to pronounce some English words, and not only hard ones (tough, rough, through, though, bough, cough, enough). These sounds are so far from the French phonetic system so if we never heard them we can’t guess how they sound like at all.

Sarkozy helping you to master French accent

Here is a funny list about how English sentences can sound with French accent. Try it. Outloud. 🙂 As you can see the meaning is quite different!

After Raffarin’s hit, we have a new record. He’s trying to say that you need to be proud of you.