L’alphabet phonétique

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Les voyelles

• [a] open front unrounded vowel - cinéma (cinema, m); hat
• [ɑ] open back unrounded vowel - château (castle, m); hot
• [e] close-mid front unrounded vowel - clé (key, f); may
• [ɛ] open-mid front unrounded vowel - père (father, m), chêne (oak, m); bed
• [ə] mid central vowel/schwa - jeu (game, m); bird
• [i] close front unrounded vowel - souris (mouse, f); free
• [o] close-mid back rounded vowel - rose (rose, f); UK yawn
• [ɔ] open-mid back rounded vowel - océan (ocean, m); thought
• [ø] close-mid front rounded vowel - jeudi (thursday)
• [œ] open-mid front rounded vowel - peur (fear, f)
• [u] close back rounded vowel - chou (cabbage, m); boot
• [y] close front rounded vowel - tu (you); UK few

This vowel diagram shows the inside of the throat from the left side (pronounce /i/ “eee” and /ɑ/ “aaa” to feel the difference). Antérieur: front, postérieur: back, aperture: opening of the lips.

Les voyelles nasales (when followed by a consonant except -h- or ending a word)

• [ɑ̃] > am, an, (é)en, em, aon - temps (time, m)
• [ɛ̃] > aim, ain, eim, ein, em, (i)en, im, in, um, un, ym, yn - pain (bread, m)
  
• [ɔ̃] > om, on - ombre (shadow, f), bonjour (hello)
• [œ̃] > um, un - humble, un (one, m); dying, turning into [ɛ̃] 
  

N.B. When a nasal sound is produced, despite being made of two letters, they are to be pronounced as their own sound: in Bonjour, the /o/ and the /n/ shouldn’t be heard at all since they are followed by the consonant /j/, as opposed to the usual dragging of /o/ then /n/ like in Bonne journée.

Les semi-voyelles

• [j] voiced palatal approximant - lieu (place, m); you
• [ɥ] voiced labial–palatal approximant - huile (oil, f); wall
• [w] voiced labial–velar approximant - oui (yes); witch

Les consonnes

• [b] voiced bilabial plosive - bête (beast, f)
• [d] voiced dental and alveolar plosive - déjeuner (lunch, m)
• [f] voiceless labiodental fricative - faim (hunger, f)
• [g] voiced velar plosive - gâteau (cake, m)
• [ʒ] voiced postalveolar fricative - ange (angel, m); vision
• [k] voiceless velar plosive - cadeau (gift, m)
• [l] voiced apical alveolar approximant - lait (milk, m)
• [p] voiceless bilabial plosive - pain (bread, m)
• [ʁ] voiced uvular fricative - roi (king, m)
• [s] voiceless alveolar fricative - sel (salt, m); nonsense
• [t] voiceless denti-alveolar plosive - table (table, f)
• [v] voiced labiodental fricative - violon (violin, m)
• [z] voiced alveolar fricative - maison (house, f)
• [ʃ] voiceless postalveolar fricative - chocolat (chocolate, m)

Les consonnes nasales

• [m] voiced bilabial nasal - miel (honey, m)
• [n] voiced denti-alveolar nasal - nez (nose, m)
• [ɲ] voiced palatal nasal - montagne (mountain, f)
• [ŋ] voiced velar nasal - connexion (connection, f); sing 

Voiced sounds are those that make our vocal chords vibrate when they are produced; voiceless sounds are produced from air passing through the mouth at different points. Fricatives are consonants with the characteristic that when they are produced, air escaped through a small passage and make a hissing sound; plosives are a type of consonant produced by forming a complete obstruction to the flow air out of the mouth.

Originally posted by cannabicocorazon-blog-blog-blog

Movie: Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain - Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001

smileystudies:

linguistics subfields as vauguely academic aesthetics

syntax // hands covered in ink as you scribble out trees at 3am; scrunching up your nose at a sentence while you try to decide whether it’s actually grammatical or if you’ve just stared at it for too long; tilting your chair back on the back legs; frosty winter mornings when you can see your breath; adding a new library book to the piles and piles you’ve barely read

phonetics // recording audio files in the booth and enjoying the way the sounds fall in the silence; being the last person in the building and hearing your shoes squeak; playing an audio file over and over on your laptop as you try to figure out where to mark a boundary, until the words lose all meaning; birdsong on early spring mornings; neatly typed notes to go along with color coded graphs

phonology // trying for hours to pronounce sounds that aren’t in your native language, and finally succeeding; whispering allophones and minimal pairs to yourself as you try to piece apart a new rule; humid summer mornings when the grass is thick with dew; markers and pens organized by color; messy annotations crammed into the margins; a laminated IPA chart getting tattered after being yanked out of the back of your binder over an over

morphology // pages and pages of charts filled with conjugations, declensions, plurals, genders, and everything else you can possibly mark; crumpling up paper and throwing it perfectly into the recycling bin; colorful yarn wrapped around your fingers as you knit complex cables; crisp air and cracklings leaves of the first real fall day; seeing a friend for the first time in a long time

semantics // spending an hour in the library reading a five page article because it’s the densest thing you’ve ever read; tasting the dregs as you take another swig of coffee out of the hope that it triggers your brain into finally working; the bleakness of stick season and the warmth of the approaching holidays; pushing glasses up your nose with one finger

mushfae: