It’s All French to Me
Could this possibly be the reason for my daily struggle with spoken French?
GraphJam.com
Here is a little something for all you non-native French speakers who may be feeling alone in your attempts to master your tongue and contort your face as you brave life in France. Grab some aspirin and take a peek at the Top French Words You’ll Never Pronounce Right as reported in THE LOCAL FR last month. Go ahead, sit down with a teabag and a steaming mug of hot water from your bouilloire (kettle), if you can pronounce it, that is…
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365+ Things I Love About France 
Yes Nancy I struggle with most of those, the whole “oui” and “eui”composite vowel sound is tough for me.
I can never pronounce yaourt to the satisfaction of my French teacher either!
I think I am allergic to triple vowels
Actually, we are having a break from French class, I need to absorb what we learned last year before I move on!! Having said that, some of it went in and stayed there
Oh, the dreaded yaourt. How the hell do you pronounce that? Yogurt seems so much simpler.
You open your mouth and pull terrible faces
On the plus side, I have deduced that the reason French women’s faces age with such style and remain expressively is the facial muscle workout they get every time they speak!!!
I shall speak French and delay the dreaded sagging as long as I can!!
I agree, Nancy! Pronunciation has been the most challenging part for me of learning French. Two of my favorites: the French word for squirrel; and remembering the different pronunciations for egg (singular) and eggs (plural)!
It is so much easier just to speak English with a French accent. x
I love the diagram. That a lot of it is silence. 🙂 It is so true.
Damn! Those silent letters.
Oh those are wonderful and I’m proud to say that the only one that gave me a problem was that wretched kettle thing and I think that was just a mental block. I was very lucky indeed that I started learning French at a very early age and that throughout my teachers concentrated on pronunciation, the downside is that instead of being taken for a Brit I am sometimes mistaken for a Belgian or even once as Canadian.
Oh you lucky duck with your early pronunciation lessons. The double “L” is a killer for me and my mouth. I have trouble with almost all the words on that list. We had a good night out last week ordering Brouilly wine. We were a group of multinationals and it was so funny listening to all of us pronouncing that awful word in different ways. Sometimes I get so frustrated and embarrassed when trying to order that wine (which I love), I just end up ordering a less desired Côtes du Rhône.
Never give up on the Brouilly! Incidentally have you ever come across Votes de Brouilly? I found some once and it was amazing.
No, not yet tried a Votes de Brouilly…perhaps this summer?
Too true! When I was trying to learn French (the key word being “trying”) I kept wondering: why put all these letters in the word and not pronounce them?? 🙂
Ha. That’s the beauty of French, n’est-ce pas? Thank you for stopping by my blog and commenting. I was just looking through your blog. I LOVE your manifesto.
Thank you! 🙂
🙂