The English and French vowels

by: Sylvia Hadjetian

1. Introduction

2. Basic oral vowels

3. The French nasal vowels

4. Glides

5. Diphthongs

6. Main differences between English and French vowels

1. Introduction

This essay will discuss the differences between English and French vowels, diphthongs, nasals and semi-vowels.

A vowel comes “from the vocal cords and [is] modified by the buccal cavity”¹. The height of the tongue (high, mid, low), the position of the tongue (anterior, central, posterior) and the position of the lips (rounded, nonrounded) distinguish the vowels from each other. Speaking through the nasal cavity creates nasals. If two vowels merge into one another in a syllable, one calls that a diphthong². Glides³ lie between vowels and fricatives⁴. There are only oral vowels and diphthongs in English, oral, nasal and semivowels in French. The last group belongs to the consonants in English. Although some of the signs of the IPA⁵ are the same in both languages, there are often many differences in the way of pronouncing them and these differences will be explained in the following chapters.

2. Basic oral vowels⁶

Although there are /a/ sounds in both languages, they are not identical. Therefore, they are called allophones. There is the [a] and the [a] in French. The vowel [a] is open, anterior and non-rounded. [a] is also open and nonrounded but posterior. So they are very close to each other and their minimal difference is suppressed by most of the speakers in favour of [a] whose frequency is higher than the frequency of [a]⁷. But there are still some minimal pairs, e.g. tache/tâche where the different /a/ sounds play a distinctive role in the meaning of the word.

The English [æ] is anterior, relatively low and non-rounded. [? ] is nonrounded, posterior and open- mid, [ ] is an open, posterior and rounded vowel. The long vowel [a:] is open, posterior and non-rounded, lower than [ ]. The French /a/ sounds are closer to each other than the English, they are more central.

There are two types of /i/ sounds in English: the short [i] and the long [i:]. [i] is anterior, close but relatively centralised and non-rounded, [i:] is close, anterior and non-rounded. [i] is lower and further back than [i:] [i] is the only /i/ sound in French. It is close, anterior and non-rounded. Comparing the English and French charts⁸, you can see that the French /i/ sound is more anterior and more closed than the English /i/ sounds. The French [u] is closed, rounded and posterior, the English [?] is rounded, posterior and half-closed, lower than the longer [u:] which is posterior, close and rounded. [?] is lower and further anterior than [u:]. The French [u] is closed, rounded and posterior. Compared to the English /u/ sounds, it is further posterior.

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1 Pierre A. R. Monod, ‘French vowels vs. English vowels’, The French Review, v XLV (October 1971) p. 89.

2 A single sound is called monophthong.

3 They are also called semi -vowels or approximates.

4 Fricatives are e.g. /f/ and /v/, /s/ and /z/.

5 International Phonetic Association

6 cf. Pierre Delattre, Comparing the phonetic features of English, French, German and Spanish (London: Harrap, 1965), pp. 50-51; Bernard Tranel, The Sounds of French (Cambridge: UP, 1987) pp.36 -37.

7 cf. Monod, p. 91

8 cf. Delattre, pp. 50-51