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Friday, June 30, 2023

Pronunciation of foreign languages, accents and diacritics



French pupils are élèves

To remember the up and down accents on French words I look at the French word for pupil, secondary school pupil eleve.

Look at the up and down accents.

élève

The first upward accent makes the sound ay as in hay. The second downward accent makes the sound ev as in every. You automatically raise your voice slightly when saying ay. You automatically make a lower sound on the ev sound.

The cedilla or tail under the c turns the c into an s sound. Think of the words palace, pencil, police in English.



English and the Magic E - for kings George V and George VI

People learning English complain that they don't know when a c has a hard sound like K. The secret is that in English an e after g makes the g soft. Age. Page. Rage. Sage. Percentage.

In the name George, the g is twice followed by an e which changed the hard g into a soft J sound.


Garage

The first g is hard. The second g is oft because the e is added to tell you so. GE=J

 Useful Websites

To find a foreign place name or any word, pronounced by male and female speakers with different accents from each country and region (you get several options) try forvo.

I used it for Italian and Albanian.

Useful Websites 

forvo

Also if you are teaching English and want people to pronounce words the English way

https://es.forvo.com/languages/es/

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