I CAN'T SAY IT!! Most Difficult French Words to Pronounce (especially for English Speakers)!
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- Опубліковано 9 кві 2018
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Hard words to say in French!! As most of you know, I'm trying to Learn French as an adult! But for me, the hardest part of speaking French is that French Pronunciation! If you have any interest in the French language, laugh along with me as I tackle some of the hardest French words to say (with my trusty French professor by my side so we can actually learn how to pronounce them!!).
Aurélie's website (online French lessons): parisoclock.com/
Aurélie's blog: lapetitevalisedaurelie.com/en/
What about you guys? What do you think are the hardest French words to pronounce? Do you have any French prononciation tips?
Click like if you like the way Foreigners speak French! :)
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Your french is excellent, I'm french and i understand all the words you pronounced
I dont speak French
Flattery, flattery, flattery... arf...
« J’ai compris tous les mots que tu as prononcé !
... mais mal. »
@@KirianOnline French is hard , for french people too
But you can learn if you have 100 years
*@mercurus 500* ~'Fin, mais en vrai on pouvait aussi *a` lire* les mots, tandis qu'elle les disait ({; D ...!
« Grenouille », « grenouille » you are so cute! Love it 😊
Ohh denyzee qu’est ce que tu fait la ?
@@Kjokkenm0dding ses seulement 2 ans qu'on répond ;) mdr
I find French pronunciation not too difficult as the same rules apply all the time. In English it's much more random, e.g. look vs loop, reader vs leather, etc.
Hmm I'm not sure it has to deal with pronunciation in itself, it's just about knowledge, having heard the world once pronunced right and it sticks in your head.
However that "th" sound is something else...
Cookie Senpai
Tbh I find foreigners speaking English in their native accents very nice to listen to. I'm not sure if French people would appreciate my Aussie accent when I speak their language lol
tacos mexicanstyle Im from New Caledonia and I love it when tourists (mostly kiwis and aussies) try to speak french (even basic words such has "bonjour" "au-revoir" or 'merci")with their own accent, thats really cute !
tacos
Honestly I don't mind foreign accents as long as I understand. If you don't mind being corrected nicely from time to time then it's all good. (but of course not everyone's like me haha)
Im agree the French is more difficult to learn than English but the English pronouciation is the most what the fuck.
For example, you never know how to pronounce the "CH" like in "Chef", "Choir" or "Headache"...
And sometimes it could be the same pronounciation for many different words like with the sound /u:/ for :
FOOD
CREW
BLUE
CRUISE
GROUP
FLU
WHO
SHOE
...Shit men
In my opinion Japanese is one of the easiest language to speak because when you see one word, even if you never heard this word before, you can be sure you know the pronounciation, it is always the same...
But in the same times japanese is one of the arduous language to read ^^
"L'abracadabrantesque prestidigitateur"
This one can be quite difficult 😆
the second one is easy, but the first one... WTF!! lol
even in French it's a mouthful
The first one is easy the second one I always pronounce a d instead of a t
I have a tip on how to pronounce "prestidigitateur" : just say "illusioniste", close enough :D
Même pour un français c'est difficile xD
Try it :
Si six scies scient six cyprès, alors six cents scies scient six cents cyprès :P
Good luck ^^
The video is about a single word, but we have many hard sentences like that, it's like exercises to help you about french pronunciation.
For exemple:
-Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches? Archi-sèches ?
- Seize chaises sèchent.
- La roue sur la rue roule ; la rue sous la roue reste.
- Trois gros rats gris dans trois gros trous ronds rongent trois gros croûtons ronds.
- Avez-vous déjà vu un ver allant vers un verre en verre vert à l'envers?
- Le plat plein ploie sous le poids ou ne ploie point ?
etc...
And these sentences are hard to tell even for a french person. ;)
ChrisKardiake
It's not so bad when you consider that we hardly say most of the letters. Reading the words off the page is honestly harder than saying the damn things lol
ce ver vert sévère sait verser ses verres verts. =p
Hahaha, when I tried the "Trois gros rats" - sentence, I almost peed myself! It sounds really funny (at least my attempt at it). :-D
So easy when are french of course (I am)
"oeil" "euil" and "euille" have exactly the same pronounciation. So "oeil" "mille-feuille". "écureuil", "accueil"... same ending.
You can notice that in accueil the "e" and "u" are reversed, compared to écureuil. Usually the correct order is "eu" but in french a "c" followed by an "e" is pronouced like an S, wich we don't want in accueil.
Raphaël D that's a lovely explanation. Merci.
you're welcome
wa, je sais que c devant e et i se prononce (s) tandis que pour a o u c'est le son (k) c'est pour ça qu'on a la cédille mais je n'avais jamais pensé au fait que c'était pour ça qu'on inversait le "eu" en "ue" dans le mot accueil. Vu qu'on l'apprend direct comme ça à l'école, je le savais mais je n'avais jamais eu l'explication derrière, merci, tu fais de moi une personne conquise qui se couchera moins bête ce soir =D
pareil pour moi. Bon truc pour se rappeler comment l'écrire.
This is silly, but the way I remember this vowel noise is by comparing it to a version of "no duh!" from the 80's, which is "no doi!". My french teacher actually uses this tip now.
Bonjour! Je suis Canadienne-Française, j'habite dans la province du Québec, au Canada :) Je viens de penser à un bon truc pour les mots qui contiennent le son "ouille" comme dans "grenouille". The way we pronounce it in French is very similar to the "ooy" part in "booyah!", if it makes any sense to you. So saying "grenouille" and other words that has "ouille" would sound kinda like "gren-ooyah" but without the "ah" at the end. J'espère que tu comprends et que ça t'aide 😂
Éliane Blanchard I’m also Canadian, but I’m English-speaking. I took up to grade 12 French. It’s been years, but I feel like I want to be fluent. I’m happy that I’ve retained most of it, but pronunciation of “r”s in particular is a problem.
Stephanie Osadchuk if you think you can pronounce it like she does in the video, I would advise you to breathe in a little more instead of breathing out when you say that sound. I don’t know if that make sense?
Daphnée Carignan Thank you. I just can’t seem to make the words sound French. Either “Mars” sounds totally English, sounds like “mahs,” or my tongue rolls too much. In any case, it sounds terribly clumsy.
Bender Alley Disappointingly, I can’t figure out how to do that.
@Stephanie Osadchuk : It's basically like gargarism, you just have to shorten it to allow the air to pass only once or twice through the vibration
My mum has lived in France for more than 40 years and still has difficulty saying « pas du tout ». It always used to make my brother and I laugh as kids 😁
Your accent is beautiful Rosie, I’m really enjoying your channel. And learning loads about my own country!
Hint for pronouncing the vowel in "tu" and "vu" : Make an "eeee" sound like in the word "seed"... hold it out for a long time like you're singing it, then move your lips forward so that they make a circle BUT- DON'T move your tongue inside your mouth! Go slow- but this is the way to make the vowel-which is not in the English inventory.
And more generally, try not to overpronounce words. I know it's tempting with a foreign language, relying on how words are written, but french is not as percusive as english, spanish, italian or german. Consonates are often quite muted and the final "e" nearly ghostly.
Etienne Ponnau it’s usually a question of learning what combinations of letters correspond to what sounds. It’s true that English p’s and t’s are more aspirated than French ones. Mute e’s are a whole different question that can even depend on register! There’s a lot to learn!
Erin Stigers didn’t see your comment before I made mine! Great explanation!
You mean, UUUU IT WORKED?
c'est pas dans une pièce de molière ça ?
You're doing great. Got one for you -- ''hurluberlu''
Also, you should try to say turlututu and 'poudre de perlimpinpin'
I think hurluberlu is my favorite word is the French language and criminally underused >.< It translates to "weird guy" as in the guy that only rides unicycle to go to work. It's a weird guy who is not dangerous, just... well... weird.
Means scatterbrained. or somekind of idiot. Avoir la berlue means to have hallucinations or to believe we see something that isn't in front of our eyes.
weapon of mass destruction ha ha ha alongside raw milk camembert.
Ben Bonœil oh got, that's a tricky one, good idea! Make me think of "scrogneugneu" 😂
Pronouncing "grenouille" for an English person is nothing, NOTHING, compared to pronouncing "thought" for a French one ;-;
just say "do"
@@tomthai7674 thought is not though, tho'.... 😂
Yeahhh Correct, I'm French and that's true very hard to pronouncing "Thought" for me, the funny thing it's my Dutch colleague teach me how to pronounce it... but in fact I avoid to use it ... Also pronounce "d" is hard example : added vs proposed we never know if it's the sound "ide" or not..
Un français a-t-il réellement réussi à prononcer ce mot un jour? xD
@@01Leyton Oui je confirme, je suis Français c'est facile pour moi..
Next year I’m taking French and Spanish in school, wish me luck 🤧
Kyler don’t worry, if you succeed in learning French, Spanish will be easier
Kyler i am french and i can't understand how the fuck ppl want to learn french, this shit is so hard, even for french. One of the hardest language. I think most difficults are the way of organising sentences and the fucking words with strange prononciation like femme(pronounced fam)for wife and fille for girl (pronounced fi and not file) or again fils for son (pronounced fiss). One more hard thing is the number of different words for a same prononciation : vert (Green) verre (glass) vers (to (direction of)) ver (storm) and i forget one but nevermind, french is shit
Mais t'as un QI pire que Franck Ribéry toi c'est pas possible...
Hugo Petit si t'es pas capable de former une phrase en Français, c'est pas le cas de tout le monde. C'est pas si difficile que ça. C'est pas du mandarin non plus.
Kyler: no problem, french is easy, Hugo Petit is not french, he's an english from a lobby that consists of denigrating the French language all the time. The urban legend which says that french is a hard language is coming from England, to discredit this world language (by jealousy). In fact, if US speaks english, it's a simple intervention of english in the process to choose French, then choose Greek, and finally take english...which is a nonsens because of 1) war 2) north american was essentially a french and spanish territory and spanish were speaking well french too. 3) french have spend billions of dollars in the war and to help US after the independance "clause de la nation la plus favorisée". France is the first ally and economic support (without counterparts!!) of the United States. The decision to forbid french at school in Louisiana is in opposition to US constitution.
When I was first learning French I was taught the "u" sound was done by making an "ee" sound with the inside of the mouth, ie tongue, and at the same time making an "oo" (or in French "ou") sound with the outside of the mouth, in lips. I never got "u" and "ou" mixed up since.
As a teenager in France immersing in French au lycee as I went along:
My mentors had me practice my “u’s”
Ursule a eu un rhume
I was fluent in 3 mos.
What a patient, kind and cheerful teacher. She could make learning French fun.
I think the French word for oyster would probably give you a tough time. Try saying "huître" !
ah ça c'est super fourbe comme mot :p
Et huit huîtres pour l'huissier !
@@Djorgal Huit huitres cuites pour l'huissier aujourd'hui?
Just try to say quincaillerie !
Its a shop where you can buy diy things ;)
Good luck !
dans le même registre: écarquiller (les yeux) : open eyes wide
resquilleur : line-jumper
procréatrice
J'ai vu que vous vous débrouilliez de mieux en mieux par rapport à l'élocution ;) sorry
~Mais en fait c'est assez bien facile a` dire, la/une "quincaillerie" ({; D ...!
@@meshuggagah4118 ~Mais en vrai, quedale tu as ecrit est difficile a` prononcer; non ({: \ ...?
French people: vous and vu sound different
Me, hearing the exact same word: *sweats nervously*
hey as a french guy ill say that this happen a humongous ammount of time when i try speaking english. and to be fair the sound « u » straight up doesnt exist in english in any capacity so thats normal
@@julien827 maybe one day I'll figure it out
@@dichotomae your ear can be trained to hear it. Buy the book pronounce it perfectly in French. That helped me tremendously.
I am so lucky to live in Canada, where french is taught in schools, and to have had a very wonderful French teacher in high school! Merci Madame Brown, wherever you are!
The city "Rouen "is hard
Oddly enough, écureuil and squirrel have the same etymology: they both come from the same Greek word.
I think it's more the latine word "scurolius", at least in french ^^
But everyone adapt the pronounciation :D
"Je veux et j'exige" is one of the most difficult to say. Your prononciation is pretty good except maybe for the "u" which sound a little too much like "ou".
Je veux et j'exige d'esquises excuses.
Je veux et j'exige d'eXquises excuses
je veux et j'exige d'exquises esquisses d'excuses !
Suis-je chez ce cher Serges ?
ça dépend si on fais la liaison
It's nice that you have your french professor with you
the french teacher is so sweet and patient !
I'm french and I find you extraordinary ! Your pronounciation is very impressive, you're talented ! :))
Your pronunciation is amazing for an English speaking person. Good for you!
Bonjour Rosie et Aurélie.
Je trouve que tu t'en sors vraiment super bien avec tous ces mots et que ton français est excellent (merci à Aurélie). Au plaisir d'autres vidéos.
En te souhaitant, toujours le meilleur.
Amicalement.
Love that, even though these words are tough, you still try your best with them! It also shows that there is no perfect mastery of language- we are all still learning!!
Il faudrait faire la même mais avec tous les mots impossibles à prononcer en anglais pour un français ! :) Comme tous les mots finissant en "ght". Par exemple : Thought. Je n'ai jamais su comment ça se prononçait x). Pour un français il y a du coup aussi tous les mots en "th". Et justement les mots avec des "r" qu'il ne faut pas prononcer, on se force à faire une espèce d'intonation pas naturelle. Exemple : "they are" = [vey are ? Zey are ? Fey are ?"]
Elodie W. Oh oui bonne idée, tous les mots comme throughout, thoroughly sont trop durs !! Et les mots où il y a un mix de th, de r et de w c'est la catastrophe 😂
@Not Even French hahah :) It's 'marrant' not 'marron' ;) Yeah great idea!
Rose Bourgon c'est nous qui allont être marrons
I can speak an understanable english, but I think I always said "Ve" au lieu de "The" XD
Le pire de tous étant throughout ^^
As a French person I can’t even say squirrel in English . I’m like « swouirrel » and then I laugh at myself ( every time)! And some times I spell écureuil wrong because this word is too complicated ( too many R and U in it) same for « engueuler ».
I am impressed by your pronunciation ! Perfectly understandable for à French speaker ! You nailed it !!!!
tutruie Bah non y a pas too many r y en a qu'un
That is one of the worst word :p !
tutruie agreed xd it's so tough to pronounce xd
Hey you guys are funny, écureuil is pretty easy. Squirrel is one level above. But let's go hard and try German: Eichhörnchen. Eich - hörn - chen. You do that and tell me which is worst!
Saruman Ork-Orphanage I'm a frenchy living in Zurich, so German is only the first level of hell me know. Swiss german is the final boss. They even write French word in Swiss german, such as "Äxgüsi". But yeah, german is a fucked up language. Once you know the rules, you have to forget everything because there are more exceptions than rule-applied verbs and words.
So helpful -- great video!
I saw a video of foreigners trying to pronounce difficult french words and the most hilarious was "quincaillerie"! I also spoke with an american girl and for her, the word "train" was really hard to say ! Mais je trouve que tu t'en sors très bien, bravo Rosie !!
You seem to struggle a lot with the '-ille' spelling, mostly because you're trying to 'diphthong' it, as in you are trying to pronounce consonants as vowels when they should not (typical from native english speakers).
Note: diphthongs are a phonetical phenomenon that consists in pronouncing two vowels in close succession so that they sound like a single syllable. It is very prevalent in English (eg: 'pear' or 'pair' sound something like 'peh-uh'). You even have triphthongs as in 'fire' (fah-ee-uh) and 'flour' (flah-ooh-uh)!!!
The French spelling '-ill' is a consonant: phonetically written /j/ (like the Y in 'yes'). The letter i in it is ONLY pronounced when there is NO other VOWEL preceding it. (As in 'bille', 'fille' as opposed to 'faille' or 'grenouille' where vowels 'a' and 'ou' come before it respectively)
Note: 'mille' is an exception, it's pronounced /mil/ and not /mij/ but I know you already know that from 'mille-feuille' ;)
When you try and say 'grenouille', you're making the mistake of trying to pronounce the 'i' right after the 'ou' and before the /j/. There's no i to be pronounced there! You're overcomplicating things :-)
You should keep in mind that in French (as in other Romance languages) diphthongs almost never happen, and most of the time when the spelling of a word suggests that several vowels follow one another, at least one of them is gonna sound like a consonant. I obviously don't know her background, but Aurélie probably studied phonetics at some point and should be able to explain this to you a bit further than any UA-cam comment can.
parfaite explication
Wow, what a superb comment! I'm going to copy-and-paste it. "The French spelling '-ill' is a consonant: phonetically written /j/ (like the Y in 'yes'). The letter i in it is ONLY pronounced when there is NO other VOWEL preceding it." Why has no one ever told me that before!
This should be the Top comment.
I love you. Beautiful explanation. My dad speaks Caribbean French but underused it at home. I want to learn standard Parisian or Belgian French! This makes things so easy! I'm learning fille and can't pronounce it 😂 😂
Actually I disagree now... The French teacher said gwa noo ee for grenouille... So she does pronounce the i and she emphasized the double L as a Y sound. 😡😢🤕
You speak very well French ! Your prononciation is very good 👏🏻
OMG ! I struggle with so many of the same sounds!! This is such a helpful video. Merci beaucoup.
I'm french, I just discovered your channel with your video about the "faux pas" to avoid, and then I could not stop watching ! You really understand french culture and you're doing well with prononciation ;)
Your videos are very interesting, you won a suscriber !
(Sorry for my english, I'm not as good as you are in french ;) )
I am going over to the U.K in July for two weeks. I will catch the Eurostar train from London to Paris, and stay there for a few days. This was brilliant for helping me in my learning of French , that I am currently in the process of.
Thank you Ladies
Edward Celtic Bear bonjour ! Comment allez vous !
Bonne journée à vous !
octopus cpl91 salut ! Je vais tres bien. Merci et comment ça va?
Edward Celtic Bear très bien merci !
Belle journée à vous !
Ici en Charente il pleut (encore)
Mais a part ca tout va bien !
Ah, voilà! Je dois chercher cet endroit que tu vis en Charente? Tu sais que je viens en Angleterre et en France en juillet 2018!
Edward Celtic Bear bonjour ! Où est-ce que vous vivez ?je vie au sud d'Angoulême !
On trouve en Charente la ville de Cognac (l'alcool) et c'est pas très loin de la ville de Bordeaux (on y fait du vin aussi ,mais vous devez le savoir j'en suis sur).
By the way, if it can help you, œil and feuille (as in Mille feuille) are the same word, with a "f" before in feuille.
and it's the same sound in the "eil" if "écureil"
My first year of French In the Narthampton School for Girls, many years ago, concentrated almost entirely on pronunciation and I had little difficulty with these words..............thanks to Miss Hughes, you were tough but it stood me in good stead.
This was a fun video-thank you✨
"chirurgien" gets me every time. argh.
as a french(and english) speaker, we dont really pronounce the second ''r''(ok like a little bit) because when you speak fast, like its your maternal language, they are some letters that we dont always pronounce. for example '' I'm going blabla'' but native english speakers will usually pronounce '' I'm gonna ''.
No, the second r is important in this word, personnaly I never skip the second r
Hi Rosie, most of the words you struggle with are similar. For "vu" as in "déja vu", do this: Say "eeeeeeeee", then, without moving your tongue, reshape your lips to say "oooooooo". Try it a few times. The trick is to leave your tongue back in the "eee" position relative to teeth. This pronunciation is common in French but not used at all in English. My background is French Canadian although I'm now an Aussie so only speak French when in Paris, which I love. It's painful to hear Americans say "daysha vooo".
Excellent advice, I'm so surprised that actually works so well! There are so many english speakers I struggled with trying to explain them how to prononce u! Now I know how to!
Mike Tribert yeah another canadian french ! pis pour les english speakers, le québécois c'est une autre histoire(l'accent et les expressions !!
Hi Alice, The truth is, I don't speak French as well as I should (my mother was French Canadian and was perfectly bilingual. She worked for the Free French government during WW2 in Washington DC, where I was born) Paris is almost a second home for me although I haven't been there as often as I'd like, which I guess would be all the time! I can pronounce the notorious "eu" though. French DNA I guess. Americans drive me bonkers when they just glide through "daysha voo" every time and look like a mob of drongos (that's Australian for "idiot", and I'm American by birth so I can criticise the yanks). While in Paris I work on my French conversation skills and it's funny when I'm caught with a Québécois accent here and there. Just not trying hard enough!!
hahaha ok !
Girl, I just love you. The difference between “wheel” and “street” and brutal AND you “surgeon”. :)
I'm french and I can tell you that you have a really great pronunciation ! French is a really tough language ! Even for us french ! Keep up the good work and the good french ! You're on the way !
Mille feuille is called a 'tompoes' in the Netherlands, which is pronounced as 'Tom Puss'. Just in case you're ever in NL and are dying to get one. (I love them too)
fourrure is the hardest for me cos the u is piched between r, and both alphabets are so hard to pronounce together😰
Roll the r at the top of your throat, it'll be easier. Almost like a strong Scottish/rustic English accent.
Echa I’m french and I have the same problem but in English ! For example « rare » is also so hard for me to pronounce since the à is pinched between r
+Marina Ajr loll how ironic we are 😂 i think "rare" will be easier if you use american "r" (i dunno the term, the r is rolled/smoother)
Mine is reward cause i feel like w and r in english sound the same ugly sound and they are everywhere in this word 😂
I learned so many new words today, thank you!
I find it really hard to pronounce the words preferer and mourir. Though I and one of my friends that is also in my French class, found that all the words with a lot of r’s become a lot easier to pronounce if you don’t think about it. And it is actually a really helpful tip
Hi Rosie, I'm learning French too and the hardest word to pronounce I've come across is the one for rubber, which is caoutchouc (m.). Perhaps you could give it a go in your next video!
Richard Ager 'ka oo tchoo'
Cow+choo
Coucou Rosie
Je trouve tu te débrouille 😉 très bien . J'en ai un autre (saperlipopette !!)
Bisouuuu💜
You're extreamly good ! Seriously
J'aime bien tes videos, toujours un ton léger et agreable. Continue comme ça. The difficulty is that people learn the sounds of words by imitating the native persons speaking around them. In that case, those words like "ecureuil " "accueil" French people can actually "read" the sound that makes each word. They teach that at school very early which become natural with the time. But it's also the case with plenty of other languages. And I know what I say because i am a French guy living in Spain.
Phonetics tip: the u is made at the front of your mouth and the ou is made at the back. For the u in vu and dessus, your tongue is in the same place as it is when you make the sound i ("eeee") but your lips are rounded. So to practise making that sound you can try making a really long "eeeeee" sound and as you're doing it round your lips into an o shape. It will transform into the u sound! For the ou, you need to lift up the back of your tongue towards the back of your mouth, almost as if you're about to make a k or g sound, but round your lips. It's not a sound that us Aussies and Kiwis are used to making!
As an Aussie, we barely move our mouths or our tongues when we speak, so anything that requires that is very difficult for us and our poor inert mouths to say. I'd agree it's probably similar for Rosie, as the Aus and NZ accents are very similar, I think only Australians and New Zealanders can actually tell the difference. I tried to learn Italian when I was young and then spent three months there - I remember my facial muscles hurt for the first few weeks because I was moving my mouth in ways I'd never moved it before, my poor tongue wanted to leave the country and go back to sleep 😉
Stacey Mcalister haha, we definitely move our tongues a lot, (think of all the dipthongs we have in English), but it's within a smaller space inside the mouth. So you're kind of right in that it doesn't move as far.
cucurbitacée, zinc,redondant
I only had one semester of French but have always wanted to learn more. This was a great ep for me. My pronunciation is poor but enthusiastic so I am always trying.. il faut essayer
Aurélie a une voix délicieuse et une prononciation claire et belle. Idéal pour apprendre.
une phrase difficile: Le lion ne s'associe pas avec le cafard!
jme disais aussi ça veut rien dire XD XD
Merde, je suis MORT... 😂😂😂😂😂 Tellement la bonne référence xD
génial XD
Ahh parce que j'avais compris le lion gnagnagna dans le placard!
Et c'est qui le Lion maintenant ?
I used to teach to japanese students, and in Japanese you don't have "B", so for them, "arbre" (tree) is pretty hard (a B between 2 R !) :)
Aruburuuu. x)
wait, they do have the sound ''b'' in the japanese alphabet. in hiragana ばびぶべぼ or in katakana バビブベボ or even the word bonsai
I’m Japanese. We have “B” but not “V”. We don’t have “TH”. We have neither “L” nor “R”. Some people may argue that we have “R” sound but we actually don’t because Japanese “R” sound if pronounced differently from English “R” sound. Our “R” sound is similar to Spanish unrolled “R”. Where you place your tongue is the same place as English “D”.
I love you channel! Thanks for uploading so many good videos :)
I had a problem with la mer Méditerranée. I had to break it up and say each part slowly to finally say the whole word. Am I the only one who thinks this is a hard word for English speakers. Loved this video! Thank you!
I struggle so much with these too! Especially "oeil" :'D I think you did great!!!!
"oeil" is not that hard. Just forgot how it spells, it's the i from "girl" with an y.
sous réserve de validation par mes pairs, si je devais trouver un équivalent dans les intonations anglaises pour t'aider à prononcer le "euil" (ou l'étrange "oeil"), je dirai que ça sonne comme le début de "[a y]oung personn" et pour les "R" il faut s'entraîner à imiter un félin (quoique je ne sais pas sûr de comment les anglophones imitent le ronronnement du chat x') ), par contre pour la différence entre "ou" et "u" là je sèche ^^' (et si tu veux faire une prochaine vidéo avec le même genre de défi en plus hardcore, il y a les fameuses phrases que les comédiens s'entrainent à prononcer rapidement pour avoir une bonne diction (par ex: "les chaussettes de l'archi-duchesse sont elles sèches, archi sèches ?"), j'imagine qu'il y en a également en anglais, ça serait sympa d'en avoir un aperçu aussi :) )
Pour la différence au niveau du son "u" et "ou" cela se passe avec le fond de la gorge ainsi qu'avec la langue et non avec les lèvres, lorsque l'on fait "ou" la gorge est relâchée et la langue aussi alors que pour "u", la gorge est un peu plus resserrée et la langue touche le palais. En espérant que cela t'aideras
"She sells seashells by the sea shore"
Bon courage :)
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where's the peck of pickled pepper that Peter Piper picked? That one is fun :)
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter, the butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter, and made her batter bitter. But a bit of better butter makes better batter. So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter. Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better.
Sauf que tous les anglophones ne prononcent pas le "a" de la même façon... Chez les kiwis comme les anglais, je pense que ça risque de sonner comme èil (comme à la fin d'oreille) au lieu de oeil...
il suffit de virer le f de feuille, qu'elle prononce déjà très bien, sinon :)
I feel your pain! I'm learning French primarily with Pimsleur and it amazes me how similar some words sound and when you pronounce something incorrectly, you're saying a totally different word. My "oh shit" moment was with je veux and je vais. And then to go to my grammar workbook and learning how many of those accent marks REALLY make a difference in how the word is pronounced...
I may look for an online tutor, as you said, since I need some feedback on prononciation.
Lol, I just started learning French and can already tell this is gonna be fun. I am working hard on Plurals at the moment and keep getting things mixed up. Took me ages to stop mixing up "es" et "et". Constantly have to go back and review and practice but it's fun and learning lots.
La bouilloire is the word that I have most trouble with
Think about it that way: "boo-ee-war"
Booy-wah-r
I'm only on beginner French. All of those are bâtard words.
Katarina Hall LMAOO
Bâtard words, you killed me 😂😂
Esprit Pastéquien what's funny with this sentence?
@@Law-_ En fait le principe de l'humour c'est que c'est subjectif, donc pourquoi une telle chose me fait rire moi ne s'explique pas forcément :)
je demandais parce que je pensais qu'il y avait une blague à comprendre comme vous êtes plusieurs à avoir trouvé ça drôle '^' pour info bâtard veut dire "croisé", c'est pas mal utilisé dans les différentes langues.
You're doing really well!
Good luck for learning french.
You speak very well french it's nice!
my most difficult french word: stoechiométrique hardest to spell and to write for english native speakers
J'avoue que là t'en tiens un bon, même pour un français le mot n'est pas évident.
Ça dépends pour lequel français. Si c'est un francais qui est allé a l'ecole, en principe il n'y a aucune de dificulté :)
My wife had a hard time to pronounce the name of the metro station Jussieu
I think your pronunciation is very good, just a little work on the U sound and you're French :)
Mille Feuille is also an expression to describe administrative layers in France, to tell how many levels there are and how complicated it is to make it work efficiently.
Good work! Haha loved the video!
So funny! I adore everything related to pronunciation, I struggled a lot with “les yeux” I don’t really know why hahaha but I’m very stubborn so I made my boyfriend repeat it and correct me until I got it right. Also to me it helps a lot to know how a word is written in order to pronounce it right, and I thought dégueulasse was written « dégoulasse » so I said it wrong all the time and he didn’t correct me because he found that hilarious 😂 it would be funny to do a video de other way around: words in English French people struggle with (ohhh the “th” and the “h” ...) bisous Rosie!
your boyfriend!!!!!!
In fact "dégoulasse" is an old variante to be more polite ^^
Et aussi on dit PARIS et pas PARISSE 🇫🇷👍🏻, j’aime bien tes vidéos
This was a great video, Rosie! (Now I'll never forget your name.) I have stumbled on each and every one of these words myself -- in fact, a couple of months ago, I was feeding tossing some (slightly stale) nuts in a rural park, and when question, explained that I was leaving them for the *écurie* -- which of couse means a horse's stable! After the laughter, I explained that *écureuil* is a word that English speakers famously stumble on. (Along with "accueil," which I have had to say all the time, too. It's even hard to spell.)
On the other hand, maybe it's a NZ vs US thing, but I would call a "serrurerie" (very helpful to know that it only has three syllables!) a locksmith's shop, because to me, a "serrurier" is a locksmith (the actual 'smithy', so to speak).
As a native English speaker who has been studying French for 2 years now, I didn’t find any of these words very difficult, but that may be my other linguistic background showing. I would definitely suggest learning IPA (The International Phonetic Alphabet) to learn the ways to pronounce these sounds and the slight differences between them. For example, the u vs ou distinction is /y/ vs /u/, with /u/ being the ou in English “you” while /y/ is a sound not found in English, but is a rounded /i/ (long e like in “see”). Knowing IPA definitely helps with pronunciations
I struggle a lot with pronouncing these differently: 1) Provence & Province 2) Enfant & Enfin
the "en" sound in provence and the ""an" sound in enfant come from the front of your mouth whereas the "in" sound in province and enfin comes from the back of your mouth. It's the same difference between "vin" (wine) and "vent" (wind) or "un" (one) and "an" (year). If you master these simpler words you'll get easily around provence / province and enfant / enfin.
"Les virelangues" are always funny to have a go at ^^
"Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches?
Archi-sèches!"
Un chasseur sachant chasseur sans son chien est un bon chasseur
Plutôt : "Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien" :)
pardon Lucy, je voulais pas voler ton punch
I like words where you have to study the syllables one by one:
inébranlable, impitoyable, incapacité
Also especially Germans struggle with the "s" sounds: "désert" vs "dessert", "baisser" vs "baiser"
and people often mess up with the three different e: é, e, è,
-> Ce prof sévère est sévère envers ses élèves.
And there are words with silly amounts of letters for what they're worth:
Elle à été créée
Beaucoup de bijoux
etc.
Première fois que je vois ce terme, je suppose qu'il vient de l'anglais tongue twisters ? ☺️
Just watched this, hadn't seen it before. I didn't realise that the combination of different vowels and the sound [j] (not the letter as it is pronounced in English or French, the sound as pronounced in the end of "oeuil" or "douille") was so difficult for English-speakers. Interesting! I'm Swedish myself, and I've had a passionate relationship with the French language since I was 13, that is, for 38 years now. I'm also a language teacher, of English, French and Swedish as a Second Language, and I love both teaching and learning pronunciation. I know five foreign languages more or less well and I'm learning my sixth one right now. If I may, I would like to give some professional advice on pronunciation in general and French pronunciation in particular.
The French R sound as it's pronounced in the North of France is tricky for many foreigners, including most Swedes. I'm lucky myself, being from the South of the country where we basically have the same R sound as in French. That R is called a "retroflex R" and what happens when you pronounce it is that your uvula vibrates as the air passes between the root of the tongue and the uvula. The passage must be made quite narrow, so you have to press the back of your tongue (=the root) against the uvula. The jaws have to be rather closed at the back for that to happen. Then you blow air from your lungs through the mouth, just as you do with other consonants, and the uvula should start to vibrate. You can't talk to it and tell it to move, you must force it!
The French "u" sound can, as someone explained here already, be achieved via the [i] sound (="ee" as it is pronounced in English). Just start by saying [i] / "ee" and keep your jaws steadily in the same position while moving your lips from a broad to a rounded position. Just make sure that your lips are rounded slightly inwards, not outwards! (If you round them outwards, you will instead produce the Swedish pronunciation of the letter "y"!)
I think many people focus too much on all the different letters in French words. Instead of stressing when you see a whole row of letters, try seeing them as groups or entities, that together represent certain sounds. The 6-letter combination "-ouille" only represents two sounds, [uj]! The combination "-ille" is always pronounced [ij], except for in "ville" and "mille"! The 3-vowel combination "eau" is always pronounced [o], just as "au" and also -od/-ot at the end of words! An "s" between two vowels is always pronounced [z]! I could go on for longer. And some entities don't represent any sounds at all, they are always silent.
As somebody here pointe out, French spelling is guided by consistent rules, perfectly applicable for somebody reading text out loud. You can, in principle, ALWAYS tell how a French word should be pronounced by looking at its spelling. It's easy. That may sound crazy to you, but it's true! The same thing cannot really be said for English, hrm hrm ... However, the opposite does not apply; it's not always easy to spell in French. Often when you hear an unknown French word, you hesitate how to spell it as there may be 3, 4 or 5 different ways to spell a certain sound (I'm especially thinking of the [o] sound here: o, au, eau, -od, -ot ... am I forgetting anything?). You have to look it up quite simply.
A piece of advice if you struggle with pronunciation in a foreign language: Try to find a teacher/native speaker friend who really knows something about the phonetics of that language, or study some phonetics and pronunciation principles of the language yourself. There are books on phonetics and pronunciation, especially in such important school/university languages as English and French! And those books will normally have pictures and descriptions of each sound in that particular language. There are certainly a lot of UA-cam-videos on pronunciation as well (at least there are a lot of them for Swedish, with teachers showing and explaining how to go about pronouncing the different sounds; I think there must be some in French too). Anyway, ask your teacher or native speaker friend to study your mouth, jaws and lips while you try to pronounce the sounds that you struggle with, and then to produce the same sound while trying to see what differs between your pronunciation and his/her correct one. You might just need to do a very slight adjustment, like rounding your lips more, repositioning your tongue or lowering your lower jaw a bit to open up your mouth a little more, for your pronunciation to be perfect. Try to do exercises together where you go from one sound to another a number of times, for example from French [i] to [u], or the classical "Un bon vin blanc" to practise all the nasal vowels in French. First do just the individual sounds and then go on to pronouncing lists of words containing the different vowels, preferably in word pairs where the only difference between them is the vowel sound. Then take a paragraph from any text, make a photocopy and mark out all the difficulties. Listen to a native speaker reading the text. Practise reading the same text yourself, many times until you become fluent and comfortable reading it. And I really recommend singing in your foreign language every day, it's great for practising pronunciation and speed. I do it a lot myself, and I love it.
It's not at all impossible to get a good pronunciation; if you find some sounds, sound combinations or a special intonation difficult it's just because you haven't practised enough yet! I once practised every day for two months before I could pronounce a particular sound in Estonian correctly [an o with a tilde over it]. I still find that sound easy to pronounce though I didn't continue my Estonian studies, and I will never forget how to make it. It's like cykling.
Oh, and I forgot, there was one word, the name of a village in the French alps, that I did find difficult to pronounce when I encountered it some years ago, despite my many years of practising French pronunciation: Huez-en-Oisans. My half-French children made fun of me, so I decided to practise a little extra to master it and wipe that smirk off their faces. It took some days before I felt at ease and didn't stumble on that horrible combination of ordinary vowles, nasal vowels and [z] sounds any more, but now I find it easy. You can do the same I'm sure, with any sound or sound combination.
Voilà!
This was adorable and very helpful. You certainly chose the words that I find the most difficult :)
Je suis québecoise, dans une famille francophone, mais quand jétait jeune je prononcait boucle bloucle et foulard fouloir.
Je prononçait compote pomcote, guimauve gaumive, et moutarde mourtade
Tout un schmilblick :)
Tortue DeRien 😂rip si elle essaie de le prononcer
ua-cam.com/video/7AcXTBmqAYQ/v-deo.html
Hi :-) my mother was a kiwi as well and I came to live in the french part of Switzerland when I was about 7 y.o. I grew up here and remember struggling with a lot of french words.
Three of the most difficult ones for me were :
- Le renard (fox, the soft 2nd 'r' was difficult to get right)
- Un bircher (some sort of swiss breakfast)
- un rhododendron (a plant, this word should not even exist)
There must be a lot of other crazy words but these are the ones I really had a hard time with ^^ !
Thank you for your videos, I love your channel, it's always fun to watch. If you ever come to Switzerland, we should get a coffee. xoxo
grenouille has always been a problem for me, so much so that I got a frog charm on my pandora during my year abroad in France, which was a challenge in itself when asking for it in the shop haha!
"accueillir" c'est le mot le plus difficile pour moi.
Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasserpp sans son chien
Hi there,
I'm a French in UK. And to be honest, you do quite well with French pronunciation! Every time someone tries to speak French here it's so hard to even understand a word of what they try to say :D
Don't give up, good luck :)
Great video! It'd be helpful to hear these words used in sentences in french, too.
Bonjour.
Le mot le plus long en Français est " anticonstitutionnellement ".
Donc assez difficile et peu utilisé.
Le jour où tu arrives à le passer dans une phrase, c'est jouissif. Je l'ai fait un jour sans faire exprès, il était là car j'en avais besoin.
Et sinon ce n'est pas vraiment le plus long mot de la langue française car en médecine, en psychologie, en physique et en droit, il existe de nombreux mots plus long. Et rien que "intergouvernementalisation" est plus long d'une lettre.
Je ne savais pas...
Pour le langage usuel je parlais...
Si tu peux m'en dire d'autres et dans des domaines différents je veux bien les connaître.
Franck Puech On trouve pas mal de mots longs dans le registre des phobies, celle des mots longs s'ecrit : "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobie" (ce qui est plutôt ironique par ailleur).
Franck Puech apparement même en exceptant le langage scientifique ou les mots construits (Comme les phobies), anticonstitutionnellement n'est plus le long mot de la langue française . Il serait supplanté par intergouvernementalisations
A vérifier donc...
lifestyle/magazine/anticonstitutionnellement-n-est-plus-le-plus-long-mot-de-la-langue-francaise-5a267952cd70b488fb07fcee
Seize jacinthes sèchent dans seize sachets sales. Bon courage.
Awesome video!
That was great actually you are very good! The words you mentioned are HARD FOR ME
le plus dur (vous le sentez tous venir) : anticonstitutionnellement !!!
C'est pas un mot dur à prononcer c'est juste qu'il est long #LePlusLongMotDeLaLangueFrançaise
le plus long mot de la langue française n'est pas anticonstitutionnellement, mais : intergouvernementalisations 😬
Mila Martial Il y en a des clairement bien pires comme : hexakosioihexekontahexaphobie. Oui ce mot existe vraiment 😂
non mais là nous non plus on peut pas le prononcer ! XD
Les français toujours parlent de ce mot mais en tant qu'Allemande c'est trouve ça un peu ridicule parce que en Allemand nous avons pleins de mots de cette longueur ou même plus longs
Hey Rosie ! You're globally doing a great job, congrats ;-)
This is really interesting as its basically the same sound in most of these words.
You say mille feuille perfectly!!! (I’m a french native speaker) ❤️
Hello, thank you very much for this video. I have the same problem in English (I am French). I appreciate the courage to post a video like that. Now side story I knew I was bilingual when I was finally able to order at a drive thru. Thanks
Bravo ! Tu es douée !
Oh so sweet your accent! I love it ! I wish you can do a video in french
You did really well