English Pronunciation for French Speakers

This is a close historical connection between French and English.  Not only do they both belong to the Indo-European family of languages, but England and France are neighbours, so there has been a significant amount of interaction between their peoples over the centuries, which is shown in English pronunciation.

The fact that English is Germanic and French is Romance does not necessarily mean that they have not influenced each other.  For instance, the final consonant in the word mirage is not native to Germanic languages; it came into English through French, and words that contain it are generally French loanwords.

SEE ALSO: Pronunciation – Why is it so Difficult to Speak Like a Native?

During the Middle Ages, there were massive borrowings of French words into English, and vocabulary is arguably the main similarity between the two languages.  When it comes to phonology, however, there are still significant differences between French and English.  Most of these differences involve vowels, word stress, and related issues.  See how Robin Williams makes use of these features to create funny, though quite exaggerated, representation of French people speaking English:

Vowels

1.  French has no contrast between the vowels /IY/ and /IH/, which occur in beat and bit, respectively.  French speakers tend to pronounce them both as /IY/.  Much of this has to do with the fact that French pronunciation is generally less “relaxed”; /IH/ is very similar to /IY/, except that the former involves the tongue moving slightly back and the mouth opening just a tiny bit more (therefore a bit more “relaxed”).  The French aren’t used to this.

2.  Similarly, the contrast between /UW/ and /UH/, found in pool and pull, respectively, is also not found in French, and this occurs for exactly the same reason given in example 1; /UW/ is the more “extreme” of the two, and /UH/ can be seen as a slightly more relaxed version, pronounced with the tongue not as far back and the mouth slightly more open.

3.  French lacks the vowel in bat, and French speakers tend to replace it with either the vowel in but or the vowel bot (American).

Diphthongs

Diphthongs can be loosely defined as two vowels crammed into the time span normally occupied by one.  In Old French, there were plenty of diphthongs and even triphthongs, which is why the word eau is spelled the way it is but pronounced /O/ in Modern French.  Nowadays, the French shy away from diphthongs, preferring “pure vowels,” and this is reflected in their English pronunciation.

Consequently, the vowels in words such as buy, boy, bay, boat, bait, ear (British), and air (British) tend to be pronounced as pure vowels instead.  For example, the diphthong in English boat gets merged with the pure vowel in bought, and both are pronounced /O/ (a complicated situation!).

Stress and Vowel Reduction

“Vowel reduction” is just a fancy way of saying that vowels in unstressed syllables are pronounced like the a in about (schwa).  For instance, the e in spoken does not sound like the e in get.  Instead, it’s much shorter and less distinct.

English vowels in unstressed positions tend to become reduced in this way, but this phenomenon doesn’t occur in French.  The French therefore tend to pronounce unstressed vowels as they’re spelled, not as schwa, which ends up sounding a bit more “foreign.”

The second issue here is stress.  In French, word stress falls on the final syllable.  The word mirage, given above, is a good example of a French loanword which has retained its word-final stress.  French speakers tend to do this to all English words.  Also, French stress isn’t quite as strong; that is, the difference in intensity between stressed and unstressed syllables is not as great in French, and each syllable is more or less the same length.  This can sometimes give their English a staccato sound or make it sound monotonous.