is french difficult to read because of the unphonetic nature it seems easier to understand along with the audio but without you have to guess the pronounciation like english at times i think
I donât think soâŚActually, in my opinion, its way to more difficult to listen and understand specific contents.Itâs normal to read a text and understand almost 95% of it, but if you had just listened it , probably youâd have understood less than 60%.
So, you do know the words meanings, but its hard to understand clearly when youâre listening, it takes time to reach a level where your reading and listening skills are at the same page.Of course, this a personal report, based on my own learning process.
1 Like
You mean whether itâs difficult to know how to pronounce each word based on the spelling? Yes, at times it is. Iâd say, somewhat less than in English but you really have to look up a lot of the pronunciations. Russianâs also like that to some extent. What I do when I donât have the audio of a lesson is to listen to the pronunciation of isolated words. I do that often even when I understand the word as spelled because Iâm not sure of the pronunciation. Often I also look up words just to check the pronunciation. I find a knowledge of IPA signs useful for that
yes that is what i meant
no. in my opinion, french can be considered a phonetic language. french isnât at all like english - once you know the rules of french spelling, when reading a new word, you will know how itâs pronounced. itâs merely different than other phonetic languages in that it is âletter groupsâ, rather than individual letters, that tell you how a SYLLABLE is pronounced. for example, -au or -eau, when you come across it, is pronounced âoh.â -eil and -eille are pronounced âay.â -ail and -aille are pronounced âeye.â -ouil and -ouille are pronounced âoo-ee.â -euil and -euille are pronounced âuh-ee.â my advice to you when beginning to learn french is, when you see a combination of letters that you have not seen before, write it down in your notebook with the pronunciation beside it. when you combine it with the knowledge of which letters indicate a nasal sound and that the last consonant in a french word is usually silent, in the future when you see this group of letters together, you will know how the word that looks complicated on the surface is pronounced. so when you come across a word like⌠grenouille, you will know gre = gre, thats easy enough, and since -ouille is pronounced âoo-eeâ, grenouille - gre-noo-ee. when you come across the word deuil, you will be able to know that its d+uh-ee, duh-ee. if you come across the word ribaud, you will know that -au- is pronounced âohâ and last consonants are usually silent, so its âree-boh.â see what iâm saying? it doesnât look like french is phonetic, but it nearly always is.
French cannot be considered phonetic AT ALL. You do know phonetic basically means âpronounced as itâs speltâ?
âlongtempsâ is pronounced âlan-tohâ. Nowhere near phonetic.
and french is pronounced how itâs spelt. it merely goes by groups of letters, rather than by individual letters. it is the same concept, with merely a unique twist how it is applied. saying âphonetic has to rigidly mean a single letter = a single soundâ is narrow-minded and pretty much eliminates virtually any language from being phonetic, including the ones normally considered so, such as spanish or german, which have silent letters and letter combinations that equal a single phoneme. nobody says "german is not a phonetic language because ich gehe zur Schule is pronounced âeesh gaya tsur shooluh instead of eek-huh geh-heh zoor skuh-hooleh like its written.â letter combinations equalling one phoneme, when applied consistently across the board, are still viewed as phonetic. it just so happens that french is mostly made up of such letter combinations that equal a single phoneme, while other languages just have a few.
1 Like
Yea, came in to say that listening comprehension with the goofy french pronunciation and slurring of words together is much harder than reading especially if you already speak english. At least half the words are the same or similar.
1 Like
Thatâs not true at all. French spelling is not phonetic.
A couple of examples
a) âenâ can be pronounced as in âenâ or as in âexamenâ, two very different sounds for the same spelling.
The correct pronunciation of, say, âBenjaminâ is not to be deduced from the spelling
I recently read a discussion online about the correct pronunciation of the writerâs pseudonym âStendhalâ, there was no agreement about it among native speakers: you donât get that if the scriptâs phonetic
b) âaiâ may be pronounced as âĂŠâ or âèâ depending on the word. Thereâs a recent thread here at Lingq about the difference in pronunciation between âiraiâ and âiraisâ and, again, native speakers were not in agreement. And how about âaiâ in faisions, faisiez, etc? (third possible pronunciation)
c) Sometimes âuâ is pronounced âoâ: album, etc. Again, you must know the pronunciation of those words separately in order to pronounce them correctly
d) Compare âsubtilâ and âoutilâ, when the âlâ soundâs pronounced in this kind of contexts is anyoneâs guess. The pronunciation of âRenaultâ is even more deviant
e) And donât get me started on isolated, just plain weird words such as âsaoulâ
There are many, many more cases in which the spelling simply doesnât give enough information about the intended phonemes
Your point about a spelling that can be considered phonetic even if it includes a few letter combinations that must be learned separately but which are then used systematically to represent the same sound can be nicely applied to German spelling, but certainly not to the French one
good thing english shares all those peculiarities
Well, as a matter of fact, English takes all those irregularities to a new level! 
I donât see how its âunphonetic natureâ would prevent you from reading. It simply makes it more difficult to pronounce words that you read.
⌠i already said that there are some exceptions. thatâs what âit nearly always is phoneticâ means, that there are some exceptions out there. the exceptions arenât the norm, or even common. and even in the few exceptions that do exist, the supposedly different pronunciation is still nearly exactly the same to how its read, to the point where non-native speakers canât even hear the difference between the sounds anyway, and if they sound it out according to the rules, they will have pronounced the word 99% correctly. if a person encounters one of the rare exceptions and says âvous fezziayâ instead of âvous fuhzziayâ, almost nobody is even going to notice.
Again, thatâs not true. There are lots and lots of exceptions, way more than in German and they do affect important sound distinctions, as the examples I gave show
As an example, The difference between the âanâ and âinâ phonemes is key in French. Learners who cant make it have a lot to learn yet. At the very least, they must be aware of when or the other is meant in a given word. The spelling often obscures it. Thatâs not typical of phonetic or even âquasi-phoneticâ spellings
I have there are two types of people with french. Those like myself have little to no trouble getting used the pronunciation with listening, and those who just canât get used to it and find the pronunciation totally impossible.
1 Like
none of the examples you gave show important sound distinctions. they are so indistinct in fact, that most of your examples are dependent on regional accents to have any distinction at all.
there are not very many exceptions in french. saying there are more exceptions than in german, does not mean that exceptions are common in french. they arenât. they are rare.
your example of the different between âanâ and âinâ, i donât see how they are relevant to the discussion. they are both pronounced exactly as expected based on french spelling rules, so iâm not sure why you brought them up.
But thatâs the pointâŚhow could this avoid you from reading? And, althoug its true some people have difficulty with french pronunciation, with a lot of listening , everbody reachs a good level.
1 Like
My example connected to my previous point about the âenâ spelling. Let me restate it in full for you, since youâve been so kind as to ask about it:
The âenâ spelling can represent an âanâ or an âinâ phoneme: the distinction between those two phonemes is crucial in French and no dialect ever confuses them.
Examples of clear obfuscation of the two phonemes are:
examen, Benjamin: where any rule would predict an âanâ sound, but you get an âinâ sound. There are many more examples, some of which can be tried to be explained away by proposing rules that get more and more complicated, and some which are completely unpredictable.
Let me remind you of the âStendhalâ example: itâs unclear how to pronounce it because of the amibiguity of the spelling: a phonetic script would make it apparent
This was meant is a counterexample to your claim that distinctions obscured by the spelling are âirrelevantâ. Itâs intended as a âclearâ example to counter your argument. It shows that the script under-represents the phonemic distinctions, even for very important phonemes, and even in cases in which it would be completely clear to competent speakers that you are mispronouncing the word if you let yourself be guided by the spelling.
In general, I find completely unconvincing your claim that âhey, itâs phonetic enough, you may not know the phonemes from the spelling but if you just mumble your words, maybe no one will realizeâ: Thatâs what you implied with you "faisiez"example: the distinction between âe muetâ,on one hand, and âopen/close eâ on the other is also crucial in the language and no dialect confuses them.
If you canât tell what phonemes are intended from the spelling, it is not a phonetic spelling. To what extent you can âfakeâ by speaking indistinctly (which anyway, I doubt you can, as the âenâ example shows) makes absolute no difference.