From lu, the past participle of lire (to read), to pour (for), you'll find major differences in meaning depending or whether "u" or "ou" are used in various French words. When you learn new words with ou or u, you should listen for that distinction and practice saying them out loud (more on that in a moment). Subscribe to learn and pronounce a new word each day! If you mispronounce Spanish vowels, you’ll just sound a little silly.
Finally, while I’ve heard some say that there’s not much point in trying to learn pronunciations when you can’t yet distinguish sounds aurally, in my personal language learning I’ve found that tackling pronunciations in an artificial way (by learning to configure your mouth correctly, as below) actually helps you appreciate the distinctions between sounds when you hear them.
So try to understand the tongue and lip configurations explained above before your ou vs. u lesson, and then practice producing sentences with your teacher that you might say in your real life using the minimal pairs in the videos above. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, Learn to Conjugate the French Irregular Verb Lire (to Read), Understanding Diacritical Marks in French, How to Pronounce More Than 2,500 Words in French, Top French Pronunciation Mistakes and Difficulties, Using Enchainement in French Pronunciation, How to Conjugate the Irregular French Verb "Haïr", Understanding the French Language and Using IPA. Another cool way to get there’s demonstrated in this video by Gabriel Wyner (it should launch directly at 6:06). But if you mispronounce French vowels such as ou and u, you’ll have real issues in communicating, just as with the rougi / rugi example above. Il a rougi and il a rugi may sound exactly the same to English speakers. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe, lost the ability to distinguish between certain sounds, For the purpose of motivation as you work, picture of what your tongue is doing here, Advanced French for Film Buffs: 3 Cult Classics to Teach You Conversational Nuance, 10 Awesome French Podcasts For French Learners, 9 Great Channels to Learn French on YouTube, 10 Tasty Tips for Teaching Yourself French, 7 Awesome Songs to Help You Learn French Through Music, 15 French Idioms You Should Know But Don’t, 15 French Slang Words Every French Learner Should Know. Very few native French teachers are going to be any good at explaining the above, however; for them the u sound is just natural and obvious. Register You’ll do the same when you say French words like dessous (underneath). {{collections.count?collections.count:0}}, Name already exists! You've got the pronunciation of ou right. Record the pronunciation of this word in your own voice and play it to listen to how you have pronounced it. This is basically the same vowel sound that you already know how to make when you say the English words “boot,” “food” and “soup.” Try saying these words out loud right now; notice how your tongue is pushed up towards the back of your mouth on the vowel. Crowdsourced audio pronunciation dictionary for 89 languages, with meanings, synonyms, sentence usages, translations and much more. Word of the day - in your inbox every day, © 2020 HowToPronounce. Have a fact about ho'ou ? Mose Hayward moved to France more than a decade ago and still sometimes has nightmares about French vowels. The French u, on the other hand, has no English equivalent: The closest sound is also the "ou" in soup, but the u sound is created further forward in the mouth. pronouncekiwi - How To Pronounce ho'ou. The presented examples are minimal pairs, so to hear the difference you really need to be able to hear these vowels. Pairing "u" with "r" (and "e") yields the word street—rue—in French, but adding "ou" to that same combination of letters creates the word roue (wheel). She struggles with “ u ” [y] vs “ ou ” [u] sounds, and never knows how to use “ sur / sous ” “ dessus / dessous ”, “ au-dessus / au-dessous ”, “ par-dessus / par dessous ”… Exactly like you do! Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you In fact, by the age of one you have already lost the ability to distinguish between certain sounds that aren’t present in the speech around you. Thank you for helping build the largest language community on the internet. Some tips and sound files can help you hear the difference and say the words correctly. or post as a guest. (You can listen for rougi and rugi at about 0:26.). (The neighbors upstairs make too much noise.).
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