FRENCH

Why choose French? With 28 countries (excluding France and its overseas island territories) using French as an official language. French is the only language other than English spoken on five continents. French is the language of writers, artists, philosophers, filmmakers, scientists, architects, and designers. French is the vehicle for creative and challenging thinking about sameness and difference, authority and resistance, law and commerce, beauty and pleasure.

How to start studying French?

1. Try to get yourself familiar with the sounds of French (the written language is quite close to English in terms of vocabulary – see http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/advice/european/Dontknow.htm). The best way to do this is to watch a video with English subtitles or listen to an audio tape from one of the French beginners’ courses available in the SAC. Then go to the section on Pronunciation below.
2. Meet an adviser in the SAC who will show you the physical materials available and decide which ones to use. There are currently 3 advisers for French.
3. Decide if you intend to join a course taught by a Language Center instructor or consultant. Courses currently cost $900 for 42 hours and enrolment for the beginners’ French I course opens in the first week of every semester and sometimes during the summer and winter breaks. Alternatively you could enrol at the Alliance Française
4. Browse the websites organised at
   http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/materials/french/web/index.html
5. Read one former UST student's experience of studying French here"

Pronunciation

French has the same difficulty as English (for Chinese learners) when it comes to pronunciation: most words are not pronounced as they are spelt, and most vowels (though not too many consonants) have more than one sound. In addition, many of the sounds of French do not exist in English, though quite a few are common in Chinese. So French is not a phonetic language. For a rough guide to the sounds of French click HERE

The main problem with French pronunciation is the nasal vowel sounds, the vowels which are followed by a ‘n’ or ‘m’ and the sounds of which come out through the nose as well as the mouth. Practise ‘an’, ‘on’, ‘in’ and ‘un’ at the above website (the last two are quite similar)! Vowels and semi-vowels are often considered to be purer than in English because they are pronounced further forward in the mouth and always separately in the vowel combinations (diphthongs). The tongue shouldn’t get in the way at all! One vowel which does not approximate to English is ‘u’ which is the same as in the Cantonese sound for ‘book’ [書]. Practise the 12 common vowel and 3 semi-vowel sounds at the website!

The consonants are less of a problem. The ‘r’ sound is guttural (produced in the back of your throat). Try the sound you make when gargling with mouthwash, or a cat’s purr! Other sounds:

‘th’ is pronounced like ‘t’ in English
‘ch’ is pronounced like ‘sh’ in English
‘gn’ is pronounced like ‘ny’ (as in ‘canyon’) in English
‘j’ (and ‘g’ when followed by ‘e’ or ‘i’) is pronounced like the sound in ‘pleasure’ /Z/
‘ll’ after ‘i’ (and ‘l’ at the end of a word after ‘ai’, ‘ei’ and ‘ti’) is usually pronounced like ‘y’ in English
‘h’ is always silent (=never pronounced)

French (unlike English) has very little stress: because words in French flow on until a natural pause (the end of an idea, noun/verb group etc), there is no stress at all except on the last syllable of the rhythmic or sense unit, e.g. ‘mon ami Jean / est professeur / à Paris’.

There is a different variety of French pronunciation in the Canadian province of Québec, but Standard French (‘le français international’) is understood everywhere.