French language starting to change to gender neutral

Just as David Cameron famously thought, until corrected by News Corp’s Rebekah Brooks. When you’re a prime minister mixing up lots of love and laugh out loud could start wars if sent to the wrong person :laughing:

I struggle, I really do!

I spend so much time with my students doing the th! The other one is adding h’s where there is none and taking them off when there is!

That drives me nuts!

One of my students is doing a fashion course. They have to make different items of clothing. I was very confused when he started telling me about the ‘bitch’ dress he was making. We worked out it was actually a beach dress, I certainly had a different thing in my head. We both had a good laugh!

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I see your problem, some of which is demonstrated here?

Twenty-four difficult English words for the French to pronounce….

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Not just your mouth. There are nearly 50 facial/neck muscles and they are trained from an early age to fit the culture you live in and make your oral cavity/mouth/lips form the right shape for the noises you need to produce. Kids who are bilingual from an early age tend to be able to speak both languages with the “right” accent. Otherwise it’s hugely hard.

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And because they have a wider range of sounds they tend to speak other languages with relatively more success as well.

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One of my favourites used to be getting my students to work on the pronunciation of “crisps”, my kids can’t say it properly. As for the H added or not pronounced where it should ‘angry’ and ‘hungry’, heat and eat etc. I won’t go there, or the beach/bitch, sheep/ship, sheet/shit, used to have some fun with those!

Mouth architecture - it’s exactly the same for every chaild at birth, it’s the development of the muscles used to make the sounds that is different. The “th” can be done, the emphasis is not just on the position of the tongue on the top front teeth but its removal as the sound is produced :wink:

How many brits don’t differentiate between tu and tout, vu and vous, dessous and dessus. And good pronunciation testers are brouillard and bouillard… amongst so many others!

And round here, with the SW accent: cent and sang

This is more about the irrationality of English spelling.
Some Italian friends of mine once had a very challenging time asking directions to Loughborough…

I was at a rugby league match a few years back. Toulouse v Keighley. The French announcer had a few problems with the pronounciation of the english players but when James Haythornthwaite scored he was almost apoloplectic.

Or “ving” for both “20” and “came”.

I narrowly missed studying Occitan and wish I had now.

My landord’s late mother has a ‘ouse near ze bitch’… 'e spends a lot of time zer.

For some strange reason my Afghan colleage could say ‘Wahab’ - his name - but he could not say ‘wood’. It came out as ’ 'ood.’ So it’s ‘ood’ for me too, now.

Yep, the différence is definitely there but i suppose some can’t hear it :thinking:

Good job they were not trying to find Woolfardisworthy, NW Devon. It wouldn’t do for an English person not familiar with this place to pronounce it as you see it. Yer Devonian, having eventually divined you want to go to Woolzerah, will have told you that if you wanna go there, best not start from 'ere.

Errr. Hairist.

And male pattern baldness - see Pr William - is passed down thru’ the female genes.

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Kind of the other way round - the morning after a big round of theft from the boats moored at my moorings and the adjacent yacht club - 23 boats broken into in one night - we looked in the events diary of the yottin’ press and saw that the year’s biggest boat jumble was happening the very nexxt day at Beulieu, on the Hamble.

The English pronounce this place ‘Bewlee’. My secretary, a Waloon, looking in another mag said “And there’s another one at Beaulieu !”

There are many ‘amusing’ words and names like this. I live near Bister - sorry, Bicester. My Outlaws lived near Rootem - Wrotham, and have more family in Lester - Leicester.

They are supposed to sound exactly the same.

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My favourite is Ulgham in Northumberland - pronounced locally ‘Uffum’!

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Supposed to but the g isn’t silent round my way :wink: but having said that most of us put a g on the end of cent anyway (just like in the advert “pas de stress, y’a point S”) :rofl: so then they do sound the same.
We always have a problem in the tabac with people from further North/ not from the south, with Drum Blanc and Drum Blond; when they ask for the Blanc, we hear Blond, and just smile at their pronunciation of the Drum Blond Blanc.
Now I do pronounce the t at the end of août, but and some others, BIL always pronounces the t at the end of juillet too, but one particular bizzarity in Carmaux is a few people pronouncing t at the end of vingt, it’s not very common but we regularly hear it, the rest of us just pronounce the g, and those not from the south only pronounce half of everyword anyway… :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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