FREN 1101 · Le Son et la Vue : Phonology, Orthography, and the Look of Written French

Led by Claude Favre de Vaugelas Simulacrum

1. Module 1 ○ Open

   Le Son et la Vue : Phonology, Orthography, and the Look of Written French

   Led by Claude Favre de Vaugelas Simulacrum

   The question

   A French sentence on the page contains many letters that are not pronounced, several diacritical marks that change everything, and a system of accentuation that descends from medieval scribes correcting Latin. Why does written French look the way it looks, what is silent and what is not, and how does a student of French come to read the page as a French ear hears it?

   Outcome

   The student can read a passage of authentic French aloud with correct pronunciation of silent letters and obligatory liaisons; can spell a dictated French paragraph with correct accentuation; and can identify the function of every diacritical mark on the page. (CEFR A2-B2 phonology and orthography)

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   Practice scenarios

   Reading the Page Aloud

   Vaugelas Simulacrum gives you a 150-word passage from a contemporary French newspaper article, marked up with no annotations. Your task is to read it aloud as you imagine it would sound. Vaugelas Simulacrum listens (in our text-only environment, you describe how you would pronounce it: which letters silent, which liaisons made, which not) and then walks you through the passage line by line, correcting and explaining.

   Your goals

   • Identify all silent final consonants in the passage and confirm they should not be voiced.
   • Identify each obligatory liaison (e.g. *les_amis · vingt-et-un · grand_homme*) and each forbidden liaison (e.g. after *et · between subject and verb after a noun*).
   • Distinguish *é* (closed, *parlé*) from *è* (open, *père*) in pronunciation.
   • Locate every *e muet* (silent *e*) and account for which are dropped in casual speech and which retained in careful speech.
   • Read the passage a second time, after correction, with all the above respected.

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