0.3 Nasal vowels — /ɑ̃/, /ɛ̃/, /ɔ̃/ — Epoché
What you will be able to do Hear the difference between the three nasal vowels of French, [ɑ̃] , [ɛ̃] and [ɔ̃] , and produce each of them on demand. Stop pronouncing the n and m that you see written after them, because those letters are not consonants here. Look at a spelling and say which nasal vowel it gives you: an and en for one, in , ain and ein for another, on for the third. Read a short sentence aloud without letting an English n creep in at the end of a nasal syllable. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Bon chien. [1] Good boy. J'ai faim. [2] I'm hungry. Prends ton temps. [3] Take your time. Prerequisites : 0.2 — you should already be able to make the three rounded front vowels and to keep the letter u apart from ou , because one of the sounds in this lesson is made with exactly the same lip position. See 0.2 Sounds if you need it. English has nasal consonants and no nasal vowels. French has nasal vowels and, in the words we are about to look at, no nasal consonant at all. That single sentence is the whole lesson, and it is worth reading twice, because almost every mistake English speakers make here comes from not believing it. You see the letter n sitting there on the page, at the end of bon or bain or banc , and your mouth does what any English-trained mouth would do: it closes the tongue against the roof of the mouth and produces an n . In French there is nothing to close. The letter is a spelling device that tells you the vowel before it is nasal, and then it is finished. It has no sound of its own. Once you accept that, the difficulty divides cleanly in two, and the two halves are very different in size. The mechanical half is easy: you must learn to let air out through your nose while a vowel is going on, which most people can do within a minute of being told how. The perceptual half is harder: you must learn to hear three nasal vowels where your ear currently hears one blurred sound followed by a consonant. This lesson gives you the mechanics first and then the twelve pairs that train the ear. These three sounds are not a corner of the language you could skip. They are in the words for good , bread , wine , hand , time , bridge , child , house , five , without , when , how much . If you count nasal vowels in a page of ordinary French you will find one every few words. What a nasal vowel actually is Air leaving your lungs can go out through your mouth, out through your nose, or out through both at once. What decides it is a flap of soft tissue at the back of the roof of your mouth, the soft palate. When it is raised it seals the nose off, and you get an oral sound. When it is lowered, air escapes through the nose as well. You already control that flap, constantly and unconsciously, because English uses it for three consonants. Say my , no and sing and hold the first sound of the first two and the last sound of the third: the soft palate is down for all three, and the sound you are making is coming out of your nose. So the machinery is installed. What English never does is lower the flap while the mouth is wide open and a vowel is running through it. English has nasal consonants and oral vowels , and nothing in between. Here is the fastest way to find the gesture. Say the English word ah and hold it. While you are holding it, pinch your nose shut: nothing changes, because no air was going that way. Now say the English word sing very slowly and hold the last sound, the one written ng . Your tongue is up against the back of the roof of your mouth and air is coming out of your nose only. The French nasal vowel is the second setting with the first mouth position: nose open, tongue down, mouth wide. Say ah again and try to route half of the air through your nose without moving your tongue at all. If you pinch your nose while you do it, the sound should change. That change is your test that you have found it. One warning about the test. Many English speakers arrive at the right sound by saying ah and then adding ng at the end, and that is not the same thing. In the real French vowel the nose is open from the very beginning of the vowel and stays open until the vowel stops. There is no closing gesture and no consonant at the end. If you can hear a little ng or n at the end of your attempt, the flap went down too late. The three vowels, one at a time Each of the three nasal vowels has a matching oral vowel, and the easiest way in is to build the nasal out of the oral one. Take the oral vowel, hold it, and open your nose without moving anything else. The lips and the tongue do not change; only the flap moves. Work down this list slowly, one line at a time, in front of a mirror if you have one. Start from this oral vowel Open the nose and you get the vowel of English father , jaw well open [ɑ̃] , as in banc [bɑ̃] and temps [tɑ̃] the vowel of English bed , lips slightly spread [ɛ̃] , as in bain [bɛ̃] and vin [vɛ̃] the vowel of English bought , lips rounded [ɔ̃] , as in bon [bɔ̃] and pont [pɔ̃] The three differ from each other in exactly the way their oral partners differ: jaw position and lip rounding. For [ɑ̃] the jaw is low and the tongue is pulled back a little; the sound is dark and roomy. For [ɛ̃] the jaw is half open and the tongue is forward; the sound is bright. For [ɔ̃] the jaw is half open and the lips are pushed into a firm circle; rounding is what carries this one, so if your lips are lazy the sound collapses towards the first. The pair that needs most work is the second and the third, because English speakers often make both of them with a half-hearted lip position somewhere in the middle. It helps to exaggerate at first. For [ɔ̃] round your lips as hard as you did for the vowel in tout in the previous lesson, and keep them rounded through the whole vowel. For [ɛ̃] pull the corners of your mouth apart, almost a grin. Exaggerate for a week and the distinction will still be there when you sto