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From: ptholfsen@netos.com (Paul Tholfsen)
Subject: Re: French vowels
Message-ID: <9117cc$81316.da@news.questar.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 96 15:19:19 GMT
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In article <51avf0$gco@Iolo.quincy.edu>,
   blahedo@Shamino.quincy.edu (Don Blaheta) wrote:
>Quoth Paul Tholfsen:
>> I notice that the French TV announcers, and others of the TV show class 
seem 
>> to pronounce the nasal vowel "in" so it sounds to me like "an".  For 
example, 
>> the announcer would always say something that sounded to my ears like "et 
pour 
>> deman matan" rather than "pour demain matin".  I learned French as a kid in 
a 
>> town near Cannes, where "matin" and "matan" have very different 
>> pronunciations.
>
>This is giving me no end of trouble in my French class, but as I
>understand it, 'in' and the word "un" are pronounced as a nasal /&/
>(which is for some reason written as /E/ with tilde instead of ae
>ligature with tilde); 'en' and 'ain' are nasal /A/; and 'on' is a
>nasal /O/.
>
>But in any case, I think it's safe to say that Cannes and Paris are
>quite different dialects.  (Isn't Provenal spoken that far south?)

Some locals have studied Provencal.  The only ones I ever saw use it were some 
local shepherds who used it to communicate both with their sheep and dogs (who 
also understand Provencal).  This was near St. Remy de Provence, which is 
south of Avignon. 

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Paul Tholfsen
Bellingham, WA
ptholfsen@netos.com
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