Six pages of rubbish
but it got 16/20. That means when you average out my marks in litterature contemporaine (15, 16 and 9) I pass OK so far.
Anyway, something really important happened on the way to DEFLE this morning. I finally sussed out how to make the anterior and posterior a. (Now I am not sure WHEN to make them!)
And also how to make my nasal a differ from my nasal o. The irritating thing is that the teacher had been telling us all along. It happened this way.
She said yesterday that american students have a particular problem because their accent uses the pharyngeal resonator a lot. That set me thinking about how in Welsh the sounds are (basically) produced in the throat, while in French the sounds are (basically) produced at the front of the mouth. Which means the tip of your tongue becomes much more important for shaping vowels. You have to think of parrots and the way their tongues flap around when they talk.
Now then - she says for posterior a "apex up" and for anterior a "apex down".
And thus for nasal o, apex down, lips rounded and open "on", but for nasal a, apex up, lips open and not rounded "an".
It can't be that simple, can it? But I practiced in the car, and it does seem to work.
(It isn't as simple as that - nasal a and nasal o are both posterior so tongue up vowels... Back to the drawing board)
Incidentally, in one of our lectures today the lecturer mentioned a character in a book, and I thought "I don't remember a parrot". The character was Pere Hoquet.
Anyway, something really important happened on the way to DEFLE this morning. I finally sussed out how to make the anterior and posterior a. (Now I am not sure WHEN to make them!)
And also how to make my nasal a differ from my nasal o. The irritating thing is that the teacher had been telling us all along. It happened this way.
She said yesterday that american students have a particular problem because their accent uses the pharyngeal resonator a lot. That set me thinking about how in Welsh the sounds are (basically) produced in the throat, while in French the sounds are (basically) produced at the front of the mouth. Which means the tip of your tongue becomes much more important for shaping vowels. You have to think of parrots and the way their tongues flap around when they talk.
Now then - she says for posterior a "apex up" and for anterior a "apex down".
And thus for nasal o, apex down, lips rounded and open "on", but for nasal a, apex up, lips open and not rounded "an".
It can't be that simple, can it? But I practiced in the car, and it does seem to work.
(It isn't as simple as that - nasal a and nasal o are both posterior so tongue up vowels... Back to the drawing board)
Incidentally, in one of our lectures today the lecturer mentioned a character in a book, and I thought "I don't remember a parrot". The character was Pere Hoquet.
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