On ne prononce pas les consonnes finales

“On ne prononce pas les consonnes finales,” is a phrase that my fellow students and I would hear often from Flavien, my French professor during my first two semesters at Cornell. It’s difficult for anglophones to transition to a language like French, whose closed syllables (that is, syllables that end with a pronounced consonant) are completely outweighed by its open syllables (those which end with an open sound, like a vowel).

Prenez cette phrase par exemple. The phrase "I like to eat chicken with a fork and knife, not my hands,” in English contains nine closed syllables, while the same sentence in French, “Je préfère manger le poulet avec une fourchette et un couteau, pas les mains,” contains only five. It’s why the stereotypical bad American French accent pronounces words like that for “in,” that is, “dans,” like “danz,” and not with the concluding nasal vowel. He or she also usually has difficulty with conjugating third-person plural verbs which end in “-aient” or “-ent,” where none of those letters are actually pronounced.

But this is an integral part of the French language. If you start pronouncing final consonants whenever you want, you are no longer speaking French. There are other facets that are optional, though. If you pronounce nearly every “e,” (the word acheter, meaning “to buy,” would sound like “achehtay” and not “achtay”), you’re probably just speaking a dialect from the south of France.

Any standard language has its range of differences; we know this. Yet those differences are hardly ever without an unseen weight attached. The entire field of sociolinguistics is devoted to the social, political, cultural, and economic implications of language. While it is fascinating to study how languages have changed and why, these changes have the power to create long-lasting interpersonal divisions, not just dialectical ones. You might not notice it in your everyday life, but prenez un autre exemple that a sociolinguist whom I admire, John Rickford, once posed to me: would you be more likely to listen to the advice of a doctor who spoke Queen's English or African American Vernacular English (AAVE)?

I’ve thought a lot about the difficulty that comes with removing inherent dialect prejudice (and all the historical baggage that comes with it) as I’ve sat in my Phonétique et Communication course at the EDUCO office in Paris. Every class period, ma profeseure, Sonia, takes us through a series of exercises to improve our pronunciation and natural speaking fluency. But here’s the catch: she doesn’t just tell us “on ne prononce pas les consonnes finales,” or steer us clear of the retro flex “r” that is almost completely particular to English; rather, she tells us to raise the tone (to absurdly high registers, if you ask me) of rhythmic groups. She admonishes us to cut out as many “e” sounds in a phrase as possible, leaving you with “onsvoir ssoir” instead of “on se voir ce soir,”* and pronounce the verb endings for the future and imperfect tenses the same.

Why? Because she’s teaching us the Parisian accent, not simply correcting our anglophone mistakes.

Sonia is a phonetician, so knowing the ins and outs of how and why and when a sound is made is what she does for a living. She is also Parisian, and therefore would be remiss to teach a Marseilles, Quebecois, Antilles, or West African accent. It’s not her fault; it’s simply impossible to teach a language without also teaching an accent. Because everyone has an accent.

Within the U.S. the differences between the way ESL is taught may not have the same implications as outside of the country. Teaching someone “highway” over “expressway” or even that “pin” and “pen” sound the same won’t really change much of someone’s everyday life. But the farther out you go, the greater the costs. The romanticized notion that we would never admit we have toward Queen’s British English, versus the acute condescension we have for Creole English, found in the southern U.S., especially in Louisiana. Teaching one dialect over another comes at a price.

My parents don’t have a Parisian accent, though they speak French. In fact, I fully expect the teasing I will receive when I return to Michigan with one. As I listen to Sonia’s intonation and phrasing, the exaggerated ups and downs of each phrase sound ludicrous to me. The way she encourages us to “eat our vowels,” as it were, so that a common phrase becomes nearly intelligible—it sounds silly to me. But it’s not wrong or worse or better, it’s simply different than the French I’ve grown up hearing.

I listen in the metro and on the street for strains of the Antilles accent I know and love. The one that sounds like you’re either slightly upset or are about to tell a joke. The one that sometimes might as well just be Creole. This French I understand. This French reminds me of home, even if it is in Grand Rapids and not Haiti. It reminds me of proverbs that can’t be translated into English without losing all meaning, food I recognize, and a history I am proud of.

Sonia has no desire to take that from me, I know. She cannot help that the French she speaks is different from the one that sounds “right” to me. She can’t undo the prejudice, racism, and colonization that comes with her dialect either because for her, this dialect—sing-songy intonation and all—is the one she knows and loves. Who can fault her for that?

Language is so complicated. Such a gift; such a nuisance. There is a wealth that is both lost and gained when learning a new tongue, because people are broken, because communication is broken. Throughout this semester I’ll have to prevent myself from rolling my eyes as Sonia encourages me to say a word even higher, and not mutter “that’s not the right way to say it. It’s just your way” when she tells me to eat more sounds. And this might be true—it is her way of saying it—but she would say the same thing if my mom or dad or any French-speaker outside of France were teaching the same course.

How do we take this reality and try to teach language better? Look at the—pardon me for saying—poorly constructed Spanish class every American 2nd grader takes, for example, that presents Spanish as only being spoken in Spain and Mexico. In some way whenever you teach a language you must consider what will be most effective, what will not hinder the person who is learning, and what will be most useful later on. The closest to the "standard" is the default. You can’t teach every dialect, but how do we refrain from neglecting them? I’m not sure, to be honest, but I’ll continue to ask the question.

If you have to look hard to find people around you who are learning your culture, you might just need to go out a bit more. A bit farther. A bit deeper. Listen to them, accent and all, because while you’re sifting through theirs, they’re sifting through yours. Try to understand a bit more of their story and appreciate everything they are both losing and gaining in order to be able to speak to you. You might pronounce final consonants, but to them, that might mean not pronouncing a part of who they are.

Megamind: This is a day, that you and MeTRAcity shall not soon forget!

Metroman: It's pronounced METRO City!

Megamind: Oh, tomato, potato, tomato, potato.

- Megamind

*meaning, "We will see each other tonight."

#culture #Paris #studyabroad #student