Phonologie
How to pronounce...
Les dictionnaires en ligne proposent à droite du mot recherché une petite icône (souvent un petit haut-parleur stylisé) qui permet d'en entendre la prononciation. Cette fonction est disponible pour la plupart des mots courants. Mais ces dictionnaires ne s'intéressent pas aux noms propres, qu'à l'exception de quelques noms de villes, on ne traduit jamais.
Il peut pourtant être utile (surtout la veille d'un oral) de savoir prononcer les noms de personnages connus - chefs d'état, décideurs, industriels ou célébrités du show-biz. YouTube peut aider. Il suffit de taper dans la barre de recherche "how to pronounce..." suivi du nom de l'individu, puis d'écouter.
Voyelles...
Pas si faciles, les "i" courts, les "i" longs, les voyelles pures et les diphtongues...
Un clic sur le tableau qui suit conduira ceux qui veulent prendre quelques repères vers un peu de mise en pratique...
Useful tongue-twisters
(o diphtongué)
-- Tony, the old ghost, moaned and groaned on a cold tombstone.
(r rétroflexe)
-- Harry rarely reads literary reviews.
(h "aspiré" - plutôt "expiré" en réalité)
-- How horrible ! Hugh has hurt his hand with a heavy hammer.
-- When he heard the hare hopping in the heather, the hard-hearted hunter
(th - un classique)
-- There are three thousand and thirty-three feathers on the throat of that thrush.
-- Are those pathetic things worth thinking about ?
-- Pass these things to the sixth sailor.
(Aspiration sur T, P, K à l'initiale d'un mot)
-- Tom, tell us the tale of the twenty-two tiny turtles.
-- The two tots tore their tea-towels to tatters.
-- Uncle Kenneth's black cat Kim is quite an inquisitive creature.
-- "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper
A peck of pickled pepper Peter piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where's the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?"
(L "sombre")
-- Tell Will to fill the pail with milk, please.
-- He had a fearful fall from the high wall at the top of the hill.
(-ng "fondus" en fin de syllabe)
-- Young Miss King is singing most charming things.
-- Hearing that bell ring always causes a tingling feeling in my finger-tips.
(i long)
-- Some teachers' teaching pleases some people but other people feel the same teaching isn't pleasing. It isn't easy to please each person but teasing the teacher won't please the teacher and each teacher needs to be free to teach as he pleases.
(i bref)
-- Tim is as thin as a pin, but it isn't a sin to be thin, is it ?
-- Why is Sister Lily sitting knitting in silence ?
-- In the Middle Ages the minstrels of this pretty little city were famous for their singing of religious melodies.
Listen carefully, then read it all out loud (if you can)
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead-
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.