The Merovingian (google it) said that swearing in French is ‘like wiping your arse with silk’.
Er, quite....
There’s also nothing quite like swearing to show up differences between cultures.
Our own swear words focus heavily on the taboos of elimination of waste and sex – particularly the sexual act, with the word ‘fuck’.
French on the other hand, puts more of an emphasis on the social context, with a strong dose of male chauvinism; hence ‘putain’ (prostitute) is the nearest equivalent to 'fuck' .
However, the word ‘putain’ is used much more freely, and it can simply be used when someone is just quite annoyed. It is also swapped with, and sometimes combined with ‘merde’ (shit), as in ‘putain merde’ (which incidentally rolls off the tongue quite nicely) and seems to have a similar weighting.
The most common ‘gros mot’ of all is 'con'. Like some other French swear words (e.g. ‘connard’), this originally came from the Latin for female genitalia (cunnus), but has drifted off to mean other things. For instance simply ‘idiot’, and people will often say ‘je suis con’, when they want to say ‘I just did something stupid’. However, in certain circumstances it can still have a fair amount of significance – hence the criticism of Sarkosi when he said ‘casse-toi alors, pauvre con!’
Now record your own voice and listen to the playback - check for any differences
Repeat until they sound the same
A powerful technique is to play the word/phrase, and to 'shadow' - say the word/phrase out loud at the same time as you listen to it. Do this a number of times (until you feel confident), then go straight on to record.
As soon as you think that you are able to copy accurately, record and listen to your own voice first, then only check if you feel you need to.
Once you get the main pronunciation right, try to get the overall rhythm and tonality the same as well. In French, the main word emphasis is usually on the last syllable of the last word in each phrase.
It can often be a good idea to try a tricky word/phrase in your head a few times, before recording.
The time available for you to make the recording is set at normal talking speed, plus a small amount extra. When you are fluent with the word you will not need all of this.
When you listen to the word/phrase, a translation is also briefly shown below the buttons. This is only there as a reminder for you to check if you wish.
The speed adjustment gives you three levels:
Slow - for starting out, and when you are having problems with particular sounds.
Normal - this is close to formal speeches and will be used when people know that you are not French.
Fast - this is close to normal, conversational French. It is worth aiming for this as it's a form of 'over-rehearsal'. When you can do something fast, then it becomes automatic and you're less likely to regress.
Incidentally, it does seem true that French is normally spoken 16% faster than English. This appears to be due to the fact that French has a lower informational density, so you need to talk faster to get the same information across (Pellegrino et al 2011).
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