Coming up on Word Matters, trying to learn the pronunciation ways of the French.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amin Shea, Peter Sakalowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Peter has some tips for mastering the trickier aspects of French pronunciation.
French sounds fancy to us.
And I think that's an important point.
To English speakers,
French has a certain cachet and I think it's an enormous topic to think about why it's culturally occupies a certain place that another language simply doesn't have the same connection.
Of course, French has a deep connection to English etymologically and historically and politically.
But the sound of French is so different from English.
And there are some of the sounds of French that we don't produce that aren't part of English phonotactics,
the available sounds of a language.
As the card-carrying francophile in the office, I do think about phonetics and French sometimes.
And in fact, I did a video not too long ago about words on a menu,
like a restaurant menu that are French.
You might recall that video where my recommendation is to not force it,
to pronounce things as you would in English.
essentially, and add the French color when it's convenient or easily done.