The Basics
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To review, phonemes combine to make syllables, and syllables combine in rhythmic sequences to create speech. In addition, French is a tonal language, so there is a third element of voice inflection at play here as well. In Rhythmic Phonetic Training, you learn the rhythm, syllables and voice inflection separately, then practice putting them all together to construct the actual speech.
The Flow of French refers to these three elements as "The Basics." The reason why we learn the Basics separately is because our brains can't handle processing all three at the same time. Remember, The Flow of French is completely different from the Flow of English. Separately Learning the Basics of French speech is the first step in building this Phonetic Infrastructure. Eventually, you will be able to process these basic elements automatically. |
In other words, the acoustic patterns are completely different between the two languages, so you currently lack the Phonetic Infrastructure needed to process French acoustic patterns at normal speeds.
The Syllables
For the rest of this primer, you will follow the process of Rhythmic Phonetic Training to learn two lines of an English song. Since its English, you will have no trouble learning the lyrics, so you can focus more on understanding the actual process of Rhythmic Phonetic Training.
- Listen closely to each syllable and read along with the phonetic notation.
- Repeat each syllable out loud to yourself, mimicking the speaker exactly.
Lines 1-2
bæ...bois....bæ....bois
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wə...chə...gə...nə...duː
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Lines 3-4
wə...chə...gə...nə...duː |
wɛn...thei...kəm...for...yuː |
The Rhythm
To focus exclusively on the rhythm of a spoken phrase or song lyric, Rhythmic Phonetic Training uses a special language called Universal Rhythmic Binary (URB). By repeatedly chanting the URB out loud to ourselves, we can internalize the rhythm of the song lyric without having to focus on all the individual phonemes.
In URB, each syllable is replaced by either a "DA" or a "di". "DA" represents a stressed syllable, and "di" represents an unstressed syllable. When chanting URB, it is critical that you emphasize the difference between the stressed and unstressed syllable, since...
In URB, each syllable is replaced by either a "DA" or a "di". "DA" represents a stressed syllable, and "di" represents an unstressed syllable. When chanting URB, it is critical that you emphasize the difference between the stressed and unstressed syllable, since...
...the stress pattern is THE most important feature of language Flow.
Our brain relies heavily on stress pattern expectations when processing the 30 phonemes per second of average speech. Learning the URB may seem unnecessary to you at first, especially if you already have developed rhythmic perception abilities. As you learn French lyrics and phrases with faster and more complex rhythmic structures, however, the URB will become your best friend..
The audio files below break down the rhythm for the two lines you are learning in this lesson.
The audio files below break down the rhythm for the two lines you are learning in this lesson.
- Press "play" and listen to the entire track to familiarize yourself with the rhythm.
- Play the audio file again, this time practicing chanting along with the speaker, being sure to emphasize the volume difference between stressed "DA" and unstressed "di".
- Once you are comfortable with the rhythm, try chanting it out loud several times by yourself.
Lines 1-2 |
Lines 3-4 |
Once you are comfortable chanting the rhythm out loud to yourself, you can move on to the next section - Construction.
