Uvular Combo Training
I mentioned before that the uvular consonants in French are "rhotic." Rhotic refers to the role the sound plays within the Flow of a language. Within a language, these sounds will appear in combination with almost every other sound.
Take the English rhotic sound /ɹ/. This is the sound in the word "road." Notice how this sound appears in combination with almost every English consonant. Word examples include "bread, throat, grand, drug, treat, preach, cream."
You will also find in English that syllables often end with this same rhotic sound /ɹ/. Examples include: "par-king, mur-der, hear, fair-y." When this rhotic /ɹ/ sound occurs after a vowel, it often alters the quality of the preceding vowel (compare the sounds of "far" and "fa" in "farther" and "father").
There are two points I am driving at here:
Doing this is perhaps the biggest giveaway of whether you have a bad accent. Acoustically, the English /ɹ/ sound is completely different from the French Uvular consonants. Yet this is still the most common pronunciation error that English speakers make.
This is why the uvular consonants have their own "Bootcamp." They are not only non-existent in English, they are also the MOST common speech sound in the language.
In the audio files below, you will train hearing and mimicking all of the possible Uvular Consonant combos in French and perform special drills to build the motor skills needed to articulate these sounds accurately and effortlessly.
Take the English rhotic sound /ɹ/. This is the sound in the word "road." Notice how this sound appears in combination with almost every English consonant. Word examples include "bread, throat, grand, drug, treat, preach, cream."
You will also find in English that syllables often end with this same rhotic sound /ɹ/. Examples include: "par-king, mur-der, hear, fair-y." When this rhotic /ɹ/ sound occurs after a vowel, it often alters the quality of the preceding vowel (compare the sounds of "far" and "fa" in "farther" and "father").
There are two points I am driving at here:
- Since the Uvular Consonants in French are also rhotic, they can change words in French Flow just as the English /ɹ/ does.
- You will have a STRONG tendency as an English speaker to replace the uvular consonants with the English /ɹ/ sound.
Doing this is perhaps the biggest giveaway of whether you have a bad accent. Acoustically, the English /ɹ/ sound is completely different from the French Uvular consonants. Yet this is still the most common pronunciation error that English speakers make.
This is why the uvular consonants have their own "Bootcamp." They are not only non-existent in English, they are also the MOST common speech sound in the language.
In the audio files below, you will train hearing and mimicking all of the possible Uvular Consonant combos in French and perform special drills to build the motor skills needed to articulate these sounds accurately and effortlessly.
"The Rally" Combo Drill
What I mean by "combo" is that you make the two consonant sounds in super fast succession, almost at the same time. This requires a bit of motor coordination, but after a few tries you'll get it.
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1. For each combo, separate the two sounds and add any vowel after each to create two syllables: For example, "fχ" will turn into "fa...χa" 2. Alternate slowly between the two syllables and gradually build speed. 3. Continue to build speed until it is too fast and you must drop the vowel after the first consonant and fuse the sound into one syllable (i.e., "fa....χa" will transform into "fχa"). 4. Repeat this final syllable several times before starting the drill again. 5. For each combo, do this drill 5 times in one session, do at least one session per day. |
Voiceless: fχ....tχ....kχ....pχ
Voiced: vʁ...dʁ...gʁ...bʁ |
If you do these drills regularly, you will accelerate the development of your uvular consonant combos. Once you are comfortable with the contents of this page, you may move onto Speed Training.
