At the phonemic level, English and French consonants do not seem to differ very much, and
misproductions do not overly affect communication. That may explain why EFL teachers
prefer to focus on English vowel sounds, which have more evident differences with French.
Phonetically, however, English and French consonants are almost systematically articulated
differently even as far as commonly used phonemes are concerned. For example, the
phonetic system of RP (Received Pronunciation) English distinguishes between clear
which occurs in syllable-onsets, and dark or velarized
Despite the presence of the same phoneme /l/, the French system does not have that
allophonic distinction, so L2 learners only use a clear
present in the French and English inventories, too, correspond to different phonetic
realizations in the two languages – they are usually alveolar plosives in English, and dental
plosives in French (Birdsong, 2003; Mortreux, 2008). Furthermore, if they are produced as
dental plosives in English, they might be misheard as
Irish English ([t?]-[d?]). In the same way, final plosives, or stops, are articulated differently in
English and French, as is pointed out in Flege (1992: 568): “[…] French learners of English
might give greater weight to release burst cues in word-final stops than native speakers of
English because French stops, unlike English final stops, are usually produced with an
audible release burst”. In other words, English final plosives are unreleased, or incomplete,
as opposed to French ones.
All these phonetic differences among common phonemes do not really affect intelligibility
and communication – the allophonic distinction between clear
also absent in some varieties of English. Native speakers will therefore be quite tolerant to
such misproduction of phonetic sound qualities (Lemmens, 2010). The production of
normally silent consonants also seem to have little significance – it is not because a French
learner says /’w??lk/ instead of /’w??k/ that a native English speaker will be totally at sea. The
context plays a crucial role in such situations. Other difficulties for French EFL learners,
triggering off more significant errors and sometimes grammatical mistakes (e.g. the nonpronunciation
of the third person inflection -s) are noteworthy. One of the few that can be
mentioned is the (non-)realization of the glottal fricative /h/. While this phoneme does not
exist in French apart from interjections, Hodges (2006) notes that French learners frequently
fail to pronounce it where it is present, and yet they have a tendency to place one before a
word beginning with a vowel. As a result, the sentence I’m happy /a?m ‘hæpi/ regularly
becomes /hajm ‘api/. Such errors can cause clashes in minimal pairs, e.g. heart vs. art, hair vs.
air, hi vs. I (see below for the importance of minimal pairs in intelligibility). According to
Roach (2009), the lack of aspirated plosives [p?], [t?], [k?] in languages other than English is
another factor that affects intelligibility. In English, syllable-initial voiceless plosives /p/, /t/
and /k/ in stressed position contrast with syllable-initial voiced plosives /b/, /d/ and /g/
through aspiration, and hardly through voicing, which is why the former will be misheard as
the latter if aspiration disappears. The French language having no aspirated plosives, pack
might be understood as back by a native English speaker if the French learner has not been
made aware of that feature of English phonology and keeps an unaspirated /p/.
The /?/-/ð/ pair is one of the best-known and systematic instances of production difficulty
for French speakers, as well as for many other foreign speakers (O’Connor, 2002). These
dental fricatives do not exist in the French phonemic inventory – with the obvious exception
of people with lisps –, and they are replaced, or “equated” (Flege, 1992), by /s/-/z/, or more
rarely /f/-/v/ (Herry-Bénit, 2011) and /t/-/d/. O’Connor (2002: 5) explains: “[t] is a good
substitute because it preserves the mellowness, or lack of stridency, of /?/, while [s] preserves
the continuancy of /?/”. Yet, the /s/-/z/ substitution is the one that should be avoided the
most, because it provokes unequivocal clashes in minimal pairs (thin vs. sin), whereas the
labiodental fricatives /f/-/v/ may still be assimilated with the Cockney English accent, and the
dental plosives /t/-/d/ with Irish English, for example(2). Similarly, the post-alveolar
approximant [?] sounds typically English to French ears, and it can take many years for an
adult French speaker to acquire it (Hodges, 2006: 10). Usually, learners replace it by either
their own
This leads us to the occurrence of that phoneme and the problem of rhoticity; due to the
influence of spelling, French learners pronounce the English
accents of English for that matter. Notwithstanding, pronunciation teaching is often based on
RP English, a non-rhotic variety of English, and learners get a mixed accent. For instance, the
word better is produced as /’bet?r/, a mixed RP /’bet?/ and General American (GA) /’bet??r/.
The consequence is a lack of coherence and merely a stronger foreign accent, though, which
does not necessarily affect intelligibility (Nakashima, 2006).
Finally, French EFL learners come across difficulties with the syllabic consonants /l?/
and /n?/, all the more as they are the consequence of the typically English rhythm (cf. 1.2.2.
and 1.2.3.). The most common production error is the insertion of a full vowel, very close to
the French phoneme /oe/, and not reduced enough to be identified with the otherwise
correct /?/. Apart from a stronger foreign accent to the native speaker’s ears, this last point on
syllabic consonants does not actually lead to utter unintelligibility or misunderstanding, but
it gives an insight into the problem of vowel production and reduction.