CAS LF 211 Quiz: French for Beginners - Chapter 2
Document Summary
The idea is this: the number of letters does not necessarily match the number of sounds. Two written vowels might give only one vowel sound (bean) and two consonants might only give one consonant sound (pinned & skilled). Sometimes a letter is not pronounced at all like the letter p in psychology or the letter e in charge. A word like spanish has two syllables: span-ish; intensive has 3 syllables: in-ten- sive. A syllable must contain a vowel sound to be counted as one. It is important that you understand what a syllable is because french is a syllable-timed language. In other words syllables are the rhythmic elements of french sentences we shall come back to this matter later on in this course. A stress is an emphasis put on a syllable. For instance in the 3 syllable word pho-to- graph the syllable pho is pronounced with more strength than the other two.
