Sound drill: melody and emphasis

Unité PO-15 · campagne 8 · the shape of a longer phrase.

A longer French sentence has a melody of its own, and getting that shape right is what finally makes speech sound French rather than translated word by word. The pattern is simple: the voice rises at the end of each non-final group and falls on the last one, and lengthening a syllable is how French emphasises it. Record the model and trace its melody — up on beau, down to settle on l'eau.

The syllable that lengthens in that model is beau, at the top of the rise: hold it — quand il fait beaaau — and the whole first group leans on the good weather. Lengthen bord instead and the sentence insists on something else, the water's edge rather than the weather. One lengthened syllable per sentence: stretching every syllable emphasises nothing.

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