Oh, I agree - that’s what I said earlier; that it’s like “fahm.” Not, to me, like the A in family. It’s hard though to write the phonetics of one language in the words of another, especially when people pronounce those words differently.
My last post was to Ferret Herder.
Those links sound right to me.
The mistake I often hear Americans making on this vowel sound is to make chat sound like Shah, where the “a” in chat is a lot more clipped. You can form the “a” in femme by “smiling” (and not pushing your lips forward) as you mouth it.
A long “a” in words like femme is something you’ll only hear as a kind of humoristic “aristocratic” spoof accent - like lahdidah. (It was presumably a living accent at some point in the past).
OTOH Quebequois French has some pertty substantial variations relative to the French spoken in France, a lot more diphthongs. Maybe that’s where the longer “a” comes from ?
At first sight it’s pretty good but seems to trip up on words like bouille / bouillir and there are some inconsistencies between the male and female voice. Still a cool site. “Bar” is a pretty good test on there since the same word exists in all the languages.
In phonetic terms, the a sound in “femme” [a] is the cardinal low front unrounded vowel. The “ah” sound in most American English accents [A] (script a) is the cardinal low back unrounded vowel.
The “a” in “cat” [&] (a-e ligature) is a front vowel that’s midway between the “e” in “met” [E] (epsilon) and [a].
See this diagramme – http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/vowels.html
Just to clarify: I know that the A in femme is not EXACTLY like the sound AH in English. It’s just an approximation in order to explain the sound to people who don’t speak French. It doesn’t do them any good to say it’s like the A in chat, since they have no idea how to pronounce chat. I have no real knowledge of Quebec French; I lived in Paris and learned Parisian French. And, I do not make the mistake of pronouncing “femme” like the AH in Lah-di-dah; maybe other Americans who don’t speak fluent French do. I am not one of them.
We may of course be talking about the same thing, it’s always tough to discuss phonetics. And obviously if you’re a native French speaker whatever your pronunciation may be it is “correct”.
The point I’ve been trying to make is that in ‘standard’ French (as spoken in Paris for example) the vowel sound in femme**[fam]** is the same short “a” as found in “family”['fam-lE, 'fa-m&-] “pan”[pan] etc. This sound is represented by a simple lower-case “a” in the phonetic alphabet. The “a” in “Shah”['shä, 'sho], the “ah” sound is somewhat different.
Sorry to have jumped on you. My last post came out more snippy than I intended. That’s what happens when typing while also having a “discussion” with one’s mother on the phone.
It is definitely hard to explain phonetics in two different languages!
What dialect of English are you thinking of here? I’m American, and so the sound in family or pan is written with the ligature “ae” in the phonetic alphabet.
I was just referring to the online webster’s pronunciation.
There are of course all kinds of regional variations.
Indeed. The a’s in family and pan for me are quite distinct.
For me, the *a * in *family * is the “a-e ligature” in acsenray’s link above. The *a * in pan, for me, is a little higher up on that chart – in fact, it approaches Spanish *e * (around the cardinal vowel *e * on the chart).