No need to apologize. Homophones and homographs are two kinds of homonyms, eh?
Okay, I’ll take your word for it. I’m having difficulty conceptualizing the difference between an open-mid front unrounded vowel and a close-mid front unrounded vowel. Can you put it for me in these terms: if you have a spectrum, at one end of which is the English “ay” sound (as in say), and the other end of which is the “ee” sound (as in see), where would *voudrez *fall, as opposed to voudrais, on this spectrum?
“Voudrez” is like the vowel in “dray,” but without the diphthongal glide at the end. “Voudrais” is like the vowel in “dent.”
Ach… depends on which source you like. Says here that homophones are two words that are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear) – which is what I was getting at. Whether that also makes them homonyms is not for a mere mortal like I to say, though I’d draw the line at “homograph.”
Trois-Pistoles, hmmm? Trwa (the w is very light, and a is as in this vowel) Peestal (I wrote ee because the actual sound is a little like this vowel in American English, but shorter, and the a is actually the same vowel as the previous a, or close enough anyway).
Hope this helps in some way. And then again, the actual pronounciation will vary depending on the dialect of French. I’m presenting the way I would pronounce it. It’s very possible that in the city of Trois-Pistoles, they don’t pronounce it exactly the same way!
I tell you, if I had all the money in the world, I would go to Paris, get a bunch of people, ask them to say voudrais and *voudrez *into a microphone, then play back the results to another set of people and see if they could tell the difference.
acsenray has already answered, and I agree with his answer. But this said, the graphic in the Wikipedia article is, in my non-expert opinion (I’m not a linguist), quite good, as it does show the spectrum. The open-mid front unrounded vowel is the e as in bet. The “ay” sound is a close-mid front unrounded vowel with, as acsenray mentioned, some diphtongation at the end. The “ee” sound is a long close front unrounded vowel. The spectrum actually goes from the close front unrounded vowel to the open-mid front unrounded vowel (the Wikipedia article also goes further, to the open front unrounded vowel, which I believe sounds somewhat like the a in bat). On this spectrum, voudrais falls in the open-mid zone (like bet) and voudrez in the close-mid zone (like “ay” without the diphtong).
If any actual linguist can explain it better than I can, be my guest.
I guess you are a native English speaker. As far as I know standard English doesn’t contain the long unrounded close-mid front vowel. That’s also the reason why English speakers pronounce “café” similar to “cafay.” In English this difference doesn’t distinguish between any pair of words and therefore English speakers aren’t trained to recognize it. For speakers of languages where there are such distinctions - like French or German - the two sound noticeably different.
Thanks to all of you, by the way, and especially to Cuckoorex for his patience with stuff that’s a wee bit peripheral to the OP.
One final question for Ascenray and Severus: are you saying that the distinction between the -ez of voudrez and the -ais of voudrais is the same as the distinction between é and è? Such that voudrez might be written voudré, and voudrais as voudrè? Or are those yet a different set of sounds?
You can listen to the pronunciations here: error
It seems to be in line with what’s been said.
I can’t speak Quebecois, though I’ve heard it at Cirque du Soleil, but AFAIR someone from NE France would pronounce them something like:
Maw-deet
Don (as in the mobster) de (short) Dyoo
Shaamblee Noir (as in choir)
La fan (short A) do (long o) Monde (one syllable, soft D)
U-ni-brew
Pretty much, yes.
Damn! I’m on much more solid ground with the é/è distinction. The trouble is, no one ever told me that voudrais is pronounced with the è sound. Unfortunately, it’s not just that the distinction is subtle to American ears, it’s that this is one of those accent faults that doesn’t impair understanding. As a consequence, no one bothers much about correcting it. Oh, well, three cheers to the SDMB for performing its primordial function.
That site rules. Thanks for the link!
Parisians don’t all mark this distinction clearly, but most do.
My son’s a native French speaker and I’m not. He periodically gives me crap about not marking the difference enough. In my defense though, how marked the distinction is varies from person to person and accent to accent.
Another good example of this distinction is près (close/near), prêt (ready/loan), and pré (meadow). Près is pronounced sort of like the ‘pre’ in ‘press’ and pré is sort of like ‘pray’.
As for all those beers - I had no idea that Québec had so many beers !