Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
6
e
: Institut Catholique de Paris; 21 rue d'Assas;
tel: 01.44.39.52.00; website: http://www.icp.fr.
Two semesters each year of courses in the language and
culture of France for all levels. Summer course in July
consists of 20 hours of lessons weekly, with excursions.
8
e
: Institut de Langue Française; 3 avenue Bertie Albrecht;
tel: 01.49.53.96.45; website: http://www.inst-langue-fr.
com. Short- and long-term courses in French language
and civilisation, literature and cooking, as well as courses
for test preparation. Evening classes available.
GETTING STARTED...
SOME PRONUNCIATION HINTS
Even before you enroll in a school, you'll be hearing French
and trying out those words you already know. (See the
Glossary in Chapter 10.) Listen carefully and see what you
can decipher when other people speak to you, although it
won't always be easy, for accents and intonations vary. It's
also hard sometimes for a newcomer to know the rules of
pronunciation, and when you ask three French speakers to
clarify something in grammar or pronunciation, they might
all have different answers! But that's what happens with
languages, for they are almost living entities that change
with the times and under external influences, especially
with younger generations imposing their own cultural
norms. Thus it's best just to know the current rules and
to obey them as well as you can—and to laugh at yourself
when you make a terrible mistake and vow not to make
the same mistake again.
First, it's important to understand that each syllable in
a French word is stressed fairly equally, with perhaps just
a slight emphasis on the last syllable (by lengthening the
duration of the syllable a tiny bit). For example, whereas
the word 'lí-brary' in English stresses the first syllable, the
French word '
li-brai-rie
' stresses each syllable equally. There
is little variation in this, even with words imported from
other languages. The city of Montevideo, which in Spanish
has the emphasis on the penultimate syllable, is pronounced
Mon-te-vi-de-o in French.
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