When Knowing the French Alphabet can save your life... well almost

What is the most terrifying when you are learning a foreign language? THE TELEPHONE and understanding without all this non verbal clues, like reading on lips, scrutinizing facial expressions...
The best cure to calm you done apart a strong Cognac is knowing your French alphabet. You will never say anymore, " Monsieur "What ever his name was" called.
Now you can relax, take notes and make sure you understood by repeating  back the dreaded letters.

This post is in 2 parts as it seems size was a problem. Do go to the next post as you are in for a treat: Le sketch de Montant et de Signoret, deux monstres sacrés du cinéma français.

I've devised a very simple way to memorise it: You have to draw columns and organise it by sounds or difficulties.

• the first one is the Ahhh column ( A, H, K), 
• the second one include all letters in ee like BCD becoming bé,cé dé...
• the third on one is the tricky one: I've put a few letters, but you can add more. If  you can pronunce "LE", "JE", "DE", "ME", etc, you know how to pronounce the lettre E.
• the fourth column is like in English, but careful with the O, it's not a diphtongue.
• the fifh is the column of the I ( or ee), i comme ici, j, x ,y ( coming from the Greek alphabet)
• the sixth beeing of the U sound, like TU, VU, SU 

So practice at home with the BBC audio file, make sure you have memorised this chart so that you can draw it quickly before you have to make this oversea phonecall.
And if you are really stuck, see at the end....
Psst! There is a part 2. To go there, click here.

Colonne des AHH	Bee qui devient Bé	Attention	Comme en anglais	Colonne des I	Colonne des U
A						A Paris, tasse…
	B					Bébé
	C					Ç : c cédille
	D					Dé
		E				Je/ne/le/ me/de/ce/ se/
			F
	G					Gé//
H						ash
				I		ici
				J
K						KA
			L
			M
			N
			O
	P
					Q	Ku
		R				Air
			S
	T
					U	Tu, vu, lu
	V
	W					Double V / deux M
				X		Eeks
				Y		I grec
			Z

Posted by Corinne Gautier-Capes at 02:00 0 comments