Tutorial Transcript

Salut YouTube I'm here with my French professor Aurélie and we are actually going to do a video on the hardest French words for native English speakers to pronounce so I'm going to try and pronounce them this has not been prepared I will try and pronounce them and then Aurélie is going to correct my pronunciation and she's going to try and get me to pronounce these French words. Aurélie has been teaching me French here in person and I've been learning a lot with her but she actually offers courses online as well so if anyone out there is looking for an awesome French professor definitely check her out where can they find you? They can find me on my website which is called ParisOClock.com I will be very happy to help you. Cool and she can definitely help you with your pronunciation which I struggle with a lot so shall we get into it? let's do! Okay so I'm going to choose the first word, what do we have here? Oh this is the classic! So what we have here is, I'm gonna try and pronounce it, mille feuille which is a desert here a patisserie here in France and it's actually my favorite and I've got a sad story for this word which is because I don't know how to pronounce it I can never ask for it at the bakery! I panic at the last moment and I'm like TARTE AUX FRAISES Ok so let's try and do it [prononciation attempts] I think what's hard is the euille, this sound that is not so present in English That's going to have to be good enough I think for now! So onto the next one The French word for eye [prononciation attempts]. Forget the 'O', just eil Okay that's a really tough one. Okay what else do we have in here? My favorite! The word for frog in French [prononciation attempts]. How do you say it? [prononciation attempts] It's really really hard! Alright, what else? Oh this is a verb and it basically means to get on with it and we use it a lot at work so when you say you know like okay I don't have all the material I need I don't have all the information but we are going to se, okay this is the easy part, [prononciation attempts] I need to hear it [prononciation attempts]. Alright, what else do we have? That's a hard one. You know this one is tough! This is the difference between on top and underneath. They're spelt really similarly we've got dessus vs. ..it's exactly the same word, dessous, I don't know!! [prononciation attempts] It's the difference between 'u' qnd 'ou' . Oh My Gosh, okay so one of the hardest things for native English speakers is the 'r'. Even saying my own name is hard for me I'm like bonjour je m'appelle Rosie and so what we have here is the word well what I would say rare so how do you say it in French? Rare. Double r! Laisse tomber! This one's quite classic I know a lot of native English speakers struggle with this one it is vous as in the formal way of saying you so you know in French you can use either say tu or vous, it's the plural way as well, versus vu like the past tense of I saw so j'ai vu is I saw. [prononciation attempts]. Mon dieu. What do we have next? Okay so the the feminine way of saying old so an old woman you would say une veille dame. [prononciation attempts]. Okay that's not so bad. Okay oh my gosh this man is famous so I've got the French word for squirrel and I think this is a hard word for French people's to say in English as well, squirrel. It's mean for French people and it's mean for English people speaking French. Even when I was in school I remember that I was struggling when I was learning French as a little girl to spell it correctly, so even for French it's hard Ok I'm gonna give it a first attempt. I'm gonna do it slowly and then I'll try and do it [prononciation attempts]. If I said that do you think a French person would more or less understand me? Yeah! Okay, that's good enough for me then. Okay this word has three r's in it so it's basically totally unfair so this means fur right that's like the fur on an animal. It's hard because you have the double r, the ou and the ure! I've accepted that there's some things that I'm never going to master and that's gonna be okay. Okay so this one, this is the the name for the reception and I have to use it all the time at work like you need to call the reception etc. [prononciation attempts]. There's a little bounce at the end right? Acceuil [prononciation attempts]. Alright so we are down to the last few. Okay so we have a word studying with ro which is the same as my name Rosie so I know that this is gonna be hard it's the word for King which is roi. I think we have the hardest one coming up. Yay for me! Okay this this word like is not fair like this word was not made for globalization okay so we've got a word with four R's in it and it's the word for locksmith in English and it is oh my god what is it?! It is sérrurerie [prononciation attempts]. But actually the way we would say it, we would smash it together So you would say... okay that's easier. Even the French know that that's a complicated word to say! If you guys are learning French, or even if you're French actually, what do you think are the hardest words of the French language let us know down below? Thank you again Aurélie, my prof de français who has helped me with my pronunciation obviously I've still got some work to do but it's normal it takes time hope you guys enjoyed that one and until the next video we'll see you next time à bientôt!

  • 88