A comprehensive, detailed, and well-illustrated undergraduate French language/linguistics textbook with CD-ROM. The book focuses on pronunciation of Modern Standard French, and incorporates regional and social variations, abbreviatory processes and 'word play'. It looks at historical phonological changes which continue through today. Perfect for readers and learners with little or no formal training in linguistics. The CD-ROM provides invaluable oral examples crucial to linguistic study.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

This Book Employs The Techniques Of Contrastive Analysis To Look Into The Sound Structure Of Bengali And French In Order To Find Out The Hurdles That A Native Bengali Speaker Is Likely To Encoounter In Pronunciation While Learning French.

In the general study of speech and phonetics, vowels have stood in second place to consonants. But what vowels are, how they differ from one another, how they vary among speakers, and how they are subject to disorder, are questions that require a closer examination. This Handbook presents a comprehensive, cogent, and up-to-date analysis of the vowel, including its typical development in children's speech, description by perceptual and instrumental methods, cross-linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects, and disorders of its production and use. It approaches the problems of vowel production and perception from the viewpoints of physiology, physics, psychology, linguistics, phonetics, phonology, and speech-language pathology. The chapters are logically complementary, and the major sections of the book are like key dimensions of understanding, each adding a perspective and base of knowledge on vowels. The sum total of the chapters is a synthesis of information on vowels that has no precedent.

In the field of second language (L2) acquisition, the number of studies focusing on L2 pronunciation instruction and perceptual/production training has increased as new classroom methodologies have been proposed and new goals for L2 pronunciation have been set. This book brings together different approaches to L2 pronunciation research in the classroom or in the language laboratory. 13 chapters, written by well-known researchers focusing on a variety of first and target languages, are divided into four parts: Pronunciation development and intelligibility: implications for teaching and training studies; L2 pronunciation teaching; L2 pronunciation training: implications for the classroom; and Pronunciation in the laboratory: High Variability Phonetic Training. Intended for researchers in the fields of second language acquisition, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, speech therapies, speech technology, as well as second language teaching, this book not only summarizes the current research questions on L2 pronunciation teaching and training, but also predicts future scenarios for both researchers and practitioners in the field.

Designed as a university level text for intermediate and advanced courses, this volume will be of value to anyone interested in recent theoretical developments in the field of formal English.