Week 5: /y/

I'm so excited about this week! I feel that I really made a small but significant improvement in French vowel pronunication. I found some amazing YouTube videos that helped me so much in being able to pronounce sounds that we don't have in American English. In particular, I watched and followed along with this video many times in order to practice the French vowel /y/. I also watched and practiced along with this video to practice the vowel /œ/, but then as I practiced my audio clip I began getting very confused about which vowel was which. Therefore, I just focused on practicing /y/. I realize this is such a specific aspect to work on (just one vowel!) but I felt pretty accomplished to be able to create a sound I was never able to before! Making the sound by itself was pretty easy for me but having to use it throughout speech proved more difficult. However, I realized that French people don't enunciate it so strongly, and so that might have been some of my difficulty. Regardless, I tried to do so within my practice, just because it was helpful for me. I also found that by really rounding and fronting this vowel as I used it among speech, it made it easier for me to pronounce other words in a more correct way. This was encouraging to discover!

Here is this week's audio clip.