Talk:French phonology

Stress part deux

I've removed this phrase from the article

Syllabic stress is also very light in French normal speech (much less than in English or other Romance languages), and frequently not distinctive phonologically; however, it is most often replaced phonetically by variation of tone, which also marks the punctuation. In normal affirmative or negative sentences, the first and the last word of the sentence use a lower tone that the rest of the sentence and is generally not stressed. In interrogative sentences, the stressed syllable of the first word gets a higher tone and the last word looses its stress and distinctive tone lower tone. In exclamative sentence like orders, or in strong affirmations, the stress is more marked on the verb and on important words, which get a higher tone. A higher tone is also applied to the stressed syllable of a word terminating each subordonnated phrase of the same sentence or at end of expressions, and to the adverbs marking the negation. In songs where tonality cannot be used the same way, the syllabic stress becomes more apparent.

(Excuse the spelling mistakes as the contributer is ESL) It seems to contradict the statement we already have that "Stress falls on the final syllable of a phrase unless that syllable has schwa as its vowel, in which case the penultimate vowel is stressed" which we haven't refined from the nuance we got from Anderson (1982). Is this element of tone backed up anywhere? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:31, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

The misunderstanding is on how you interpret syllables.

In French, syllables are all counted phonologically, even if they are merged phonetically. So every syllable containing a schwa is counted. This is how to interpret "penultimate"; the stress goes back to the syllable before the ultimate syllable with the schwa.

Example: the French word syllabe has three phonologic syllables [si.la.b(ə)] (that are backed by three orthographic syllables syl-la-be that are used to determine the position of possible syllabic breaks with soft hyphen in written texts, but also to determine where to place a possible note in a song where schwa may also be realized) but only two phonetic syllables /si.laːb/ in normal speech.

The phonologic notation may use the first notation, ignoring the fact that the syllables may be merged and lengthed, or a notation noting merged syllables with long vowels, and no syllable break (but it will be impossible with this impler notation to determine from this simpler notation where there are distinctions between the few words where the length may have distinctive meaning; for finding rimes in poestry, the simpler notation may be easier to use, but it can be produced algorithmically from the full phonologic notation with syllable breaks and the position of optional schwas).

Various dictionaries are using one or the other, depending on the audience. Famous dictionnaries for beginners students of French or for children in schools, will prefer detailing the syllables (even Petit Larousse or Petit Robert are doing it), but encyclopedias often omit it (dictionaries of rimes frequently use a simplified phonology where the schwa and mid-closed e, or the open and closed a, are not made distinctive in the classification and ordering). verdy_p (talk) 01:18, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how me misunderstanding French syllables (which I'm not, I am aware of the phenomenon you're talking about) is related. What's this about stress being replaced by tone? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Vowel length table

The table contains information that is dead wrong. The i in habite, for example, is never long, whether habite is phrase-final or not. The same goes for défaite. The pronunciation [defɛːt] corresponds to des fêtes for those speakers who have a long e/short e distinction, but never défaite, for anybody, whether they make that distinction or not. The table is a serious misstatement of the principles governing vowel length in French. Joeldl (talk) 07:03, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you think you can fix it? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I've rewritten the table. I think discussing schwa at the same time as vowel length muddies things, so I've deleted the discussion of phrase-final/non-phrase-final. The table now applies only to phrase-final syllables. (The lengthening of vowels in unstressed syllables is a complex phenomenon. The clearest thing that can be said is that it is never obligatory, and, except perhaps for long e, one never has full-length unstressed vowels. The table was previously erroneous in that it made it seem lenthening could never happen.) I've also added a dispute tag to the statement about [ə] never being stressed, as this is plainly contradicted by Fais-le!. Joeldl (talk) 02:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Affrication, anyone?

I notice that in many dialects of French, including the ones I happen to have been exposed to, the dental stops are pronounced with noticeable affrication before close front vowels. The IPA used in this article does not reflect this. Is this phenomenon local to European French? In either case, I think the article should reflect this. Does anyone have a source citing this phenomenon?Szfski (talk) 04:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that what you're talking about isn't a feature of Standard French, which is this article's main subject. I've heard about it occuring in Quebecois French. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Aeusoes1, these days "Standard European French" is probably a more suitable phrase than "Standard French" when making comparisons with Canadian French. Affrication belongs to both standard and colloquial Canadian French. Joeldl (talk) 09:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry. When I said Affrication, what I really meant was palatalization. I'm positive that it occurs in much of Belgian French (which I speak) in addition to Parisian. For example, in Parisian as well as Belgian, the "d" of "dieu" is far more palatized (almost affricated) than the d of "doux." Szfski (talk) 09:16, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, palatalization... well, in The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, there's a mention of Acadian French where velar consonants are optionally palatalized to palatalized velars or postalveolar affricates but that's neither dental consonants nor European French. I might point out that phonetic palatalization around front vowels is not uncommon across languages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I imagine it's more pronounced in Acadian French and Quebecois (but then, I speak neither.) The palatalization I'm talking about is so slight it could probably not mark phonemic contrast. But the allophones are definitely there. With respect to Belgian French, try http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0954394500121027. Would this source warrant inclusion in the article? I'll get back to you on Parisian. Szfski (talk) 19:40, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be more in passing, though we have an article on Belgian French that could do with some beefing up. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I do notice a tiny (yet perceivable) "ts" sound like a puff of air (palatalization? affrication? aspiration?) with /t/ /d/ before /i/, /y/, and /u/ (those aren't front, btw, but close)in a lot of the spoken French that I've heard, most of them quite standard to me. I don't sound native if I don't emulate it. It's probably only phonetic though, I'd say. Anyone aware of this phenomenon? Cause I'm not sure if it's the same as discussed above. Keith Galveston (talk) 15:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

and what about the diphtongs in French ?

How come the question is not adressed in the wovels section ? see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphtong ... stephane.jourdan gmail —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.234.218.194 (talk) 01:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a good article in the Journal of the IPA about Romanian and French in regards to Diphthongs (Chitoran, Ioana. "A perception-production study of Romanian diphthongs and glide-vowel sequences" vol 32.2). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:17, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

this paper is about Romanian, not French. S.J. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.234.218.194 (talk) 01:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

True. There was a little about diphthongs that I've added from it. We can still add more. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

There is one legal Standard French pronunciation

As the French language is legally regulated by the French government, and the Dictionary of the Academie Francaise includes IPA transcriptions, there is one "Standard French Phonology" to be presented here as the basis of discussion.

Variations by region, class, historical period, and level of formality -- clearly indicated, and not the useless "some speakers say" as presently -- can and should then be presented in brief, as non-standard variants, with referrals to full articles on major types. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.202.199.205 (talk) 18:17, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Linguists generally treat prescriptive versions like the Académie's pronunciations as one variant among others. Anyway, though the grammar and spelling of French in official contexts (university examinations etc.) are regulated, I am aware of no regulation of pronunciation. And as André Martinet showed a long time ago, there is considerable variation in French pronunciation even among educated speakers of French. I agree though that "some speakers say" with no reliable sources is pretty useless. --macrakis (talk) 01:02, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The French language goes beyond France's borders, so the Académie cannot truely regulate the language. OQLF and other language bodies in other francophone countries would agree on this. It's better to go with the general trend in various dictionaries and books to set a phonology convention here on the Wiki. Pieuvre. 24.202.31.204 (talk) 07:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

"I am aware of no regulation of pronunciation" absolutely true "And as André Martinet showed a long time ago, there is considerable variation in French pronunciation even among educated speakers of French. " his demonstration has a problem, before doing a linguistic survey, you have to do a socio-linguistic study to examine if the people you will interview are traditionnal speakers of the language you want to study. With such a methodology, I am not surprised that he found a "considerable variation" I fear that Martinet and his students decided that the french language was "obviously" the native language of french citizen living in metropolitan France, which is far from true. Traditionnal french speaking population are found in France, Belgium, Swizerland and Canada, but in each of these countries,including France, you have a lot of people who have or had a different language. The difference between France and these other countries is that in the other countries, those people DONT speak french (or with an accent). In France they do speak French with (often) no accent but they dont possess the traditionnal phonology, on wich "standard french" was devised. As an example, the famous Amelie POULAIN is played by Audrey TATOU, born in Clermont Ferrand. In the movie she is a typical parisian girl. Unfortunately, her diction is not parisian french, it is simplified french ! Being educated or not does not change your phonologic system. If a dictionnary like Le Petit ROBERT attempts to make its reader believe this fiction, OK ! But does it appear to you to be linguistic epistemology ? If you want to kwnow the truth about french pronunciation, visit : www.bonblabla.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.234.218.194 (talk) 21:54, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Semivowels

Are there any cases of vowel/semivowel contrast that do not rely on either ʎ→j or the supposed /wa ɥi/? It doesn't say, but I'm reading between the lines that this is one of the reasons these are considered difthongs while other combinations aren't. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Good question. I can't think of any that don't depend on syllable boundaries or geminate consonants. Something like qu'il l'y aie mis /kil.li.ɛ.mi/ "that he may have put it there" vs. Il liait /il.ljɛ/ "he tied/linked". What do you think of that? Pronunciation might vary among native speakers. Any of you native francophones have an opinion on it? Moxfyre (ǝɹʎℲxoɯ | contrib) 16:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

/wa ɥi/ are considered diphthongs rather than combinations of a semivowel and vowel because they can occur after consonant clusters. Other sequences can't.

According to Chitoran (2002 cited in the article), other instances of glides comes from a glide formation process that is blocked if the syllable onset contains more than one segment. Here are the examples she gives:

• lier ('to bind') [lje ~ lije]. Oxf: /lje/
• fiacre ('carriage') [fjakʁ ~ fijakʁ]. Oxf: /fjakʀ/
• nouer ('to tie') [nwe ~ nue]. Oxf: /nwe/
• plier ('to fold') [plije]. Oxf: /plije/
• clouer ('to nail down') [klue]. Oxf: /klue/

I've included the phonemic transcriptions of Standard French from my Oxford English/French dictionary. Note also the relationship between the word pairs in clou [klu]/clouer [klue] and impie [ɛ̃pi] ('impious')/impiété [ɛ̃pjete] ('impiousness'). The latter demonstrates an example of change upon suffixation, one of the stronger indications of allophony. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:20, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Phonemic vs. phonetic length

Another quick question: is there any difference between /ɛː/, and the [ɛː] allophone of /ɛ/? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

the vowel a

I added a paragraph for this and made corrections in the tables but I don't know how to do it for the chart. Wrongly transcribing the a is a serious error and omiiting the symbol for the a as in cat from the chart is, too. If you doubt this you just have to listen to francophones talk. I am francophone myself and a linguistics student and language buff.--Bpell (talk) 19:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This is your own impression, and OR is a serious error for Wikipedia editors. Your edits contradicted the information in the sources already appropriately cited in the article, without providing any new sources, so I reverted them. CapnPrep (talk) 20:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

There is only 1 source cited for this, Fougeron and Smith, and it is only 4 pp. from a magazine. I listened to the You Tube demonstration and the à is pronounced wrong and so is ami as they are both a as in cat; the others are pronounced correctly. I couldn't listen to the other 1 as I don't have MP3 and the other was "web page could not be displayed." This is not my impression as I am a native speaker and live in a French community where we are constantly exposed to the pronunciations that I elucidated in my paragraph from people we speak with as well as the French media. We can give endless examples but just to cite 3 on You Tube there's Marc Trudel avec André Arthur, for Quebec French, where we clearly hear magie, masqué, façon, caméra, évasion, classique, atelier, communication, maneuvre, etc., all with the a as in cat except for the 2nd a in caméra as it is final. For European French there are Sarkozy Face à la crise in 10 parts and the song Sacré Charlemagne.--Bpell (talk) 03:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime I also found the u-picardie-Francais: Phonétique, Phonologie, et Prononciation; under French Pronunciation there is Vowel Sounds 1 and 2 where we can clearly hear the ash, as it is called, the a as in cat, in several words but notice in one section it says the letter a is pronounced (a) but the sounds we hear are clearly ashes as is the case for the 1st e of femme yet it is said to be (a) also. You can check the distinction in audio demonstrations between the (a) and the ash at uvic-IPA under Public IPA Chart. --Bpell (talk) 09:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

One source trumps no source. It may be relevant to repeat the gist of my comment on your talkpage here - namely, IPA [a] and [æ], both being front vowels, are quite similar. ([æ] is officially a little higher, depending a little on the definition of "higher" tho.) You might be familiar with a variant of English where /æ/ is pronounced [a] (rather than a variant of French where /a/ is pronounced [æ]). The "mispronounced" /a/ you're hearing may be the corresponding central vowel [ä].

We cannot use your "speaker intuition", nor your own analysis of a sound file; it's possible you're right, but you'll need to find a sorce that actually uses the description [æ]. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You are still doing OR here (as Tropylium just pointed out). If you look around I'm sure you will find some other "magazine" articles that explicitly discuss the different phonetic realizations of French /a/ (I agree that it can have the quality of [æ] for some speakers in some environments, but I do not agree with your claim that this is the basic, correct pronunciation). Only then can you add the information to the article. CapnPrep (talk) 12:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

While cardinal [a] is front, the vowel chart shows French /a/ to be more central. Maybe there's variation, but no matter what, even bilingual English-French speakers aren't necessarily prompted to hear the differences between [æ] and [a], which is why sources are important. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

There is no mistaking the sounds in most instances especially in -al, -ac, -ation, ac-, av-, etc. And I was forgetting my Larousse Dictionnaire Français-Anglais Anglais-Français from '70; the principal editor is Marguerite-Marie Dubois, doctor of letters at the Sorbonne. It cites the sounds for a and includes the ash sound (but transcribing it as à, not using the IPA) giving the English example "can" saying the French is shorter, giving the example "canne"(meaning cane), which is exactly right. This cannot be confused with (a). Throughout, the ash sound is properly transcribed.--Bpell (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that you are confused. If you're going to stubbornly insist that you're right despite what experts say, you will not get far at Wikipedia. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

But Fr. canne does not (normally) have the same vowel as Eng. can. E.g. when people say the "Can Film Festival", the problem is not that the vowel is too long. And here is a quote from Fagyal et al. (2006, p. 31) which may help explain your 1970 dictionary transcriptions: "Descendants of the Parisian aristocracy still pronounced /a/ reminiscent of /æ/, i.e. more fronted and raised than a central vowel in the early 1970s (Mettas 1979), and this tendency was also attested in the speech of middle-class Parisian speakers at that time (Lennig 1978)." I can provide the full references if you care to actually find and read them. CapnPrep (talk) 21:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're the 1 who's being stubborn and who is confused. The "experts" you refer to don't know what they're talking about. Who is the author of the article?--Bpell (talk) 22:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Easiest way to decide this issue is to refer to the section on French in the "Handbook of the International Phonetic Association", which has only /a/, not /æ/. −Woodstone (talk) 08:55, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

These experts may not "know what they're talking about," but they're published, scholarly, often peer reviewed, and credibile. That's our standard. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:45, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Here are two more quotations from sources already listed in the References section):

The low central vowel /a/ is produced between the front /æ/ of English that, bat, gnat and the back /ɑ/ of English father, farther. To give students an idea of what sound they are to produce for /a/ in French la, sa, sac, parc, plat, etc., make them isolate the sounds /æ/ and /ɑ/. Then make them go back and forth between these sounds so as to make them experience the front-back movement of the tongue and the degrees of opening of the mouth. Then explain that any sound they produce between these two extremes is an acceptable /a/. (Casagrande 1984, pp. 188–89)

Even though the front [a] (patte [pat] 'paw') resembles English [æ] (cat [kæt]) and even though the back [ɑ] (pâte [pɑt] 'dough') resembles English [ɑ] (father [fɑðər]), the two French vowels generally tend to be more central than the English vowels and thus closer to each other from both an articulatory and a perceptual point of view. It is, however, interesting to note that in some dialects, particularly in a (stigmatized) variety of Paris French, these two vowels tend to grow apart, [a] becoming more front and slightly less open ([æ]) and [ɑ] becoming rounded ([ɒ]); hence the following pronunciations, for example: Paris [pari] becomes [pæri], pas [pɑ] 'not' becomes [pɒ]. (Tranel 1987, p. 48)

CapnPrep (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Telling French people like me how French is pronounced when you don't even know French should be named as the Misplay of the Millenium. Saying that the a as in cat doesn't occur in French is like saying the Earth is flat. I since noticed another mistake in the article which is that the é, -er, -ez, the e of some other words, and the -ai of some words, which all have the sound of the i in pin, the IPA symbol for which, like the ash, is also missing from the chart, are transcribed as the a in rain, or aren't included at all in dictionaries because some are conjugations. Saying that the i as in pin doesn't occur in French is also like saying the Earth is flat. The Dictionnaire générale de la langue française by L.-A. Bélisle does not usually include the pronunciation but when it does these sounds are always transcribed properly and without the IPA. But these other mistakes, it can be safely predicted, you won't admit either. Also, there is a Wikipedia article which includes the correct phonetic transcription, with the IPA yet, for the French a as in cat, and it is not my article, I don't have articles on Wikipedia, and it wasn't my edit either. But I will not tell you what article because you will only change it. But I will not seek mediation because this will achieve nothing and will be a waste of time and effort, as you will always continue to argue and refuse to listen to reason. Wikipedia is supposed to be objective and accurate but your article is neither. I have discontinued my account, as much as that is possible with Wikipedia, I haven't read any postings since my last 1, nor have I read the 2nd 1 from you on my talk page, nor will I return to this page, and it will be good riddance.--Bpell 22:43, 13 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpell (talk • contribs)

I am a native Italian speaker, and while reading the article about Italian phonology, I learned many new things that I did not realize about the pronunciation of my language - either the standard pronunciation (as opposed to my own), or even my very own pronunciation.

You need to approach this sort of things with more humility. Being a native speaker doesn't somehow magically gift you with an improved sense of hearing when it pertains to comparing the sounds of one language (namely your own) with that of another. Actually, I have found it often makes it worse, because you are influenced by your language's spelling when trying to judge phonemes.

Also, the sound in french é, -er, -ez ([e], as far as I know) is quite definitely not the same sound as English "pin" ([ɪ]), although I don't believe French has the latter sound (and English only has the French sound in the form of diphthongs like the one in "rain", and only in some dialects), so I suspect it's quite possible for a French or English speaker to confuse the two.

LjL (talk) 22:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Things to sort out here

I've just been seeing a real expert website, about pronunciation symbols using a different advanced IPA, called canIPA, by Luciano Canepari (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciano_Canepari) .. You can find on its website the real pronunciation of French using his own improved IPA, (http://venus.unive.it/canipa/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pdf .. to find the French one go to "A Handbook of Pronunciation", then "Pronunciation of French", and for the table of consonants and respective IPA equivalent to understand the referring sounds go to "A full treatment of vowels and vocoids" and "A full treatment of consonants and contoids"..). Anyways, out of this, there's interesting things that are not on this article, neither in the official IPA for French.. /t/ and /d/ in French, before any Front vowel in Standard French are realised as /tʲ/ and /dʲ/, French R has many taxophones, difficult to illustrate (you can see them on that website), /k/ and /g/ before front vowels become /c/ and /ɟ/, /j/ is in reality /ʝ/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are more like /ʃʲ/ and /ʒʲ/, /enwiki/w/ is rounded../a/ in French is a front vowel, and different from Spanish and Italian /a/, it's much fronter, /o/ and /ɔ/ are back and rounded, and different then, /i/ before a pause is followed by /hʲ/, for example hear a French person saying "mardi". Vowels change before French R > /u/ becomes /ʊ̜/, /a/ becomes /ɐ/, /y/ becomes /ʏ/, /i/ becomes /ɪ/ (whom many think is the English I, but in the reality it's slightly different, and you can find it as the German short I sound). /ə/, already concerned, doesn't exist (except in regional pronunciations), and it's an unstressed /ø/, /u/ is backer, and many more changes .. as for Nasal consonants /ɑ̃/ is /ɒ/ nasalised, /ɛ̃/ is closer to an /a/ nasalised than a /ɛ̃/... and this is just a part of the mess unrepresented by IPA, and in part Wikipedia which hasn't helped.. come on people, sort it out, there's a lot of things to sort out in this article, and in almost every language's article, just follow canIPA symbols and their IPA equivalent, it's not that much, but there's important changes, and I think, if a French person will come here, will agree with me saying that these sounds are the right ones.. I believe in you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.182.77.236 (talk) 00:27, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

"Many think" that /ɪ/ is the "English I"? Yes, many do - including the English phonology article. Probably because it is... --LjL (talk) 00:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

It's very close to, but if you look at that article you'll find that is not, though it's found in the diphthong /eɪ/, but out of it, English short I is not like that, you can find it for example in German .. here's the reality.. /ɪ/ is front, while English short I is front central (sorry no symbol for it), it's slightly different, but the difference exists, and if you look carefully on the website from Luciano Canepari, you'll find the pronunciations much clearer than IPA does —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.182.77.236 (talk) 00:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with this transcription system or with the term "taxophone" (which seems to be synonymous with allophone). I don't want to be too dismissive here, but some of this stuff seems like very common phonetic particularities not worth noting. It's very common crosslinguistically for, e.g. /t d/ to be palatalized before front vowels. Similarly, /k g/ very often are pronounced slightly advanced in the context of front vowels. The document says of /j/ that it is somewhere between [j] and [ʝ]. Seeing as how it often acts as a consonant, it's not a surprise that it would have a bit more constriction (and duration) than a nonsyllabic /i/ (as is the case with Spanish) but I wouldn't stop transcribing it as /j/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:29, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

While the canIPA is impressiv in its complexity, many of these phonetic details should be back'd by phonetic reserch. Canepari seems to be using the pronunciation sections as basically examples on how to disambiguate various phones in his system, offering no actual evidence. And if we were to use his values, we run into the problem that his system is non-standard and not entirely compatible with IPA. For example, the IPA /ɪ/ is by default front-central, so describing a French lowered /i/ as [ɪ] (phonetic brackets BTW) would be simply incorrect, if we wish to distinguish between front and near-front.

Other features however (like palatalization and perhaps the lowering of /ɛ̃/), as said, are common detail that might actually start to have a place in an article of this size.----Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 08:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, /ɪ/ is pratically the realisation of /i/ only before French R, because as that R is uvular, changes the vowels are before it (more or less like English R), it's a natural thing, so it's a not another way to say I, French I is /i/ like in Italian, Spanish etc..,/ɪ/ as not an allophone is mainly found in Quebec French ... Just try it yourself, a normal /i/ and /i/ before R, and such.. As for Luciano Canepari's canIPA, he does a lot of analysis with all the possible tools existing on Earth in this field, I can ensure you, all of his transcriptions are controlled very carefully.. the big monster on here is IPA which never is aware of these important stuff.. Sadly most of these, and the ones he says are changes that people doesn't quickly realise, also, people assumes that everything has not to be signaled because are minor sounds and differences, but it's not.. Many of the things I've read in canIPA are things I've never known ---- Francis 12:29, 9 July 2009 (UTC)