In the first part of our meeting, which took place in the café at TAMK, we went trough another vocabulary and phrase list to practise pronunciation. Hanna told me that she wants to know the weekdays and months in French.
She tried to read them out first on her own and then I corrected her. And I noticed that after a few ‘wrong’ attempts she got better and better. I tried to give her as many rules such as ‘au’ is almost the English ‘oh’ and the ‘ai’ is like the German ‘ä’ and so on. It was really hard for me to ‘remember’ all this rules or figure out the right English equivalent but luckily Hanna knows also German so we could find an equivalent for everything.
We also noticed that while speaking French your diaphragm/midriff is more active as in English, German, Swedish or Finnish and that it feels as your speaking with your whole body. For me it’s quite normal probably but when Hanna mentioned it I also noticed that.
I also explained Hanna that usually consonants aren’t pronounced if they are at the end of a word – except if the word is ‘bounded’ to another word, starting with a vowel, in the flow of the sentence.
After the French session, we switched over to Swedish. I asked Hanna also about some pronunciation things.
What I learned:
‘o’ is pronounced as ‘u’
‘u’ is pronounced as ‘ü’ (GER) or ‘y’ (FI)
‘y’ is pronounced as ‘i’ (GER) or ‘i’ (EN like interesting)
‘å’ is in Finland called Swedish O because it’s pronounced as ‘o’
‘tj’ is pronounced as ‘sch’ or soft ‘ch’ because it’s easier. Try to say ‘tjock’ with ‘t’ and ‘j’ and then say just ‘schock’. This sound also comes sometimes with the ‘k’ followed after a vowel – just like ‘köpa’ is pronounced as ‘schöpa’ and ‘hjälpa’ is pronounced as ‘jälpa’.
Another topic was ‘en’ and ‘ett’ (articles) and question words ‘vart’, ‘vad’, ‘vem’, ‘vat för’ and ‘hur’ (Where, What, Who, Why and How).
I also learned how to say ‘How are you?/How do you feel?’ and ‘What’s your name?’:
‘Hur mår du? / Hur är det?’ and ‘Vad heter du?’
And ‘ursäkta mig / förlåt mig’ but I always forget how to say ‘Excuse me / Sorry’ in Swedish 😉
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