Re: French verb conjugation: "je harcele"? or "je harcelle"?

On Mar 27, 4:27 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2008-03-25, Nathan Sanders wrote:

I think the issue is that French schwa is not actually "that sound" (a
mid central unrounded vowel), but rather a mid front round vowel,
somewhat like [o] and [oe] (in fact, I *think* I recall that it can be
analyzed as just an unstressed positional variant of the /o/ and /oe/
phonemes, but I'm not sure about this).

I looked in a few apparently IPA-using French-English and French
dictionaries: they all use "that upside-down-e" for the vowel in "je"
and the first vowel in "jeter", but they use ø (slashed o) for the one
in "jeu".  

That's because "je" and "jeu" don't rhyme.

Are the dictionaries consistently misusing the IPA or idealizing
French pronunciation, or am I wrong in thinking that "upside-down-e"
means "schwa"?

You're quite right.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: French verb conjugation: "je harcele"? or "je harcelle"?
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