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

Adam Funk <a24061@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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".

Are the dictionaries consistently misusing the IPA or idealizing
French pronunciation,

Those are phonemic transcriptions. They don't necessarily describe
the associated sounds precisely. Apart from omitting allophones
(no English dictionary distinguishes aspirated and unaspirated
voiceless stops), they will also tend to use the most convenient
symbol if there is no conflict. IPA-using English dictionaries use
/r/, despite this not being an alveolar trill in standard varieties
of the language.

or am I wrong in thinking that "upside-down-e" means "schwa"?

It does, but the actual French vowel represented by it is different
from the one represented by the same symbol in phonemic transcriptions
of, say, English or German.

Regarding the actual phonemic inventory of modern French, the choices
offered by the "phonetic" search function of the TLFi site are quite
telling:

A Amour
E rEvoir, dEUx
É École, rÊve, AImable
I Innocent
O Obliger, AUrore, burEAU
U Unité
OU OUtre
Y fiLLe, raYé, tuYau

AN ANcre
IN INfini, mais aussi brUN
ON ONctueux

So while French dictionaries still maintain a three-way distinction
between the vowels in "peu" and "peur" and the first one in "premier",
your average French speaker is rather less certain. Most shocking,
I know.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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