The top 8 things to think about when doing a French accent.

You never know when a credible French accent is going to come in handy. This woman found that it helped boost her sales. Follow these steps and you'll sound like a Parisian in no time at all.

1 The first step of learning a French accent is to learn how to pronounce the R-sound. Think of it like this: Imagine you have a hair stuck in the back of your throat and you're trying to get it out. How would you sound? Hrrr, hrrr, hrrr. That's a sharp, "aggressive" sound, so you need to take away the "H" in front, to make the R soft-sounding. It will sound almost like gargling. If you know how Spaniards pronounce J, you're onto something. Not the Mexican way of saying J which is almost the equivalent of an English H sound. The Spanish J is too harsh and sharp though, so remember to soften it.

2 Time and again, the French (and many others) prove unable to pronounce the English "th"-sound. Now, there are two TH-sounds in English: The TH in "there" or "though" is soft, while the TH in "with" or "think" is more sharp. Make sure you understand this difference in English. The French pronounce the TH-sound in "there" as a Z or even sometimes DZ: "Dzere are no more bananas". The sharp TH, the one in 'thing" and "theater", is often just pronounced without the H: "I tink I can do anyting".

3 Remember that in French, the stress is almost always on the LAST syllable, not second to last which is common in English or Spanish. So instead of saying "remember", say "remember". Also, extend the E's if they are in the last syllable of a word: "remembehr". If pronounced with a French accent, the word "remember" should rhyme more with "in the air" than with "surrender". Get it? Good.

4 Where English speakers might say Ahh or Uhmm when they otherwise do not know what to say (e.g. while you are thinking), such as "I, uhmm, think you may have chlamydia", the French would use their "Euh" sound (not pronounced like "eew, that's gross") Although there are no letters in English which represent this sound, it is comparable to the I in girl (which, when you think about it is very different from the I in, say, "fill", which in turn is different from the I in "file") or the O in "world" (which is different from the O in for instance "go", or the O in "forty"). Try saying the words "world" and "girl" without pronouncing the whole word (i.e. stop after wo- and gi-). These two sounds are almost the same, right? That vowel which is represented by I in girl and O in world is the French way of saying something hesitantly.

5 The H is always silent. Words such as "hamper", "honey" and "holiday" become "amper", "oney" and "oliday".

6 O is not rounded off like in English where you would pronounce it OH, but rather becomes a British English or New York AW. Americans would pronounce this AH (AH-some, AH-full), but the British would say AW-ful, like the O in "more".

7 Make the I's sound like EE's. Thin becomes "theen". Thin should rhyme with "mean", not with "pin" as it otherwise would.

8 As a last note, the syntax, that is the structure of a sentence, is different in French from in English. In French, when you say "What did you do this weekend" you would say "Qu'est-ce que tu as fait ce weekend" which literally translates into "What is that which you have done this weekend?". Obviously, this is complicated, even to the French themselves, so they colloquially would just say "T'as fait quoi ce weekend?", which literally translates into "You have done what this weekend?" Notice that the verb "to do" comes before the person "you" in English, but after it in French. When it comes to questions, the French put the person first, then whatever the person does comes second, which is opposite of English. Thus, where an American might say "Have you done your homework?", a Frenchman might say "You have done your homework?"

Let's sum up by pronouncing a whole English sentence as a Frenchman with poor English skills would (syllable stress in bold): " I have not remembered to do my homework for more than a month" becomes " I ave not rememberd to do my omeweuhrk for more dzan a mont".

© 2010 Christian Nesheim - http://www.learntheaccent.com/french-accent-explained.