demolinguistics and phonetics

[manuparis]

Hi,

I have a master's degree essay to do, which subject is : "influence of the chinese dialects on the pronunciation of French language".

I have to analyse the phonetics particularity of the different "chinese languages" (putonghua, wuhua, minnanhua, yuehua...).

Despite of Wikipedia, have you got some links or some books to advice me ?

Thanks a lot !

Manu

[Scoobyqueen]

I cant really see how French pronunciation would have been influenced by Chinese dialects. Do you mean how people speaking these dialects pronounce French?

Your first starting point should be a literature search if this if this is for your master’s thesis (rather than a course essay).

[manuparis]

Yes, that's my meaning :

how people speaking these dialects influence French pronunciation.

I give you an example : in Sichuan, Hubei and Hunan provinces, they tend to confuse "L" and "N", for me this is a dialect pronunciation that will influence foreign languages pronunciation (btw it influences mandarin pronunciation too).

[Hofmann]

In that case, I think your title is misleading. It implies that such regions' French pronunciation influences the standard.

[akdn]

English teachers may be familiar with this book.

There are explanations of the specific pronunciation difficulties native speakers of various countries have when learning English as a second language.

I wonder if French teachers have an equivalent?

Edited January 27, 2009 at 08:07 AM by akdn
missed out a word

[manuparis]

I teach French in China Beijing, and I didn't know such a book exists or not...

[Madot]

As an academic in the area of language studies it seems to me that, as already suggested, the first thing you need to do is a proper litature search and literature review. Perhaps not much has been done on this topic. If so, you would need to compare the phonetic and then the phonemic systems of these dialects to French. Whatever sounds in French either do not exist or are not phonemic in the native language will cause difficulties. This would be the substance of your thesis. What adivce are you getting from your thesis supervisor? S/he should have some recommendations to start your lit review off.

Mado

[manuparis]

My thesis supervisor is not so available, as she as 20+ students.

But she adviced the same as you : first litterature and theory.

[Madot]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Your lit reivew would, of course, include any work that has already been done on this specific topic, but before that, it would include all the theoretical stuff on lingistic interference, phonetics, phonemics, etc. THEN you would look at any work which applied this theory to your specific case, i.e. Chinese dialect speakers of French. Having identified the lack of previous research in the area, then you would look at the phonetic and phonemic systems yourself. Busy supervisors are always a problem. Hope this helps.

Mado

[Akarui]

If you're a french teacher, maybe you already know the "Guide pratique de prononciation française pour des apprenants chinois", by Hendrik J. Kockaert and Li Jiayi.

If not, you can easily find it on amazon, and it is pretty cheap.