How are the nasalized vowel sounds in “enfant” pronounced?

Question

I just started learning French, and I came across the word enfant. The question I have concerns this word's pronunciation. I looked in the dictionary, and it said /ɑ̃fɑ̃/, which is supposed to sound like "amfam" ("am" as in the word champ and "f" as in the word flip or "at).

Is that really the correct way to say it? Whenever I hear the word in online dictionaries, I can clearly hear a hard "n" and not an "m" like in "amfam."

Your confusion comes from the fact that the combination of letters am (in the word champ) is pronounced just like the combination an. So champ and enfant have the same sound /ɑ̃ /. And that is pronounced like the word en. If you listen to en on Forvo you have the exact sound (the clearest pronunciation to me is probably the 4th one, female, French). Two good pronunciations of enfant on that page of Forvo. — None, Jun 29 '14 at 07:55
On wikipedia the list of the various ways the sound /ɑ̃ / can be written in French. — None, Jun 29 '14 at 08:04
(I think the OP is referring to the English word "Champ." If OP is referring to the French word "champ" then disregard part 1 of my previous comment.) — hunter, Jun 29 '14 at 13:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 24 '14 at 21:19

Actually to pronounce "enfant" you can put your tongue completely into sleeping mode. Don't try to pronounce any "hard n" or "m" or other consonant except for for the "f".

Other than that, what the comments under your post says is right, pronounce it like the little word "en".

Other examples of the pronunciation of both "en" and "ant" can be found in following words:

"grand" (tall) "gens" (peoples) "empathie" (empathy) "France"

I hope I could help!

Oneira · Answer 2 · 2014-07-25T13:14:53.490

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I had a lot of trouble to explain how to pronounce this to my Chinese friend. I went with the following explanation:

First you have 3 nasalized vowels sound: an, on and in each one derived from the vowels a, o and è respectively. (en actually pronounce very similarly to an, I would not do the distinction as beginner)

To pronounce the n sound you let air go trough your nose. For those you need to put the front of your mouth in the position you would to pronounce the associated vowels (a -> an, o -> on and è -> in) and arrange the back of the mouth let air go trough your nose like for n.

It is quite hard to explain how to do it but I hope this help.

edited Jul 25 '14 at 13:14

answered Jul 25 '14 at 01:21

Oneira

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Explaining that the sound which is written in comes from the vowel i is wrong. The in sound uses ɛ as base vowel (usually written è or ê). See this answer for more correspondances. And by the way, Polish has similar sounds (nasalized vowels). – Stéphane Gimenez Jul 25 '14 at 11:28
@StéphaneGimenez thank you for the correction, answer accordingly edited. – Oneira Jul 25 '14 at 13:16

How are the nasalized vowel sounds in “enfant” pronounced?

2 Answers2