I am planning to sing Elergie for my G6 (Trinity) and teacher sent me home with a book to help with the pronunciation. The book was a bit heavy going and so we had a go at it as family effort. I last did French over thirty years ago - my children have variously dropped it at the first opportunity or not taken it yet.

I'm using the Shuberline version - http://www.schubertline.co.uk/Scorchshop/c...anetelegiea.sco

This is what we've come up with -

O doux printemps d'autrefois,
O doo prahn tom dow-tre-fwa
Vertes saisons,
Ver-tay sas-on
Vous avez fui pour toujours!
Voo avay fwee paw too-jshour
Je ne vois plus le ciel bleu;
Jshe ne vwah ploo le see-el bler;
Je n'entends plus les chants joyeux des oiseaux!
Jshe non-ton pler ley shon jshoi-err day was-oh!
En emportant mon bonheur,
En em-por-ton mon bon-err,
O bienaime tu t'en es allé!
O be-an-amee too ton es allay!
Et c'est en vain que revient le printemps!
Eh say en van key re-vee-en le prahn-tom!
Oui, sans retour avec toi.
Wee, san re-tor avek twa.
Le gai soleil,
Le gay solay
Les jours riants sont partis!
Lay zshoor re-ant son par-tee!
comme en mon coeur tout est sombre et glace!
Com en mon-ker too ay som-bre ay gla-say!
Tout est flétri!
Too eh flay-tree!
Pour toujours!
Paw too-zshoor!

I'm hoping someone might be able to tell me if I'm on the right lines anywhere in this? I promise to own up to teacher that it isn't all my own work.

I'd say roughly on the right lines, although it's going to come across as rather anglicised - keep in mind that some of the vowels are rather approximate.

The French 'u' is not really like our 'oo' but less round - (we need Alan I think to really pinpoint the niceties! ).
This might help though - shape your lips as though to say 'oo; but say 'ee' instead, without changing the shape of your mouth.
Vertes in the second line I think should be vair- tuh rather than ver-tay.

There are others better able and better qualified, but hope this helps for starters

(*rusty A level*)

I also remember reading on the voice forum that sung French is different in some ways from spoken French - but I will leave that area to one of the singing teachers in our midst.

I've spoken French for too long to be able to reliably read your transcription but a few things did struck me as mistakes.
When "tout" is followed by a word starting with a vowel you should pronounce the "t" so "tout est" should be "toot eh". (I also think "eh" is a bit too closed as a vowel sound but can't think of any better way of representing it in you system - your lips should be spread slightly wider as if you are starting to smile).

"que" is not "key" but "keuh"

"vertes" should be "ver-te"

To pick up on what MaggieMay said; for the "u" sound, imagine you are going to give someone a kiss - purse your lips forward (if that makes sense) your mouth should feel a lot tighter than when you say "too".

Mon D-i-e-u!!!

My French is very rusty but until someone more proficient comes along I'll have a go...


O doo prahn tom dow-tre-fwa
O doo prahn tom doh-tre-fwa

Ver-tay sas-on
I'm pretty certain Ver-tay isn't correct but I'm not sure what is
sas-on
sez-on

Voo avay fwee paw too-jshour
Vooz avay fwee paw too-jshour

Jshe ne vwah ploo le see-el bler;
Jshe ne vwah ploo le see-el blur;

Jshe non-ton pler ley shon jshoi-err day was-oh!
Jshe non-ton ploo ley shon jshoi-err day was-oh! ('was' to rhyme with 'has' not 'woz')

En em-por-ton mon bon-err,

O be-an-amee too ton es allay!

Eh say en van key re-vee-en le prahn-tom!
Eh say en van keh re-vee-en le prahn-tom!

Wee, san re-tor avek twa.

Le gay solay

Lay zshoor re-ant son par-tee! (not sure if you pronounce the 't' in re-ant)

Com en mon-ker too ay som-bre ay gla-say!

Too eh flay-tree!
Toot eh flay-tree!

Paw too-zshoor!


Hmmm Hope somebody will correct me if I've got it wrong!



Edit: ah, I see a couple of others have replied whilst I was typing this - they're probably more proficient than me!

OK, obviously it's not always clear the exact pronunciation you mean, but here are some things which I'd change:

d'autrefois - dot-re-fwuh
vertes saisons - vairt says-on
vous avez - vooz avay
plus - ploo
oiseau - wuh-zo
en - on
bienaime - byan-em
es - ay
que - Like children would say the letter 'c' or 'k'
revient - re-vee-an
sans - son
riants - ri -on
tout est - toot ay
glace - glass (northern!)

I hope that's helpful!

Thank you all - I'm sure I can cobble together all suggestions/comments into the best version I can manage by 4pm tomorrow (when I set off for lesson)

We should have a Language Help thread here. I have no idea how to sing in Russian for example.

That would be useful

I didn't like to ask for help without showing that I'd tried to have a go myself though. I thought it better to give something to go on rather than asking people to tackle the whole thing.

Agree with both Petrat and Alicia Ocean here

Not bad at all, Alicia ! Some great advice too, especially Maggiemay's advice on pronouncing the French 'u', which is ostensibly the same sound as a long i sound (as in peat) but with rounded lips.

Two things I would point out - firstly in French the liaisons are made as Kerioboe and Skylark pointed out, between certain words such as 'Vous avez' and 'Tout est' - but remember that the final consonant of the first word is pronounced as if it belonged to the second word, so rather than Vooz avay, think Voo - zAvay. Same thing for Tout est. The est sound, as some people pointed out, is more open than ay, think of someone in the northeast saying 'eh?' or the word 'pet'.

With my singing teacher hat on, remember that you'll probably need to modify the nasal vowels (printemps, for example will be sung like 'pra - toh' simply because you'll want the velum completely closed, so no sound will be able to travel down the nose, making the true nasal vowels impossible to sing).

There you go - hope they enjoy it !

Allan

We had quite a number of language threads about a year ago, including Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, English...

This is the Russian thread

If anyone wants the others, just do a search for "Learn" in the Cafe forum and it will bring up the others.