An Introduction to French Pronunciation

Consonantal Assimilation 127
18.3.4 A type of assimilation that foreigners should be aware
of but that they need not imitate is that in which the voiced
stops, i.e. bilabial /b/, dental /d/ and velar /g/, are replaced
by the corresponding nasal consonants, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/, by
assimilation to a preceding nasal vowel, e.g.:
un demi kilo /h nmi kilo/ for /h (or j) dmi kilo/
vingt-deux /vhndø/ for /vhddø/ (see 18.2.5)
(la) Chamb(re) de commerce /ʃem dc kbmεrs/ for /ʃeb dc
kbmεrs/ (for /ʃebrc d kbmεrs/ – see 11.9.2)
(une) longue main /lfŋ mh/ for /lfg mh/
(les) langues modernes /leŋ mbdεrn/ for /leg mbdεrn/
18.3.5 A voiceless allophone of the semi-consonants /j/,
/d/, /w/, is regularly used after a voiceless consonant, e.g.
pied [pre], tiens [trh], fier [frε:r], puis [ppi], cuisine [kpizin], tueur
[tpœ:r], poire [pya:r], toi [tya].
18.4 Assimilation to Vowels
We have seen (10.1.1) that lip movements are much more
vigorous and (because of the greater degree of tension
involved) more sharply defined in French than in English.
Related to this is the fact that the articulation of French
consonants is very much influenced by the lip-position
adopted for the vowel that they precede or follow in the same
syllable.
We can discuss this first in relation to consonants at the
beginning of a syllable. In English, many native-speakers
anticipate the vowel of words such as, on the one hand, too,
cool, loop, by rounding the lips to some extent, or, on the
other, the vowel of words such as tea, keel, leap, by spreading
the lips to some extent. (Southern English speakers are less
likely to do so than others, and consequently more likely to
pronounce too, cool, etc., as something like [tcu], [kcul] – see
10.4.) In French, this anticipation of the vowel is much more