An Introduction to French Pronunciation

4.5 Orality or Nasality
The Vowel Phonemes 23
In describing most European languages, we should not need
to take account of this factor (except perhaps to mention that,
before a nasal consonant such as n, some air may escape
through the nose while the preceding vowel is being uttered –
this can happen in English in words such as can, etc., in which
case we have a slightly nasalized allophone of the vowel).
Certain languages, however, French being one of them (others
are Portuguese and Polish), have vowels in which the velum is
lowered throughout, allowing the airstream to escape freely
through the nose as well as the mouth, and which therefore
have a pronounced nasal quality. French has four such vowels,
those of words such as vin, un, son, grand (see 10.10), which
are not allophones of other phonemes but phonemes in their
own right.
4.6 Classification and IPA Symbols
In 4.7–4.11, we are concerned mainly with the classification of
the vowel phonemes and with the IPA symbols that represent
them. The individual vowels are discussed in greater detail in
chapters 10 and 11.
4.7 Front Unrounded Vowels
The front unrounded vowels and the IPA symbols for them are:
Symbol Definition Examples
i high lit, vite, dire, y
e high-mid été, pré, chanter, nez, j’ai
ε low-mid très, bête, jette, faire
a low la, patte, page
Some problems connected with the distinction between /e/
and /ε/ are discussed in 10.6 below.