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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

Un son bizarre se produit en prononçant des mots comme “conclure”/”concurrence”

This sounds to me like a whistle that would happen if you’re closing your mouth and moving your tongue forward during the /ɔ̃/, just before the second /k/ sound. It would be your mouth getting into position to make the /y/ sound, but a little too early.

You can verify this theory by doing a pronunciation drill where you repeat the initial syllable /kɔ̃/ many times before saying the rest of the word, e.g. /kɔ̃kɔ̃kɔ̃kɔ̃klyr/ … sounds a bit impolite so do it where nobody who understands French can hear you 🙂

If this theory is correct then you should only hear the whistle in the last one of these /ɔ̃/ sounds (or not at all, if the drill fixes it).

EDIT: after you confirmed that this only happens at the last vowel. I’m sorry I don’t have any experience with this kind of speech issue to provide tried-and-true remedies. Just a couple things to keep in mind (here I assume, based on your usage of English in the question, that you are a student of French as a second language or “FLE”)

  • First off it doesn’t impede understanding; many people probably won’t even notice it. No need to stress out too much about it if your primary goal is to be understood.

  • The good news is that you’re doing the hardest part correctly: your nasalized consonant /ɔ̃/ is perfect in isolation and so is the /y/. Since many languages don’t have either of these vowels you’ve likely had to learn one or both of them and you’re doing fine.

I might still suggest a couple of things:

  • Considering that you can say the syllables independently but have trouble when they quickly follow each other, maybe do a drill where you say /kɔ̃/, pause, /ky/, pause, /kɔ̃/, etc. and gradually speed up and shorten the pauses between syllables

  • Do an exercise where you first pronounce the word without the initial /kɔ̃/, then with the /kɔ̃/ but a slight pause between the two parts: “currence, con-currence”, “clure, con-clure”

Hope this helps!

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?