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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

What are “cuir” and “velours” liaisons?

As the article mentions, these are erroneous liaisons ! So don’t make them. The idea is that, for instance, by analogy with vous aussi or deux cents euros, the speaker puts a liaison that etymologically shouldn’t be there.

Of course, as always, “erroneous” is in the eye of the beholder. Some liaisons which started out as erroneous are now standard. I believe this is the etymology of the /z/ in vas-y (c.f. va à…) and the /t/ in pense-t-il, for instance. Still, most native French speakers won’t make the cuir or velour errors in spontaneous informal speech, so you shouldn’t try to imitate them, even if you want to sound slangy. (My understanding is that the errors arise when someone is trying to talk more sophisticatedly than necessary and hasn’t thought through properly which words take liaison.)

By the way, liaisons, and erroneous liaisons, also occur in British English — where r is not pronounced word-finally, except before a vowel. (My mothe(r), my mothe-r-ate a biscuit.) For instance, if you listen to Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova,” he pronounces the word “supernover” before the phrase “in the sky” which starts with a vowel.

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?