« Le mystère de la voyelle E » ou quelques remarques sur les contrastes acoustiques [e] – [ɛ] dans le contexte de l’enseignement/apprentissage du FLE
“The Mystery of the Vowel E” or Some Remarks on the Acoustic Contrasts [e] – [ɛ] in the Context of the Teaching/Learning of French as a Foreign Language

Summary/Abstract: The object of our study is the vowel E pronounced in French as a closed [e] or an open [ɛ], an opposition thatteachers (often non-native speakers) are regularly confronted with when teaching French as a Foreign Language.Practically speaking, the exercises contained in phonetics textbooks are aimed at learning to discriminate betweenand produce these acoustic contrasts. Theoretically, on the other hand, explanations focus mainly on the phonic-graphic relationship to distinguish [e] from [ɛ], but are sometimes presented in a fragmentary manner, or lackbroader contextualisation. For better understanding of the facts, a question arises: what basic mechanisms governthe pronunciation of [e] and [ɛ] in spoken French (“standard” or “standardised,” as recorded in FFL textbooks)?Our aim is to shed light on certain aspects of their content, in particular by providing authentic illustration of howdistributional and etymological constraints operate. Of these, distributional constraints are an undeniable priorityin teaching the phonetic system to non-French speakers.

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