Bonjour, mon couer

I am particularly excited to learn how to pronounce the lyrics of our new Choral Spectrum piece, Bonjour mon couer (I think that's how you spell it...). Not just because they are surprisingly optimistic, but because they are in a language that I have no mastery over whatsoever. I often tease my French-student friend when she says something to me in French and I stare at her blankly or reply sarcastically, just because I have absolutely no idea how French works at all. As a Spanish student, I can say that the pronunciation of the language came pretty naturally - each vowel is consistently the same - a clear, sharp sound. On the other hand, when I try to read French, I end up using a Spanish accent and confusedly butchering the normally beautiful language. Watching someone read French is like observing somebody reading Chinese aloud. None of the arrangements of letters seem to make any sense to me. Something with four vowels in the middle ends up just sounding like 'uuuuh'. However, there are apparently several different ways to pronounce 'uuuuh', none of which I have encountered before. Learning our new piece is going to be slow-going for me, but I am eager to learn (maybe) how to pretend to read French. After all, despite its oddness, it is an absolutely lovely language.

I think that it's cool how different it is to sing French than to speak it. In French, there are a lot of vowel sounds at the end of words that end up being almost completely dropped, especially in familiar speech. For instance, the word "douce," which is technically "doo-suh" usually just sounds like "doose." When singing, however, you pronounce all of the syllables that you just sort of shadow in everyday speaking, so "douce" becomes "doo-suh" again. Also, the "r" sound, which when speaking sits way in the back of your throat, comes more to the front when singing. These differences make for a fun challenge even for somebody who speaks French, and that makes me really excited about Bonjour, Mon Coeur.