Manolee just started first grade and tomorrow she will have her very first dictee - a dictation test. She has one sentence to prepare and I was helping her do so:
"Marou est un chat"
I had trouble enough pronouncing Marou, because in French the R takes a sort of an "h" sound before the actual "r" sound, and then there is that "ou" sound, which is not straightforward for me, especially preceded by an "r". But Manolee took it in stride and wrote it down correctly.
When I got to the second one, the word whose pronunciation I had utmost confidence in getting it correctly, Manolee looked up and said, "Maman, it's not "et", it's "est".
To me, "et" and "est" sound exactly alike. I asked her to repeat what she thought was the distinction. Twice. Three times. I still did not hear it. I asked Hanaya to say those two words for me and I heard an ever slight difference but not enough for me to really pick up.
Manolee rolls her eyes.
I don't really care that I can't pronounce things correctly, there is only so much I can do about it. But in all these years speaking French with French people, not one person spoke up to correct my mistake, which is astounding! And unlike when I say "deux ans" and people think I'm saying "douze ans" - it has created no big misunderstanding.
Nonetheless, I will have to rely heavily on my 6 year-old to catch my mistakes and endeavor to help me correct them (rolling eyes notwithstanding).
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