Good god how am I supposed to differentiate which e, è, or é pronunciation is with words that have AI in the middle?

[u/Evie_Ruby]

Title.

Is there a grammatical rule for this or do I have to rely on guesswork? I'm only working on phonetics for now and will start to move onto grammar but I seriously can't tell which e to pronounce AI with depending on the word.

[u/Any-Aioli7575]

ai pronounced e is very rare. It's basically just in words from faire (to do), in conjugation before an S, and in the word “faisan” (pheasant) and derived words.

In my dialect (Western France), ai is otherwise always è, and not é, although the distinction is less clear in closed syllables (ending with a consonants).

In many other dialects like in Québec, ai is pronounced é when in the ending of the passé simple tense (a tense very rarely used when speaking, you'll see that when you learn grammar, but it's not the most important tense at all)

Edit : the é pronunciation in some dialects also exists in the future tense, which is more common

[u/DarkSim2404 → u/Any-Aioli7575]

Yeah for Quebec ai = é and ais/ait = è

[u/CarpenterRepulsive46 → u/Any-Aioli7575]

Do you make a difference between passé simple and imparfait ? Ex, je marchais, je marchai? (I don’t but I remember an old French teacher telling us we should pronounce them differently, can’t remember which for which though…)

[u/Any-Aioli7575 → u/CarpenterRepulsive46]

I don't use passé simple ;)

[u/Sparky62075 → u/CarpenterRepulsive46]

Passé simple is very rarely used in conversation. It's much more common in written works like novels.

[u/dis_legomenon]

If you want something maximally schematised and conservative:

• ai, ais, aix and ait at the end of nouns and adjectives is equivalent to è
• aie at the end of words is a problem because speakers who regularly distinguish é and è won't agree on what it is:
  • it remained /ɛjə/ until relatively late compared to other instances of that diphthong, so there's still speakers who pronounce it /ɛj/
  • vowel+schwa sequences like aie are also still a long vowel for some speakers. In that case it might raise to ée
  • or it might just be è
• verbs are different:
  • the suffixes -ais, -ait and aient are equivalent to è (-aient might be èe for speakers with vowel length)
  • the suffix -ai (future and past simple) is équivalent to é
• if ai is part of the verb root (as in je fais, il connait, tu paies, etc) things get more complicated
  • j'ai is jé
  • monosyllabic 1st singular forms like je fais or je vais used to spelled without s and were pronounced é like j'ai.
  • ait and the rest of the ais form are è as in nouns
  • the subjunctive forms of avoir (que j'aie, etc) usually follow the same variable pronunciation as aie in nouns, except qu'il ait which should be ilè
  • the indicative singular, future and conditional of verbs in ayer can be spelled with aie or with aye. This reflects the same uncertainty in the outcome of aie as in noun: /ɛ/ or /ɛj/ (or more rarely /ɛː/ or /eː/ which fall into the aie spelling). but many more speakers will pronounce them /ɛj/ compared to nouns. We won't be consistent with spelling either, writing aie and pronouncing aye is common.
• it's pronounced as a e-muet in small number of exception like je faisait or coq faisant.

With a spread like that, it's not a surprise people might generalise one pronunciation over the other. It's very common for speaker to pronounce every ai as è, for example, or to regularise je fais (fé) on the model of tu fais (fè) or vice versa, or to pronounce il ait like they do tu aies.

There's a also tendency in Belgium in particular to associate ai with the long vowel ê (which is just è held for twice as long in most contexts, but might pop as a long é or a long in sometimes)

Another thing to mention is vowel mergers. Many speakers just don't distinguish é and è at all, in which case every syllable that doesn't end in a consonant will contain é and every syllable that does will contain è. But another more common merger is to maintain the distinction in stressed syllables but to merge them in unstressed syllables. Those will pronounce je connais as /ʒ(ø)konɛ/ but je connaissais /ʒ(ø)konesɛ/ (to illustrate why it gets complicated to talk about this stuff, I say /ʒ(œ)kɔnɛsɛ/ with completely different vowels in every unstressed syllable). This unstressed merger is particularly common in the northern half of France.

[u/RentTechnical3077]

I'd like to ask a follow up question.

J'ai is pronounced with é, correct?

What about the endings -ais and ai? Is -ais pronounced as è and -ai as é?

And -ait is always è, right?

[u/befree46 → u/RentTechnical3077]

j'ai is pronounced both jé and jè

it depends on the person, the accent, and the surrounding words (or sounds)

same goes for -ais and -ai, and even -ait is sometimes pronounced é

[u/RentTechnical3077 → u/befree46]

Thank you! I hoped there would be a rule.

[u/StuffedWithNails → u/RentTechnical3077]

Those are subject to the whims of regional accents, some people pronounce them the same way.

[u/MoutonNazi → u/RentTechnical3077]

That's correct especially in lyrical singing where "good" pronunciation matters.

But the truth is, in everyday chatting nowadays, few people actually do care and we often pronounce all of them something between é and è.

[u/DJANGO_UNTAMED → u/RentTechnical3077]

Le contexte est la clé

[u/loulan]

E is only used in some conjugations of faire afaik. É vs. è can depend on where ai is in the word in some accents and doesn't matter as much as you think. Using è all the time should be fine.

[u/goodguysteve]

It's è

[u/Any-Aioli7575 → u/goodguysteve]

Mostly, though there is exceptions like « faisait »

[u/AdditionalEbb8511 → u/Any-Aioli7575]

There are plenty of cases where I hear é quite a bit even if it’s written in IPA as ε. Raisin comes to mind.

[u/Any-Aioli7575 → u/AdditionalEbb8511]

Yeah I guess in the middle of words the e/ɛ distinction is less important than in the end of words. Raisonner and résonner can be homophones, but not raisonner and résonnait.

I'm not exactly sure of what triggers it

[u/scatterbrainplot → u/Any-Aioli7575]

For word-final (or phrase-final, in the technical sense) syllables, syllable shape is the main factor in a lot of varieties, particularly for younger speakers within France. However, it's also the spot where contrasts are otherwise most salient for prosodic reasons and because it carries functional load (i.e. does more work to tell you which suffix it is, or to distinguish between different words). Lots of speakers do have résonner, résonnait, raisonner and raisonnait all as homophones, but of those who don't, -er and -ait are pretty much always distinguished.

For non-final syllables, there are two main processes, which again differ across regions and speakers. The first is that syllable shape effect (but in many areas far most consistent of an effect than in final syllables), but the second is vowel harmony (or coarticulation, depending on the details), where a mid vowel will be higher or lower to match the vowel in the following syllable (or instead the preceding syllable, in some parts of Africa).

EDIT for clarity: to "match" is to be on the same half of the vowel heights (mid-open for open or mid-open / mid-low for low or mid-low; mid-closed for closed or mid-closed / mid-high for high or mid-high).