En réponse à Chris Bates :

>The English system of Education falls down on languages as well. I got a
>C in GCSE French (Middle grade, not a really bad mark, you take GCSEs at
>16) not having memorized most of the irregular verbs, nor knowing most
>the non-present verb endings. I lost interest to be honest... but I got
>through simply by guessing on the most part when i was reading what
>infinitive each verb was from and what tense it was in (they let you
>take dictionaries into the exams as well!)

All the students of France envy you!!! :)) Dictionaries... Never saw the
shadow of one even in classes...

>As for vowels Christophe, French has four nasal vowels doesn't it?

Four, going down to three. /9~/ is in the process of disappearing in favour
of /E~/. I still make the distinction, but many people younger than me tend
to confuse them. So if it's those that you can distinguish, you needn't
worry about it ;))) .

>  I
>can only distinguish three, so I have a similar problem to your u and U.
>I also tend to turn final e into ei (forgive me, I'm not as good with
>vowels as with consonants),

It's a usual problem with English people and cardinal vowels. They tend to
diphtongise them.

>  and I'm sure there are a lot of other
>problems with my pronounciation of french (like the typical english
>tendency to insert very short @ sometimes). I think my etre is more
>etR@_X instead of etR and I don't think the @ should be there (just
>looked up the X SAMPA hope I got it right).

Indeed, there should be no schwa there. Final "e" is always silent in
French. I'd guess you add [@] because a final /tR/ cluster breaks the
sonority contour principle and English people have trouble with this break
of the principle in final clusters, so they add a short [@] to create two
syllables which don't break the principle anymore.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.