Whether you’re aiming to become the next “Emily in Paris,” get cast in a production of “Amélie,” or blend in at the Stade de France during this summer’s Olympic Games, you don’t want to sound like Inspector Clouseau when asking for some “pain au chocolat.”
Fabien Enjalric, a dialect coach who worked on the fictional Arrakis language for “Dune: Part Two,” can help actors make a French connection—whether it’s a long scene or a quick moment.
“Sometimes, I’ll get a call that asks me to be on set the next day for an actor who has two lines,” he says with a laugh. “I can immediately tell if an actor is going to be a challenge with an accent, but I quickly adapt and figure out how to make it work.”
Et voilà! Here are some of his suggestions.
Start listening.
Before you attempt to form a phrase, just listen to the rhythm, musicality, and intonation of how French people speak. “If I’m walking down the street, I’m able to hear the melody of a language even if I can’t hear what they are saying,” says Enjalric. Unlike English, French puts the stress at the end of a word or phrase and the cadence is quick-fire. “It’s like ba-ba-ba-ba-bum,” he adds.
Get some backstory.
Do a deep dive on your character and figure out their age, where they grew up, and when they grew up. “France has many dialects, and the differences can be subtle,” Enjalric says. What we think of as “classic French” is stereotypically someone from Paris who’s educated from a certain school and has a like-minded social circle. There are regional and time-specific subtleties to learn, just as there are in any language.
Master the pause.
One of the most representative parts of any language is the hesitation sound. These are every country’s ums, ehs, and ahs. For French, it’s “eh” (pronounced like the “ir” in “stir”). “These sounds are where you really get the shape of the mouth,” Enjalric says. “Everyone does it when they are not sure what they are going to say or just pausing. French has many rounded vowels. Some actors find it really helpful to get into the mechanics of what is happening in the mouth, while others don’t care—they just want to listen and repeat.”
The Ultimate Guide to Doing Accents as an ActorTake some shortcuts.
We all know there is “school French” that we sat through in high school and real French: textbook versus conversational. Modern-day French does a lot of eliminating, conjoining, or adding filler words. While Americans throw in “like,” modern French inserts “genre” (pronounced “jen”) and means “a kind of.” While teachers stress the “ne pas” for negative, natives often drop the “ne.”
“Instead of ‘je ne sais pas,’ we’ll just say, ‘je sais pas,’ or even ‘sais pas,’ ” explains Enjalric, who always starts any longer-term project with an actor by sourcing their required accent with all its subtleties on YouTube, and giving them a taped version to listen to for a few months.
Give it time.
Enjalric says the number one mistake people make when speaking in a foreign language is going too fast. “Always get your lines checked by a professional, not a friend—someone who can really listen and give you constructive feedback,” he advises. He also suggests studying films with French actors; some of his favorites are Marion Cotillard, Camille Cottin, and Guillaume Canet. Finally, remember that some people are natural-born mimics, while others can take longer to nail accents and sounds. “I always have the mindset that we, the actor and myself, can do this, even if they feel a little self-conscious or scared,” he says.
French native Fabien Enjalric is a London-based language and dialect coach. He worked with Olivia Colman for “Great Expectations” and Saoirse Ronan for “Mary Queen of Scots.”
