Eeehhh. Native speaker here. I can hear the difference, doesn’t mean I can pronounce it without it feeling alien. In my southwestern accent, a distinct “ê” doesn’t really exist. We tend to ignore length and/or closed vowels.
For example, “les” /le/ (pl. the) and “laid” /lɛ/ (ugly) are both pronounced [le], “fête” /fɛt/ (party) and “faîte” /fɛ:t/ (roof ridge) are both [fɛt]. Another exemple is “ô” and “o” being both merged into a very open [ɔ], “paume” (palm) and “pomme” (apple) sound exactly the same.
A better distinction is between parlerai and parlerais. The first one ends in /e/ the second one in /ɛ/. It’s important to distinguish them because one is the future tense (I will do something) and one is the conditional future (I would do something).
I learned French in Canada, but learned mostly from teachers speaking in a France-French accent, so I’ve heard both Quebec-style and French-style pronunciations.
To my ear, both French and English pronounce the month of May the same way: “may”, “mai”. But apparently some French speakers say /mɛ/. But, what about, “élève”? Surely you don’t say the two “e” sounds in that one the same way, right?
Eeehhh. Native speaker here. I can hear the difference, doesn’t mean I can pronounce it without it feeling alien. In my southwestern accent, a distinct “ê” doesn’t really exist. We tend to ignore length and/or closed vowels.
For example, “les” /le/ (pl. the) and “laid” /lɛ/ (ugly) are both pronounced [le], “fête” /fɛt/ (party) and “faîte” /fɛ:t/ (roof ridge) are both [fɛt]. Another exemple is “ô” and “o” being both merged into a very open [ɔ], “paume” (palm) and “pomme” (apple) sound exactly the same.
That’s a bad example because “les” can be pronounced either as /lɛ/ or /le/.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/les#Pronunciation_7
A better distinction is between parlerai and parlerais. The first one ends in /e/ the second one in /ɛ/. It’s important to distinguish them because one is the future tense (I will do something) and one is the conditional future (I would do something).
I learned French in Canada, but learned mostly from teachers speaking in a France-French accent, so I’ve heard both Quebec-style and French-style pronunciations.
To my ear, both French and English pronounce the month of May the same way: “may”, “mai”. But apparently some French speakers say /mɛ/. But, what about, “élève”? Surely you don’t say the two “e” sounds in that one the same way, right?
Exactly, those are two very very different sounds to me. May is meh-ee. Mai is just meh.