williamylee

[faint ermine]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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[digital night]

The liaison in the imperative when followed by anything but « y, en » is optional so you can hear it with liaison:
« fais attention /fɛz‿a.tɑ̃.sjɔ̃/ »
« faites attention /fɛtz‿a.tɑ̃.sjɔ̃/ »
It's just that since it's optional, many speakers are going to omit it:
« fais attention /fɛ a.tɑ̃.sjɔ̃/ »
« faites attention /fɛt a.tɑ̃.sjɔ̃/ »

You hearing « faites attention » as « fait attention » because of enchainement. Enchainement is the phenomenon where a final consonant sound is transferred from one word to the word afterwards if the latter starts with a vowel. This is to prevent closed syllables. An example would be « avec elle » pronounced as /a.vɛ kɛl/ instead of /a.vɛk ɛl/. With « faites attention », then, what you would hear is « faites attention /fɛ ta.tɑ̃.sjɔ̃/ ».

[lean grove]

So enchainement is carried out after the liaison is omitted? I thought they were not supposed to happen together. Like, first the "es" in "faites" gets omitted and then "t" is chained with "attention"?

[digital night]

Yeah because the T is always pronounced in faites

[digital night]

If you hear my audio, you’ll notice that I said « fai tattention » and I put a pause so that the « faites » is clearer