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Re:It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age by astrobe_ on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @03:05PM (#19790879)
You are talking about a diaeresis [1]

For "rien" in particular, I'd say speakers can do that diaeresis as a sort of emphasis. For instance "Tu n'as rien fait! Rien! ("you did nothing! Nothing!"). The first "rien" can be said as a single-syllable world, while the second one can be pronounced as a two-syllables.

It also may be pronounced slightly differently in various places in France (regional accents).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_%28prosody%29

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