Say this out loud: Les enfants sont partis à l’école. If you pronounced every letter you saw, you said about twice as much as a French speaker would. The final s of enfants, the t and s of sont and partis: all silent. Yet the s of les is heard, as a z, because the next word starts with a vowel.
French spelling looks unreliable to English speakers, and from sound to spelling it is. From spelling to sound it is far kinder than English: a few rules for silent letters, about fifteen vowel spellings and three nasal vowels cover nearly everything. This piece teaches them, with a pronunciation card and a trainer. It is the first of four French pieces on this path.
Your device has no French voice, so the play buttons are hidden.
- Who it is for
- English speakers starting French from zero. About 320 million people speak French (Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, 2022); it is an official language in some thirty countries, and more than half of the people who use it every day live in Africa.
- After this piece you can
- Read a French word aloud and know which final letters to drop; say the three nasal vowels and tell tu from tout; know when a silent letter wakes up before a vowel; and read the accents.
- Comes after
- Nothing is required. The method is in How Memory Builds a Language (37/01) and How a Language Grows (37/02).
- Leads to
- French 2: The Present Tense (37/11), where the silent endings turn out to be the key to the verbs.
- Honest line
- A page cannot hear you. You will have the rules and a way to drill them; a tutor, a partner or a recording of yourself tells you whether it worked.
Vowels: lips forward, no glide
French vowels are tense and steady. English slides inside its vowels (say no and feel your lips close into a w); French holds them still. Two pairs matter from the first day. ou is the vowel of food. u has no English match: say “ee”, then round your lips as if to whistle without moving your tongue. That is the difference between tout (all) and tu (you), and between roue (wheel) and rue (street).
Several spellings share one sound. The table gathers them; the play button on each row reads the examples, if your device has a French voice.
| Spelling | Sounds like | IPA | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| ou | oo in “food” | /u/ | vous, tout, rouge |
| u | “ee” with rounded lips | /y/ | tu, rue, salut |
| é, final -er, -ez | ay in “day”, without the glide | /e/ | été, parler, nez |
| è, ê, ai | e in “bed” | /ɛ/ | mère, fête, lait |
| e in le, de, petit | a short “uh”, often dropped | /ə/ | le, petit, samedi |
| eu, œu | the vowel of “fur”, lips rounded, no r | /ø/, /œ/ | deux, heure, sœur |
| au, eau, ô | oh, without the glide | /o/ | chaud, beau, hôtel |
| oi | wa | /wa/ | moi, trois, voiture |
| an, en, am, em | nasal “ah” | /ɑ̃/ | enfant, temps, chambre |
| on, om | nasal “oh” | /ɔ̃/ | bon, nom, maison |
| in, ain, ein, un | nasal a in “bag” | /ɛ̃/ | vin, pain, plein, un |
A nasal vowel lets air out through the nose, and the n or m after it is not pronounced at all. Add a vowel or a second n and the n comes back as a real consonant: bon /bɔ̃/ but bonne /bɔn/, un but une, fin but fine. Many masculine and feminine pairs differ by exactly this.
Consonants: the r and a few others
Most consonants are familiar. The famous one is the r: in France and Quebec it is made at the back of the throat, close to a light gargle or the ch of Scottish loch with your voice switched on. Say “ga”, then relax the closure into friction and you are near it. The rest fit in a table.
| Spelling | Sounds like | IPA | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| r | at the back of the throat | /ʁ/ | rue, Paris, merci |
| j; g before e, i | s in “measure” | /ʒ/ | je, rouge, manger |
| ch | sh | /ʃ/ | chat, chercher |
| gn | ny in “canyon” | /ɲ/ | montagne, gagner |
| ill after a vowel, and most ill | y in “yes” | /j/ | fille, travailler |
| ç; c before e, i | s | /s/ | ça, garçon, merci |
| h | silent | none | homme, hôtel |
Three common words keep an l sound in ill: ville, mille and tranquille. A single s between vowels sounds like z (maison), and qu is a plain k (qui).
Silent final letters
Most final consonants are not pronounced: the s of vous, the t of petit, the d of grand, the x of prix, the z of nez, the p of trop. A final e without an accent is silent too, but it does a job: it makes the consonant before it heard. Petit ends in an i sound; petite ends in a t. Much of French grammar is spelled in letters you never hear.
The useful rule of thumb is the English word CaReFuL: final c, r, f and l are usually pronounced (sac, bonjour, neuf, sel), and the other consonants usually are not. The big exception: the r of the -er verb ending is silent (parler sounds like parlé), as is the r of most words in -ier (premier). A few others, such as blanc, gentil, fils and bus, are in the trainer below.
Liaison and elision: words that run together
French is spoken in groups, not in single words, and two rules glue a group together.
Liaison. A silent final consonant wakes up when the next word in the same group starts with a vowel or a mute h, and it moves over to start that word: les amis sounds like “lé-za-mi”, vous avez like “vou-za-vé”. An s or x links as a z, a d as a t (un grand homme), and in neuf heures the f links as a v. Liaison is required after an article or a number (un ami, deux euros), between a pronoun and its verb (ils ont), and after a short adjective or a short word such as très or chez. It is forbidden after et, after a singular noun, and before an aspirated h, a silent h that still blocks the link: les héros, les haricots.
Elision. A few short words drop their vowel before a vowel or a mute h and take an apostrophe: le and la become l’ (l’école, l’hôtel), and so do je, me, te, se, de, ne and que: j’aime, je n’ai pas, qu’il. Elision is not optional in writing. Si elides only before il and ils: s’il vous plaît.
Choose a set. A word or a pair of words appears with the letter in question marked. Decide whether you hear it, then read why and play it.
Without JavaScript: the t of petit is silent; the c of sac is sounded; les amis links with a z, les héros does not.
The accents
French accents do not mark stress, as Spanish ones do. They mark a vowel’s sound, or tell two words apart, or both.
- é (acute) appears only on e and gives the closed sound of été.
- è (grave) on e gives the open sound of mère. On a and u it only separates words: a (has) and à (to), ou (or) and où (where).
- ê, â, î, ô, û (circumflex) often mark a lost s, so English is a key: forêt and forest, fête and feast. Since the 1990 spelling reform it is optional on i and u in most words: connaître or connaitre.
- ë, ï (diaeresis) tell you to say two vowels separately: Noël, naïf.
- ç (cedilla) makes c sound like s before a, o and u: ça, garçon, reçu.
Accents are part of the spelling: a word without its accent is misspelled.
Stress at the end of the group
English stresses one syllable in each word and squashes the others. French gives its syllables about equal length and lengthens the last syllable of each group of words: pa-RIS, but Paris est très beau is pa-ris-est-très-BEAU. The result is an even stream with a lift at the end of each group.
One language, many accents
No variety is the correct one. This path teaches the standard French of most courses and dictionaries, close to educated speech in France. Every difference below is native and fully correct where it is spoken.
- Quebec. Before i and u, t and d gain a hiss, so tu sounds close to “tsu” and dire close to “dzire”, and pairs such as patte and pâte keep two distinct vowels. Everyday words differ too: fin de semaine for the weekend, dépanneur for the corner shop.
- Belgium and Switzerland. Septante (70) and nonante (90) replace soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix; parts of Switzerland also say huitante (80). Meals shift: in Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec, déjeuner is breakfast, dîner lunch and souper dinner.
- Africa. In many West and Central African countries French lives beside one or more local languages, and many speakers use a tapped or rolled r and give syllables more even weight. Local words enter the shared language: in Senegal a petrol station is an essencerie.
Copy the variety you will hear most; you will understand the others sooner than you expect.
Pronounce it
Sixteen words that cover the surprises. Tap a word, read the respelling and the IPA, then say it aloud before you play it.
Without JavaScript, use the two tables above: they have a sound-alike and the IPA for every spelling.
Read it aloud
Read it aloud slowly, marking the liaisons and crossing out the silent letters. Then play it and compare.
Je m’appelle Julie et j’habite à Lyon, près de la rivière. Le matin, je prends un café au lait et un croissant. Mes amis arrivent à huit heures. Nous allons au travail ensemble, à vélo. Et vous ? Où est-ce que vous habitez ?
My name is Julie and I live in Lyon, near the river. In the morning I have a milky coffee and a croissant. My friends arrive at eight. We go to work together, by bike. And you? Where do you live?
Check as you read: is the t of huit linked to heures, are mes amis and nous allons joined by a z, and did the whole ending -ent of arrivent stay silent?
Mistakes English speakers make
- Saying every letter. Paris has no s, and parlent sounds like parle.
- An oo for u. Tu said as “too” is tout. Round your lips on an “ee”.
- A full n after a nasal vowel. Bon said as “bonn” sounds like bonne. Let the air out through your nose and stop.
- Stress on the first syllable. English says RES-taurant; French says res-tau-RANT, with even syllables and a slight lift at the end.
What sticks
- French vowels are steady; tu (lips rounded on “ee”) and tout (oo) are different words.
- A nasal vowel drops its n or m; add a vowel and the n returns: bon, bonne.
- Most final consonants are silent; CaReFuL (c, r, f, l) usually sound, with exceptions such as the -er verb ending.
- Liaison wakes a silent consonant before a vowel (les amis), but never after et or before an aspirated h.
- Elision drops the vowel of le, la, je, de, ne, que and the like before a vowel: l’école, j’aime.
- Accents mark sound or meaning, not stress; the stress falls lightly on the last syllable of each group.
Read French by subtraction: say the vowels cleanly, drop the final letters the rules drop, and let words run together where liaison and elision join them.
Try this: read the passage above aloud once a day for three days and record the third reading. Play it next to the voice, and pick one mistake from the list to fix next week.
Sources. Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, La langue française dans le monde (2022); Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Douglas Kibbee and Fred Jenkins, French: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2006) for the sounds, liaison and regional variation; Conseil supérieur de la langue française, Les rectifications de l’orthographe (1990).
- 🌐 TV5MONDE: Apprendre le français, free lessons and videos from A1 up
- 🌐 Vitrine linguistique (Office québécois de la langue française), free answers on usage, including Quebec French
- 📘 Fagyal, Kibbee and Jenkins, French: A Linguistic Introduction