Learn French - Lesson 3: French Pronunciation

Hi everybody. In the previous lesson we looked at the French alphabet in detail. If you have not yet seen that video lesson, I strongly recommend that you watch it before continuing with this lesson. Some English speakers find French pronunciation quite challenging. However, you can be certain that if you keep on trying, it will improve. This may sound obvious, but many people keep the pronunciation they had when they first started learning French, almost as if they assumed on day one that it would be impossible to get it right. No one will ever expect you to have a perfect French pronunciation, but I have found that if you manage to acquire reasonably good pronunciation, it will actually make learning and speaking French a bit easier in general. To improve your pronunciation, first listen carefully to the correct pronunciation of the specific letter, sound or word and try to repeat it as accurately as you can until you hear an improvement. You will almost certainly have to practice some sounds more than others. Try to avoid thinking about how you would have said it in English, because you are now learning a whole new way of thinking. Don't be too hard on yourself though, it will become easier over time. I am now going to read the French alphabet once more, but this time we will also look at examples of words that contain that specific letter. Focus only on the sound of the single letter as it is used in the word. Do not worry about other sounds in the word that may not yet make sense to you. Are you ready? Let's begin. As you can see, by default we are using a soft C, almost like an S sound. However, a C would be pronounced as a K when it is followed by the letters A, O or U. For example, cuisine. When we use a cedilla, that's basically that C with a bit of a tail, it will always indicate a soft C. So, we use a cedilla and the letter A, but that would actually be not a K sound, that would be a soft C sound, so we would say ça, for example. Des, dans, eux, le. Sometimes the letter E will contain an accent, and as you can see right here that we have three different accents. The first one is actually pronounced as E, as in clé. The next two are pronounced exactly the same way, as in fête and très. So, the difference between the first E is that it's a much more, I'd say, it's kind of a flat sound, flat E, é. The other two E's are more like é, fête, très. If the E does not contain an accent, but it is situated between two pronounced consonants, we would pronounce it as é, for example, maître. If the E does not contain an accent, but it is the last letter of a word that contains three letters or more, it is usually not pronounced at all, for example, madame. F, français. G, grand. There are obviously two possibilities here. The G sound, by default, is the same as in English. For example, you saw the word grand. However, when the G is followed by an I or an E, it is pronounced as the French J sound. For example, plage. H, homme. The H is never pronounced in spoken French, although it is used in written French. I think like so many other letters in French that are not actually pronounced, it's really just there to make the French language look beautiful. Y, ici. J, je. K, kilomètre. L, ligne. M, malade. N, nouvelle. O, mot. When the O is followed by a double N-E or double M-E sound, the pronunciation changes. For example, we say bon, which is a very round and nasal sound, but we would say bonnes, which is not nasal and is also a much less rounded sound. P, pomme. Q, question. We basically pronounce the Q as a K sound, and we never pronounce the U that follows the Q. R, rouge. There is no similar sound in English, and we already discussed this in the previous lesson. S, sous. T, toujours. Notice that we do pronounce the T as an S in the T-I-O-N combination. For example, nation. But not if it is preceded by an S. For example, question. Then we would just pronounce it as a T, a normal T. U, tu. There is no similar sound in English, and we already discussed this in the previous lesson. V, vérité. W, wagon. This letter is rarely used in French. X. Now, when the X is situated before a consonant, we would pronounce it the same as in English. It is basically a X sound, like exprimer. However, when the X is situated between two vowels, there are two possibilities. It could be as in the word exercice, or then the word taxi. So you can hear they are different. But I suggest you learn these differences as you go along, because we don't want to make things too complicated now. An X is usually silent at the end of a word, but it is pronounced as an S when dealing with numbers. For example, dix is ten in French. Y, stylo. Y simply refers to a Greek I, and we pronounce it like a French I. Z, zéro. We do not pronounce a Z at the end of a French word. OK, let's look at some vowel combinations. When you put certain vowels together for some combinations, you get a very specific sound. So, let's look at our first one. It is an O and a U combination. It is basically an OO sound. It is very rounded. It is not like the English double O sound. It is not OO, it is OO, as in toujours. And then we have the OI combination that you probably already know. Moi. AI. Français. And you can see it is the same as the I, as in the word très. It is français. AU or EAU. Beau. EU. Peur. And then you can see our character that looks like an O and an E together in one character. It is basically pronounced the same as the OO sound in peur. And the UI combination. Puis. OK, in French you may have noticed there are a lot of nasal sounds. Vowels are basically nasalized when followed by an M or an M. Provided the N or M is followed by a consonant or it occurs at the end of the word. So, let's look at some examples. The first set of vowel combinations are pronounced the same way. AIN, IIM, EIN and so on. For example, we would say africain, fin, cinq. Then AN would be en, so we say tante. EN and IM will also be pronounced like AN, so we say entre and temps. Note, however, that there are exceptions to this rule and there are times that the EN sound would be pronounced actually like the very first set of vowel combinations that we had. But you will get used to them as time goes on. OK, ON is on as in bon. So, if you look at AN and you compare it to ON, you see that AN is on while ON is on. Remember when the N or M is followed by a vowel, these combinations are not nasalized. For example, we would say américaine. Now, if américaine did not have an E at the end, we would have said américain. But now, with an E at the end, we say américaine. Let's take a look at some other combinations. We have the CH sound as in chaque. We have GN, gagneur. It's a silent G and it's a bit like the sound in lasagna. And then we have the ILL sound, billet. We almost pronounce it like an English Y sound and we pretend the double L's are not there at all. There are a few exceptions, for example, ville and village. You can hear the L sounds in those words. TH, we only pronounce the T and not the H, so you would say té for T. Consonants at the end of a word. When consonants occur at the end of a word, they are normally not pronounced. For example, Paris. And in fact, this would be the case for most French words. Consonants at the end of the word are not normally pronounced. The liaison. If a word ends with F, T, X or Z and the next French word begins with a vowel, and even in some cases an H, a liaison occurs. For example, we have the word c'est. We do not pronounce the T, but we would say c'est une maison. There we have actually pronounced the T because of the rule for liaison. Note that when you're using an S or an X, it will become a Z sound and an F will become a V sound. The liaison is used less often nowadays and mainly restricted to some of the most common phrases that you will pick up over time. It's possible to hear the following phrase without the liaison. You can say pas impossible or pas impossible. So you will pick up the most common phrases over time because we don't want to make it too complicated right now. If you apply all the rules we mentioned here, you should be able to pronounce the vast majority of French words. If you feel overwhelmed and confused, don't panic. You will get used to French pronunciation the more you listen to it. After some time, you will instinctively know how to pronounce French words. In the next lesson, you will learn how to count in French.