French Pronunciation

French words, for the most part, put the stress of a word at the end whereas, in English, the stress often goes at the beginning. Don’t worry if you can’t hear the stress. Some people find it a challenge.

Lazy French – The French can’t be bothered to pronounce most of the letters at the end of words. Try these without pronouncing the last letters. Paris, grand, petit, poulet, deux.

FRoLiCK BBQ – French Pronunciation Mnemonic

The exceptions are words that end in the consonants in the mnemonic FRoLiCK BBQ (think of lambs frolicking in a field not realising they’re being eyed up to be put on a BBQ – sorry vegetarians!).
Try these out for size: neuf (nine), partir (to leave), normal (normal), sac (bag), coq (cockeral/rooster), sportif (sporty).

There are exceptions to these exceptions (as always!) words ending in ‘nc’ are silent blanc, franc.

-ER verbs (don’t worry if you don’t know what that means yet – you will soon enough 🙂 – the –er is pronounced more like ‘ay’ manger (mangay) to eat, parler (parlay) to talk/speak.

Liaison in French

To do the French liaison you have to sound drunk!

This is what often happens when one French word that normally has a silent ending is followed by another word that begins with a vowel. Now you can merge the two words together – so that you sound a little drunk.
Vous__avez – ‘you have’ (with your drunk impression the ‘s’ sound is more of a ‘z’ vouzavez)
Ils__ont – ‘they have’ (sounds like ilzon) deux oranges ‘two oranges’ (durzorange)

Spit it out!

The letter(s) ‘e’ or ‘es’ at the end of a word is/are MUTE but it gives the letter before it a strong sound. To sound French you spit the letter preceding an ‘e’ or ‘es’ out! grande, petite, tout le monde.

Other Bits & Bats in French Pronunciation

Shush!

H is silent hôtel (otel), hôpital (opital)

Une robe rouge

R is like having a hairball that you need to clear from the back of your throat. robe dress, rouge red

QU is a ‘k’ sound quiche (kishe), qui (key) ‘who’

TH is a ‘t’ sound thé (tay) ‘tea’, Thierry (tierry)

CH is a ‘sh’ sound chat (sha) ‘cat’, chips (ships) ‘crisps’

IN/IM/UN usually sounds like ‘an’ without the ‘n’ sound vin ‘wine’, important important, un one, a/an

Accents in French

Accents (the funny squiggles you find above words) serve to either:
• Change the sound of the letter – e (er), que ‘what/that’ é (ay) café ‘cafe/coffee’, è (eh) près ‘near’.

• Change the meaning of the word – ou ‘or’, où ‘where’, a ‘has’, à ‘at/in/to’.

• Tell you that a letter ‘s’ used to be there – forêt ‘forest’, hôpital ‘hospital’

• To tell you to pronounce all the syllables (including the last letter!) Anaïs pronounced A-na–eeees not Anay!

Ça suffit pour l’instant – That’s enough for the moment. Merci et à la prochaine – Thanks and until next time.

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Bisous bisous (kiss kiss)