French For Football/Notes/Pronunciation

An English speaker should not find French pronunciation too difficult, but it is easy to start mispronouncing French words which have a similar spelling to English words. There are also many different letter combinations which can produce a particular sound and also many silent letters, so it is often difficult to tell how a word should be spelled just from the sound of it. To assist the student, this book makes extensive use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is used in many dictionaries to show the correct pronunciation. By convention, pronunciation is shown bracketed by “/” characters.

Consonants
These are generally like English, but with the following modifications.

Dental Consonants
The letters d, l, n, s, t and z are pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the lower teeth and the middle of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. In English, one would pronounce these letters with the tip of the tongue at the roof of one's mouth. (It is very difficult to pronounce a word like 'voudrais' properly with the d formed in the English manner.)

b & p
Unlike English, when you pronounce the letters 'b' and 'p' in French, little to no air should come out of your mouth. If you're an English speaker, say the word 'pit' and then the word 'spit' out loud. Did you notice the extra puff of air in the first word that doesn't come with the second? The 'p' in 'pit' is aspirated [pʰ]; the 'p' in 'spit' is not (like the 'p' in any position in French).

/ʀ/
The French “r” sound is produced at the back of the throat, as when gargling. (This is the “official” pronunciation, but there is a lot of regional variation with some dialects being more like English.)

/ʃ/
The French “sh” sound is pronounced as in English but is spelled with “ch”. e.g.

/ʒ/
This is the “zh” sound like in English “leisure” which can be spelled with “g” or “j” in different words. e.g.

/s/
This is the “s” sound is produced by the letters “s” and “c” as in English, and can also be produced by the letter “ç” and sometimes by “x”. e.g.

/ks/
This is the sound normally produced by the letter “x”. e.g.

/z/
This is like the English “z” sound, and is produced by the letters “s” and “z”. e.g.

/j/
This is the sound at the front of the English word “yellow” which in French can be produced by the letters “i”, “y”, “l” and “ll”. e.g.

/ɲ/
This is the sound normally produced by the letters “gn” which sounds like the “ny” in the English word “canyon”.

Silent Consonants
In French, certain consonants are silent when they are the final letter of a word. The letters p (as in 'coup'), s (as in 'dos'), t (as in 'court'), d (as in 'grand), and x (as in 'locaux'), are generally not pronounced at the end of a word. They are pronounced if there is a letter e added at the end ('coupe', 'dose', 'courte', 'grande', etc.) There are exceptions, e.g. many words taken from English.

The letter “h” is always silent, but where it appears on the front of a word it can affect the pronunciation of any silent consonants on the end of the preceding word. (see Liaison)

/a/
The following words only have the vowel sound /a/ as in English “hat”.

/ɑ/
The following words have the vowel sound /ɑ/ like the “a” in English “car”.

/ɛ/
This is like the "e" in English "bed" and "bet".

/ə/
This is like the "a" in English "about".

/u/
This is like the "o" in English "into".