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Vocabulary Boost Up Your Fluency To Speak French

December 26, 2008

It’s a known fact that it’s hard to learn second languages as you get older. This can be overcome with ease, however, with the assistance of tried-and-tested techniques. To teach French to adult learners, these special methods are used by most French learning classes.

French pronunciation is tricky because it uses nasal sounds which we do not have in English and there are a lot of silent letters. However, if a word ends in C, R, F or L (except verbs that end in -r) you usually pronounce the final consonant. Their vowels tend to be shorter as well. The French slur most words together in a sentence, so if a word ends in a consonant that is not pronounced and the next word starts with a vowel or silent h, slur the two together as if it were one word.

Therefore, this lesson is an attempt to simplify French pronunciation, to make it easier for you to get started, even if you don’t know how every letter combination is pronounced in every situation. While at some point, you will need to study more in-depth lessons on pronunciation, for the time being, this simplified pronunciation chart can help you get a good idea about how to pronounce new words.

Whenever possible, I have provided English words which use the same spelling. Failing that, I used French terms used in English, but if you don’t know how to say these ? la fran?aise, you will need to look them up in order to get the correct pronunciation. Failing either of these, I used an alternate spelling – these words are in [brackets] and the letters which make the relevant sound are in bold. When there is no real English equivalent, the nearest sound, if any, is explained in (parentheses) – for these letters and letter combinations, you should look really at the in-depth lessons. The LKL column indicates how I write that sound when spelling out pronunciation in other lessons. The letters and letter combinations are linked to detailed lessons, while the examples are hyperlinked to sound files in .wav format.
Letter(s) LKL English Sound Examples
A a father quatre, un ami
AI ay pain le lait, frais
AU o taupe chaud, mauvais
B b baby bonbons, bas
C k can caf?, sucre
s ceiling ceinture, ni?ce
? s fa?ade ?a va, cale?on
CH sh champagne chapeau, anchois

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