French · Rung 1 of 26

What isn't pronounced

Written and spoken French do not match, and that is the first wall. The rule that pays most: final consonants are almost never pronounced — petit sounds “puh-TEE”, grand “grahn”, les enfants “lay-zahn-FAHN” — except C, R, F and L, remembered through the word “careful”. A final -e is silent too, but it makes the consonant before it sound: petit is “puh-TEE” and petite is “puh-TEET”, and that is where you hear the feminine. And the clincher: the -ent ending of the third person plural is mute, so il parle and ils parlent sound exactly the same. Writing four letters you do not say is normal in French, not a mistake.

Where this sits

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Accents and spelling, Liaison and elision, Articles and gender, Present tense, A1 vocabulary

Exercises from this rung

Generated by the app, from easiest to hardest

  1. il parle / ils parlent

    • The second ends in a t sound
    • The second adds a syllable
    • The first one is shorter
    • The two sound exactly the same

    Why None. The -ent ending of the third person plural is mute, so il parle and ils parlent are identical to the ear. Number is told by the subject, which is why the pronoun cannot be dropped.

    easier

  2. homme, hôtel, heure

    • Only after a vowel
    • Only at the start of a word
    • Always, as in English
    • Never: h is always mute

    Why Never. What changes is whether it lets elision and liaison through: mute h does (l'homme, les hommes with a z) and aspirate h does not (le héros, les héros with no z), but neither is ever sounded.

    in between

  3. bon, banc, brin

    • They are nasal vowels
    • The n sounds like an m
    • The n is pronounced at the end
    • They are identical to each other

    Why All three end in a nasal vowel. The written n is not pronounced as a consonant: it nasalises the vowel before it. They are three distinct sounds — on, an, in — and telling them apart is what makes you understood.

    harder