Reading French

French looks hard to read because it writes letters it no longer says. But the system is consistent: once you know the patterns, a written word almost always tells you how to pronounce it. The hard direction is the other one — one sound can have many spellings, so spelling what you hear takes longer.

Silent final letters and the e muet

Most final consonants are silent: petit, grand, trop, gros, deux, nez — and the verb ending -ent (ils parlent [paʁl]). The usual exceptions are c, r, f and l, the consonants of CaReFuL: avec, mer, neuf, sel. Even r has a big exception: -er infinitives and most -er nouns end in [e] (parler, premier, boulanger). Final unaccented e, the e muet, is silent as well, but it has a job: it makes the consonant before it heard. petit [pəti] / petite [pətit], grand [ɡʁɑ̃] / grande [ɡʁɑ̃d] — this is how spoken French marks most feminines. Inside a word it often drops in normal speech: samedi [samdi], maintenant [mɛ̃tnɑ̃].

Letters that team up

Nasal vowels

When n or m closes a syllable — at the end of a word or before another consonant — the vowel becomes nasal (air flows through the nose) and the n or m itself goes silent. Add a vowel after it, or double it, and the n comes back while the vowel stops being nasal: bon [bɔ̃] / bonne [bɔn], plein [plɛ̃] / pleine [plɛn], an [ɑ̃] / année [ane]. Portuguese is the other nasal sister, but it shows nasality openly, with a tilde or a final m: mão [mɐ̃w] 'hand', bom [bõ] 'good', fim [fĩ] 'end' — and, unlike French, it has nasal diphthongs (pão, põe).

Liaison and enchaînement

Spoken French runs words together. In enchaînement, a consonant that is always pronounced slides onto the next word's vowel: une amie [y.na.mi], avec elle [a.vɛ.kɛl]. In liaison, a final consonant that is normally silent comes back to life before a vowel: les amis [lezami], vous avez [vuzave]. In liaison s and x sound [z] and d sounds [t]: un grand homme [ɛ̃ ɡʁɑ̃tɔm]. Liaison is compulsory after articles and pronouns (les, des, mon, nous, vous, ils, on), forbidden after et, and blocked by an h aspiré, a silent h that still acts like a consonant: les héros [le eʁo].