Mastering French Pronunciation Challenges

Do you sound a bit like this when you speak French? Une pain au chocolat. Un! Not une! Un pain au chocolat. If so, then this video is for you! French pronunciation is a bit tricky, but don't worry! I've put together a special French pronunciation guide which summarises all the essential rules you need to know for good French pronunciation. To download it, simply click on the link in description, enter your e-mail address and you will receive the pronunciation guide directly into your mailbox. After that, you'll continue to receive free PDFs of my videos. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time. Hi! Hi! Hi! Welcome to another episode of French Mornings. If you're learning French, you've come to the right place. I'm Elisa and on this channel I help you to improve your French and to speak more naturally. Today, I've prepared a one-hour course on the theme of French pronunciation. I'll give you some tips to help you understand French people who speak fast. I'll also give you some examples of good and bad pronunciation, and even a test. So get comfortable, activate the subtitles if you need them, and let's start! The pronunciation of French is sometimes very different from what we see written. In the following video, I give you some advice to understand spoken French. There's even a short test at the end. French is a very strict language when it comes to writing. We have a lot of special grammar and spelling rules that need to be respected. But when it comes to speaking, French becomes a little more flexible and doesn't follow the rules quite as much. So if you've only learned French from books or at school, I'm sure you sometimes find it a little hard to understand the French we speak in everyday life. There are many differences between spoken French, the French we speak in everyday life, and written French, which is more formal and reserved for official communications. Today I'm going to give you three reasons stopping you from easily understanding spoken French. The first reason is verbal contractions. The French love to contract words when they speak. So it's a bit harder to understand them because that the language is less articulate. But fortunately it's not that complicated. One of the most common contractions is the pronoun "Je" (I). We rarely pronounce the "e" sound in the word "je", but we do contract it. with the verb or word that follows it. For example: "I have to leave". Becomes: "J'dois partir" "I see it." Becomes : "J'le vois." "I eat." Becomes : "J'mange." And in front of the words that begin with the F, K, P, S or T sounds we pronounce the sound SH (ch) instead of the sound J. For example: "I'm cooking". Becomes : "Chfais la cuisine." "I think so." Becomes : "Chcrois bien." "I'll come by tomorrow." Becomes : "Chpasse demain." "I'm here." becomes : "Chui là." "I'm telling you". Becomes : "Chte dis." We're now going to take a look at the pronoun "il" (he), which is also often contracted when we speak. In front of a consonant, we rarely pronounce the "L" sound of the word "il", we simply pronounce "i". The result is: "He is coming." "I vient." "There are some." "Y'en a." But that's not the case before a vowel. Here we connect the I with the L. For example: "He's coming" or "He's opening". But what about the plural pronoun "ils" (they) with an s? Well, when you say it, you don't pronounce the L, we don't pronounce the L sound, but we're going to keep the S to connect the words. It'll be a bit easier when you see the examples. So we have : "They're coming." Which becomes : "Izarrivent." "They open." Which becomes : "Izouvrent." And in French we don't just contract pronouns, but we also contract entire words. These are words that we often use in our daily lives. When spoken, "peut-être" (maybe) becomes "ptet". "Parce que" (because) becomes "pasque". "Enfin" (finally/well) becomes "fin". "Maintenant" (now) becomes "main'nant". "Tout à l'heure" becomes "t'à l'heure". "Tout de suite" (in a while/just now) becomes "tout' suite". And now that you know all that, let's do a little exercise. Take a pen and paper and try to write down the sentence I'm going to say in natural spoken French. ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? When I was speaking, I contracted all these words a lot. I said: "Shall I come over now or later? In any case, you have to tell me because I might have to leave earlier." And in writing, we would write this: Shall I come over now or later? In any case, you have to tell me because I might have to leave earlier." I'm not saying that you should do the same. and make contractions when you speak French. It's really up to you to decide whether you feel comfortable or not. At first it may seem a little strange, but then it'll come more naturally. But in any case, you have to learn the basic rules before you can understand the changes that native speakers allow themselves to make. Another difference between spoken and written French is the use of apocopes. That's what makes it a bit difficult to understand at times. But what is an apocope? An apocope is a word that has been shortened. And it doesn't just exist in French, but in many languages. For example, we say mayo for mayonnaise, "prof" for teacher, kilo for kilogram, etc. And there aren't really any rules when it comes to choosing words which can or can't be shortened. It works with some words and not with others. Why? We don't really know. What these words have in common is that at the outset they have at least three syllables and are fairly common words that we use every day. And as everything has to move fast these days, we shorten words too. Alright, let's play a little game. I'm going to give you three seconds to try and guess which words these apocopes come from. D'ac. D'accord (I agree/alright). L'orga L'organisation (the organisation) La compta La comptabilité (accounting) Une manif Une manifestation (a demonstration) Une cata Une catastrophe (a catastrophe/disaster) Un appart Un appartement (a flat/apartment) Le ciné Le cinéma (the cinema/movies) Le resto Le restaurant (the restaurant) The third difficulty in understanding spoken French is the use of slang words. Slang words are words that are synonymous with common French words but which we are used in a very informal context. With family or friends, in a social circle where you can use very casual language. It's not the kind of language you'd expect to hear from a politician, for example. And a few years ago, we even had a small scandal when Emmanuel Macron, the current President of the French Republic in France, used this phrase. He said: "Un pognon de dingue", which is a very, very, very colloquial expression. "Pognon" means money and "dingue" means crazy. "Un pognon de dingue" means a crazy amount of money. So depending on the situation you find yourself in, you may encounter people who use slang words. It's very, very common and there are lots of them. So I'm going to tell you some of the most common ones. In slang, work is "le boulot". A friend is "un pote". A man is a "un gars". A policeman is "un flic". A car is "une caisse". Clothes are "des fringues". And there are so many more, I'll leave you a link here to a video that I made on the subject. Now that you understand the French, the French also need to understand you. In this video, I give you advice on how to be better understood by French people. Hello, have you made your choice? For me, the ? ? A blond wind? The blonde wind? What is a blond wind? Is it a cocktail? The blonde wind. The red wind. The blond wind. Ah! A white wine, a white wine. A white wine, okay, no, because I understood... Okay, very well... And for you? A froute (?) cheek. A froute (?) Cheek? Orange froute cheek ? Ah, an orange fruit juice. Okay, okay, a white wine, an orange fruit juice, alright. Did this little sketch bring up any painful memories in you all? I think so. We've all been there. You're on a trip, and you want the person you're talking to to understand you in their own language and the person doesn't understand. It reminds me of a funny moment I had in Italy. I was at a restaurant with my brother and he didn't really feel like making an effort with his pronunciation and asked the waiter: "Quattro tiramisù". and the waiter never understood what he was trying to say. He even called his colleague to take the order. In short, you may have understood from the examples I have given you but if the French don't understand you it's not because you're lacking vocabulary or beacuse you have bad grammar. The most common problem is pronunciation. So when I say that the French don't understand you, let's qualify that a little. Personally, if I have a conversation with someone who's learning French but who's hesitating a little, making pronunciation errors, searching for words etc. I'm going to be a bit patient and make an effort to understand the person. But that's when you have time. We're having a coffee, a chat and so on. We're in no hurry. "Être pressé" is an expression that means you don't have time, you have to hurry and get things done. And there are times in life when you're in a hurry. The people who are most in a hurry at work are often waiters in restaurants, cashiers in supermarkets, bakery shop assistants. In short, people who have a lot of customers and can't take much time for each individual. So it's the people who have a little less time to make the effort to understand foreigners. So obviously I'm generalising, there are people who are going to make an effort to understand you, but it's usually in these situations that the that people will understand you the least. But why? You're making an effort to speak French, you've been learning the language for ages And yet the French don't understand you. Might they be doing it on purpose? Are the French so arrogant that they don't want to make any effort to understand you? Personally, I don't think so. Ever since you were a child, you've been learning your mother tongue, your own language, be it English or Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, etc. You learn sounds, you learn vocabulary, you learn grammar rules, but you also learn to listen and recognise the phonetic characteristics of your language. And often when we learn another language, we tend to bring some of its characteristics into the language we are learning. You could call it: having an accent. Imagine a Frenchman who speaks English. He will sometimes misplace the stress on certain words. And in English, that's very important. For example, if I say "intenSIty", you're going to tell me, "No, that's wrong, it's "inTENsity". " And in some cases, if the tonic accent is placed at the wrong place, you may not even understand what the person is trying to say. It happened to me a few days ago with a Spanish friend. I said the word "acido" and she looked at me a little strangely. and she said to me, "Acido, ha sido, Àcido!" For me, as someone with a French ear, it's something that I find rather strange. I find it hard to understand how a word can be incomprehensible just because the stress is not in the right place. I have the impression that it's a tiny mistake, but I can imagine that you don't feel the same. And this is also the case in French. There are some small errors that make it a little more difficult to understand. The first is getting the vowel sounds wrong. The example I often give is that of English speakers who often say: "J'edore" instead of "J'adore". If you mispronounce the A in adore we understand "I'm sleeping". For example, if you say, "J'Edore la nuit." Is it, "I love the night." "I sleep at night." We don't know. The second mistake is to make mistakes with the sound of nasal vowels. In French, we have lots of little words with just one syllable, and if we change the sound of the vowel it becomes another word with another meaning. In the sketch at the beginning of the video I used the example of the words "vin" (wine) and "vent" (wind) and "blanc" (white) and "blond (blond). But there are many more. For example: the bridge, the peacock, the bread. Hunger, the fawn, the background/bottom. One, in, have. Etc, etc. Of course, depending on the context, we'll understand you even if you make a mistake, but it's always better to master those sounds. In my pronunciation course, you'll also find a number of exercises to stop confusing them. I'm just saying. One of the last mistakes, if you can call it that, is to pronounce words the way we pronounce them in our mother tongue. French has many words in common with English and other Latin languages. For example: Attention/attention, remarquable/remarkable, patient/patient And you can see that even if the spelling is the same, the pronunciation is completely different. That's why you need to know the pronunciation rules of the language you are learning. Imagine you're visiting Paris and you ask someone: "Where is the Eiffel Tower?" The person will probably reply: Aïffeul? The Aïffeul tower? Sorry, I've never heard of it. The Eiffel Tower, like this. Ah, the Eiffel Tower is that way. There is still a good chance that the person will understand you because the tower you usually visit in Paris is always the same. Let's get into the details now. Here's a more technical and specific video on th pronunciation of vowels in French. There are 16 phonetic vowels in French. 16 is just crazy! If you look at other Romance languages, there are 13 in Portuguese, 9 in Romanian, 7 in Italian, and only 5 in Spanish. So you're probably thinking to yourself, the French are crazy! And you're not wrong! But learning French pronunciation isn't completely impossible, and I'm going to give you a little help! For this video, we're going to use my accent. My accent is fairly standard, i.e. not too pronounced. I lived in the north of France until I was 10 before moving to the South, and I also lived in Paris for five years. So my accent isn't really marked by any particular region. And many of you have told me that you like the way I speak, the way I pronounce words, which I'm happy to hear. And that's what we're going to base this video on. Let's start with the letter A. If we look at the phonetic alphabet, there are two types of A. The /a/ and the /ɑ/. In France, to be honest, the sound /ɑ/ is hardly used any more. It's a sound you might find if you watch old French films. But personally I never say it, and I don't know anyone who uses it either. To pronounce the sound /a/ we pronounce a nice open /a/, as in Paris. Paris. And not Paris, as I sometimes hear. We can sometimes find accents on the letter A, but it doesn't change the pronunciation at all. For example: an arm, a cake, here you are. All these /a/ sounds are pronounced the same. French also has a closed /e/ sound. To write this sound, add an acute accent on the letter E. For example: Élisa, bike, video. Video and not vidio as I sometimes hear. In French, we also have the open sound /ɛ/ and it's the same principle: we add this time a grave accent on the letter E to write this sound. For example in the words: mother or faithful. A circumflex accent can also be added to the letter E, shaped a bit like a hat. If you look closely at this circumflex accent, it's a bit of a combination of a grave accent and an acute accent. Why is this? Because the circumflex accent can make both sounds. For example, the closed /e/, as in : dressed. Or /ɛ/ open, as in: dream. How can you tell the difference? The /e/ sound will be pronounced open, in the case where the last sound of the syllable is a consonant. For example: We say, "rêve" The V sound is the last sound of the syllable. But we say "to dream". Here we have two syllables. And I won't go into all of the possible spellings of the sounds /e/ and /ɛ/ so that the video is not too long. Now let's talk about the letter E. It is found in many French words and it's important to understand how it works. The letter e makes the sound /ø/ when closed, As in the words: je, me or petit, for example. You can also write the /ø/ sound with the letters EU, as in fire. Or OEU, As in the word vow. But in French, there is also an open /œ/ sound. As in masseur or coeur. Here, it's the same principle as what I explained for the closed /e/ and the open /ɛ/. If the last sound of the syllable is a consonant, then we have an open /œ/. For example, in the word lunch, the last sound of the syllable is the /n/ sound. But in the word to eat lunch, the last sound of the syllable is the sound /ø/. In French we also have the letter O which makes the /o/ sound. For example, a motorbike. But you can also write the O sound with the letters AU, as in the word, too. Or with the letters EAU, as in the word skin. And you may have guessed it, the letter O also makes the sound /ɔ/ open. For example, in the word apple. And it works again based on the same principle. If the last sound of the syllable is a consonant sound. So it's an open /ɔ/. For example, the telephone. But phoned. Phoned In French, you also have to be careful not to confuse the /y/ sound with the /u/ sound. The letter U alone makes the sound /y/, as in the word rocket. But the letters OU together make the /u/ sound, like an ant. And finally, the letters I and Y make the sound /i/. It's quite a long I. The same I found in 'cheese', for example. They can be found in words like "Paris" or "un lycée". You can even have both in the same word, for example with the word 'physical'. They are pronounced the same way. Come on, let's take a little break. Let's go and see how the Spanish manage with French pronunciation. And it's not easy for them. Trough/feeder No ! Feeder. In French, when you have an E between a G and an O, or between a G and an A, it is silent. So we have the sound /ʒ/. So at the beginning of the word we have "mange-". and then we have the letters O and I, which together make the "wa" sound. So, "mangeoire". Lion cub. Lion cub. When there is an E after the letter C, the letter C makes the /s/ sound. And then we have the letters EAU, which together make the sound O. It is therefore pronounced lionceau. Murder. Murder. Here we have the letters E and U together to make the sound /œ/. Note that this is an open /œ/. But that's not always the case. Sometimes we also have the letters E and U, which make the /ø/, much more closed, as in curious for example. A long time. A long time. In French, we have a lot of silent letters, which are written but not pronounced when we speak. Very often these are letters found in the Latin root of the word. For example, here "longtemps" comes from "longus tempus" in Latin. This is a slightly special case because it's a word which is made up of two words. We have the word "long", where the final G is not pronounced, and the word "temps", where you don't pronounce the P and the S at the end either. Together we have, "longtemps". To welcome. To welcome. Here we have a slightly more difficult word. First we'll look at the end of the word. In French, when you have this sequence of letters, I followed by two Ls, we get the /j/ sound. For example: a girl or a family. Watch out, there are a few exceptions. And here the letters UE make the closed E sound. So we say, "accueillir". There's a little subtlety here. Here we pronounce "accueillir" with a closed E because it's not the last syllable of the word. The last syllable is "-illir". But there's also the word "accueil", where here we have an open E. A welcome. Because it's the last syllable of the word. "Accueil", open. "Accueillir", closed. Turlututu. (~The sound of a flute) Turlututu. What's interesting here is the pronunciation of the /y/ that doesn't exist in Spanish, or in many other languages for that matter. To pronounce the /y/ sound, the mouth takes on the same shape as for pronouncing the /o/ sound, but you should try to pronounce the /i/ sound. This will give /y/. And you can also blow lightly as in: "Salut". There are a few sounds that students hate in French. The ɛ̃, the õ and the ɑ̃. And yet these sounds are extremely important. In other words, they're very important in French pronunciation. In the following video, I explain how to pronounce them correctly. In French, there are three nasal sounds. The IN /ɛ̃/, the AN /ɑ̃/ and the ON /õ/. Some people would say there are four. Particularly in the south of France, there is a difference between two "in" sounds. The "in" and the "un". Personally, it's a distinction that I don't make and I only pronounce the "in" sound. The first sound is the "in" sound. For example: "in the morning". To pronounce the IN sound correctly, the mouth takes the same shape as for pronouncing the I sound and then the sound becomes nasal. And keep your tongue flat in your mouth. There are many, many, many ways to write the IN sound in French. First with the letters IN we saw in the morning or the garden. With the letters IM, as in simple or impossible. With the letters AIN as in train or human. With the letters AIM as in hunger. With the letters EIN as in painting or a kidney. And I'm sorry, the list isn't finished yet! With the letters IEN, as in a dog or nothing. And finally, it can also be written UN, as in one and all. And it is precisely with this spelling that the accent will perhaps change according to the region where, in the south, it's more common to pronounce: "un et chacun". So that's a big list for the 'in' sound, but just remember that it always includes either the letter I or the letter U. Now we'll move on to the "an" sound. For example: to eat. For the AN sound, the mouth takes on the same shape as when pronouncing the A sound, and then the sound becomes nasal. Once again, keep your tongue flat in the back of your mouth. A, AN. And here too we have several ways of writing the AN sound. With the letters AN as in an angel or France. With the letters AM like a lamp or a vampire. With the letters EN like in the wind or an adventure. With the letters EM as in an emperor or to fill. Here again, there are several possible spellings, but remember that we always find the letter E or the letter A, accompanied by an N or an M. And finally, the last sound is the simplest, the "on" sound. Like a lemon. For the ON sound, the mouth takes on the same shape as for the O sound and then the sound becomes nasal. Once again keeping the tongue flat in the mouth. Here, there are only two possibilities for writing the sound ON. First with the letters ON, as in a lion or a sweet. Or with the letters OM as in to count or a first name. So now that you know everything, here's a quick test. I'll give you exactly ten seconds to read the sentence that appears on the screen! The answer is: Five hundred kittens singing five hundred songs. Five hundred kittens singing five hundred songs. Now it's time for the test! In the following video we'll look at 5 words that are difficult to pronounce in French Let me know in the comments whether you succeed or not! French is completely illogical, the pronunciation is really complicated. You write a lot of letters but you don't pronounce them! That's one of the things that I hear very often when talking about pronunciation in French. And yet, it's not that complicated. It's much more logical than in English, for example. For each word I'm going to give you 5 seconds to pronounce it before showing you the correct pronunciation. Here we go with the first word: Fog Fog is a cloud that forms very close to the ground in slightly damp areas. And this word is pronounced BROUILLARD. There is a /j/ sound made by the letters I and two Ls. In French we often find this sequence of letters ILL and it makes the sound /j/. For example: a girl, a ball, make-up. And in the word "brouillard" we don't pronounce the final d. As is so often the case in French, we don't pronounce the last consonant of the word. And a little subtlety, be careful to distinguish between the /u/ sound and the /y/ sound. Here we have the letters OU which make the sound /u/, BROUILLARD, which is different from the /y/ sound, which is made by the letter U alone. If that's something you're still struggling with, I've got a pronunciation course with lots of exercises to help you to distinguish between OU and U. I'll leave you the link in the description. Second word: Happy. Here the word starts with an H and in French we have many words that begin with the letter H, but this letter is always silent, we never say it. So here the letter makes no sound. Then we have the letters EU which together make the sound /ø/. It is a closed /ø/, and the final X is, once again, a silent consonant. The last consonant of the word is not pronounced, so we have the word happy. happy. Next word : Surgery. In this word, the letters C and H make the sound /ʃ/. This is the case most of the time in French, where the letters C and H make the /ʃ/ sound, but they sometimes also make the K sound. This is very often the case for words of Greek origin. For example: an orchestra, a choir, an orchid, etc. As I was saying, you have to make a distinction between the sound /y/ and the /u/ sound. In the word surgery we use the /y/ sound. A little tip to pronounce this sound correctly. Place your mouth as if you were to say the O sound. And keeping the shape of the mouth, try to pronounce the I sound. This will give U. And that's the sound we want to use in French. And here, at the end of the word, there's no consonant but a silent vowel. Very often, when the letter E is at the end of a word, it is silent. And in this case, when it's after a vowel, you can't hear it at all. The last sound in the word is the I sound, surgery. The next word isn't really a word, it's a very short sentence: We've got one. So I know that here it's a bit difficult to say all these nasal sounds in a row. If you want to go even further, I talk about it in my pronunciation classes. But what we're interested in here and what will help you a lot when you say this sentence, it's linking words together. In French, very often when a word ends with a consonant and the next word begins with a vowel, we make what we call a link. In other words, we say words as if they were a single word. So we're not going to say here: "on, en, a, un," If you say the sentence like this we wouldn't even understand the meaning, you must link the words together. So make an initial link between the N and the E. "On en", "on en", and we make another link between the N and the A. We have one. We have one. I'll give you a few seconds to try and repeat: we have one. And finally, the last word in this challenge: Infrastructure. In French we very often have syllables made up of several consonants, the second of which is often the letter R and I know that it's quite difficult for foreigners to pronounce sounds such as tr, fr, br, etc. Here we have the syllable FRA inFRAstructure, and my advice is to break down the sounds. First, let's take a look at the R. The R in French sometimes poses problems because it's a harder sound than in other languages. To pronounce the French R, try to imagine that you're gargling in your bathroom. So it's going to look like this: Then you say the other sounds, before and after. We'll start with the /f/ sound, followed by the R sound. Faster. And then the R and the A. And now, all together! Does it work? Try to take your time and try again several times. But with a bit of practice, it will come. And it'll be the same for the other syllables. Infrastructure. For the TRU sound, do the same thing. Decompose the /t/ sound and the R sound, the /y/ sound we also saw earlier. Why are there so many letters in French that aren't even pronounced? In this special Halloween video, I explain everything you need to know about phantom letters in French. Do you believe in ghosts? You should. You're looking at one right now. Right here. Have you ever wondered why the word "genoux" (knees) is spelt with an X in the plural? But the word "gnous" (wildebeest) is spelt with an S? Why is the word pharmacy written with a P and an H and pronounced /f/, when you write the word "huit" (eight) with an H that you don't pronounce? And what's that circumflex accent found just about everywhere? The ghosts of the French past. If you're learning French, I'm sure you've already said to yourself, "But why does this language have such complicated spelling?" No, the explanation is a bit longer than that. French is far from being a phonetically spelled language. In Spanish and Latin, each sound corresponds more or less to a letter. In French, we could have chosen this logic, but we preferred to tell stories inside words. And today I'm going to tell you some ghost stories. I'll start by telling you the story of the first ghost of the French language, the letter X. You too may have learnt this grammar rule. Words ending in OU take an S in the plural, except jewle, pebble, cabbage, knee, owl, toy and louse (head lice). But why? What is it about these words that makes them so special that they take an X in the plural form that you don't even pronounce? Do you really want to know what this X is? It is the ghost of a scribe monk that still haunts us today. And not just any monk. A lazy monk. This X isn't even a real letter. It's an abbreviation. In the Middle Ages, scribe monks were responsible for copying manuscripts. And because it was such a long job, they invented a few abbreviations. This symbol, for example, was used to replace the sequence of letters US which is often found in Latin. Little by little, from copy to copy, we think that the meaning of this symbol was lost and confused with the letter X. For example, the word "cheval" (horse) already existed in the 12th century. One horse, some...? Chevaux (horses)? Ah ah, not at that time. At that time, the plural of the word horse was "chevaus", which was pronounced something like that. Chevaus, chevaus. And as I said, the monks used this abbreviation to replace the letters US, which was later confused with the letter X. And one day something like this must have happened. A monk must have thought: "It's a bit odd to write CHEVAX, when we say CHEVAUS. Come on, I think there's a U missing, I'll add it." And boom! And then the diphthong AU was transformed into O which is pronounced now in standard French. Horses. And from this abbreviation, we have created this somewhat chaotic plural rule with X. So that's why we've ended up with words with different plurals such as knees and wildebeests. And just imagine this story. Plural X's have haunted the nightmares of generations and generations of students. All because some monks wanted to save a bit of time. Bunch of lazy bastards! And the ghost of these monks can be found in other words too. The word "huit" (eight), for example. What's with the H? The word eight comes from the Latin "octo", and it is clear that there is no H at the beginning of the word. This time, we've added a letter to make it easier to read. In the Middle Ages, the letters U and V were confused in the Latin alphabet. If we wrote this, we wouldn't know whether it should be pronounced "vite" or "huit". So to make things clear, we added an H. And it's the same story for the words oil and oyster, which come from the Latin oleum and ostrea without H. OK, so the Hs in the words oil, oyster and eight are not pronounced. But what happened to the word pharmacy? Why do the letters P and H make the sound /f/? Throughout its history, French spelling has undergone a process of relatinisation. For example, for centuries we wrote the word body, C O R S, phonetically. The same applies to the word "doigt" (finger), which we find spelt D O I, in the novel Perceval by Chrétien de Troyes, written around 1180. But writing is something that has long been reserved for the elite of the population. The clergy, the clerics, the nobles, the monks we have mentioned, and all of them also spoke Latin. And Latin was the language of reference, the most prestigious language. So the French language couldn't stray too far from this. So we added a few letters to make the French words look like Latin words. That's why the word body (corps) is spelt with a P today, because it comes from the Latin "corpus". And the same goes for the word "doigt" (finger), to which we have added the G and the T which comes from the Latin "digitus". That's what happened with the word pharmacy. It was spelt "farmacie" with an F in a surgery textbook dating from 1314. It later became pharmacy with a P and an H. The ghost of the Latin pharmacia has passed this way. And if we want to be even more precise, the words where we use the spelling PH are words of Greek origin that came into French through Latin. Examples include "spelling, alphabet, euphoric, philosophy" and so many others. And strangely enough, that's not the case with "fantôme" (ghost/phantom). The word "fantôme" comes from the Greek "phantagma", which also gave rise to the word "fantasy". And the word phantagma came directly from Greece without passing through Latin. It was brought by the inhabitants of Phocaea to Gaul where they founded the city of Marseilles, the Phocaean city with a P and an H of course. And strangely enough, at a time when French was being relatinised, we've forgot the word "fantôme". Coincidence? But there's another ghost we haven't talked about. That little circumflex accent. The Greek word phantagma has continued to evolve over the centuries to give "fantosme" in Old French and today fantôme. The syllable has undergone what is known as an amuification. In other words, over the course of time, we have stopped pronouncing a sound. The S sound at the end of the syllable has disappeared. But it's not the only one. Many other words have also experienced this phenomenon. For a long time, we continued to write this S, which had become mute, before deciding to replace it with a circumflex accent. And if we compare French words to other languages, it's even more obvious. For example, the word "forêt" means "forest" in English, "foresta" in Italian. The word "château" is "castle" in English and "castello" in Italian. "Août" is the word for the month of the year, "August" in English, "agosto" in Italian. And let's take the word "tôt" in French. This word means quickly, and it also means early in the morning. And once again we have the ghost of the S which has disappeared, the S in the Latin word "tostus" which means to burn, to grill. It is thought that the meaning of the word has evolved, and that it originally meant cooked quickly, and then took on the meaning of quickly or early in the morning. In English, the word "toast" always means to cook quickly, to grill something. And it's even come back to France, as we now have the verb "toaster". And I find it very interesting to think that when you get up early in the morning, you eat toast. To conclude and to motivate you, I'm going to give you 5 good reasons to continue studying pronunciation in French. There are 5 reasons why you should concentrate on your French pronunciation. Number 1, it's easier than you think. Number 2, to boost your self-confidence. Number 3, for more authentic interactions with French speakers. Number 4, to become fluent more quickly. And number 5, because you'll never be as young as you are today. French pronunciation has a reputation for being a little difficult. And so it's something that students, and sometimes teachers also tend to neglect. But in my opinion, this is a big mistake. But why is that? French pronunciation isn't as difficult as you might think. If you're watching this video, chances are you probably speak English. So let's have a quick comparison of the two languages. In French, there are officially 16 phonetic vowels. But you could say that most people only use 14. In English, there are around 20. And it's even more complicated than that because it depends on the dialects, accents, countries, etc. But that's not all! In English, if you've never heard certain words, it's impossible to guess how they are pronounced. Do you see what I'm talking about? In French, there are clearly defined pronunciation rules. And as their name suggests, they are very consistent. The phonetics of French works mainly by groups of letters. The group of letters EAU will always make the sound /o/. Always! What you need to remember is that there are often many different ways of writing the same sound. So you can see that phonetics in French is a little simpler than phonetics in English, all you need is a good method. Working on your pronunciation is also a great way of boosting your self-confidence. There's nothing worse than trying to order at a restaurant and the waiter doesn't understand what you're saying. It's happened to all of us, including me, and it's really frustrating and disappointing. I have many friends who have learnt French and gone to France and they've told me, "When I was in France, when I wanted to order at a restaurant, people didn't understand what I was saying." So, first of all, let's talk about this cliché: "The French don't understand on purpose". Maybe that's true for a small percentage of the population, but I can assure you that most of the time this is not the case. Maybe you learned French by repeating the words you learned but you don't really know the pronunciation rules. And if you get to a restaurant and try to guess the name of the dishes rather than reading the menu using the rules, then we're going to find it hard to understand you. Once again, by understanding the rules of pronunciation in French, it will be much easier to read. But as well as boosting your self-confidence, you'll also have more authentic interactions with French speakers. So we're going to talk about something that can sometimes offend because it can hurt our egos a little bit, but there's a difference between having a a strong, understandable accent and having a strong but incomprehensible accent. And unfortunately, that's the truth. If your accent makes the way you speak incomprehensible, there's a good chance that the French will have a hard time understanding what you're saying or have trouble staying focused when they listen to you. And I remember when I started giving private lessons that I had a student who had such a strong accent that I really had trouble understanding what he was telling me. I think you know me a little bit by now, so no, I wasn't deliberately not understanding what he was saying, it was really difficult for me. In fact, he had never really taken the time to study the basics of phonetics and the basics of pronunciation, and he pronounced the words a little bit randomly, pronouncing silent letters very often. That made his private lessons really difficult because I had to really concentrate and try to understand what he was telling me, and he couldn't really make progress while making so many pronunciation errors. One day I decided to talk to him about it because we couldn't go on like that and we really reviewed all the basics. For him, it helped enormously and he was able to gradually correct his pronunciation mistakes. Good pronunciation will also help you to become fluent more quickly. It's a bit like what I said before, if you have better confidence in yourself and if you have more authentic interactions with French speakers, then you'll make much faster progress. What's more, by working on your pronunciation, French sounds will become much more familiar to you. So you'll have better pronunciation, but you'll also have a better understanding of French speakers. And finally, the last reason why you should work on your pronunciation is that you'll never be as young as you are today! So yes, I know, it's a bit dramatic when I put it like that, but it's true. You know that children can learn languages without an accent, teenagers too. And for adults, it's a little more difficult, but not impossible. And it's true that the younger you are, the better your listening and ability to reproduce the sounds you hear are. That's why you need to concentrate on pronunciation as early as possible. If you don't do this from the outset, it's very likely that, like the student I told you about before, you'll develop bad habits which are harder to correct later. If you start working on your pronunciation today, you'll be very happy with your results in a month's time, or two months' time, and just imagine where you'll be next year! I hope that after watching this video, you'll want to continue exploring the subject. If that's the case, you can find the link in the description to my pronunciation course, Flawless French Pronunciation. Thank you all for watching this video. Don't forget to download the pronunciation guide. It is extremely comprehensive and free. See you soon!

Do you sound a bit like
this when you speak French? Une pain au chocolat. Un! Not une! Un pain au chocolat. If so, then this video is for you! French pronunciation is a
bit tricky, but don't worry! I've put together a special French
pronunciation guide which summarises all the essential rules you need to
know for good French pronunciation. To download it, simply click on the link in description, enter your e-mail address
and you will receive the pronunciation guide directly into your mailbox. After that, you'll continue to
receive free PDFs of my videos. Of course, you can
unsubscribe at any time. Hi! Hi! Hi! Welcome to another episode
of French Mornings. If you're learning French,
you've come to the right place. I'm Elisa and on this channel I
help you to improve your French and to speak more naturally. Today, I've prepared a
one-hour course on the theme of French pronunciation. I'll give you some tips
to help you understand French people who speak fast. I'll also give you some examples
of good and bad pronunciation, and even a test. So get comfortable,
activate the subtitles if you need them, and let's start! The pronunciation of French
is sometimes very different from what we see written. In the following video,
I give you some advice to understand spoken French. There's even a short test at the end. French is a very strict language
when it comes to writing. We have a lot of special grammar
and spelling rules that need to be respected. But when it comes to speaking, French
becomes a little more flexible and doesn't follow the rules quite as much. So if you've only learned
French from books or at school, I'm sure you sometimes
find it a little hard to understand the French we speak in everyday life. There are many differences
between spoken French, the French we speak in everyday life, and written French, which is more formal and reserved for official communications. Today I'm going to give you three
reasons stopping you from easily understanding spoken French. The first reason is verbal contractions. The French love to contract
words when they speak. So it's a bit harder to
understand them because that the language is less articulate. But fortunately it's not that complicated. One of the most common
contractions is the pronoun "Je" (I). We rarely pronounce the "e" sound in
the word "je", but we do contract it. with the verb or word that follows it. For example: "I have to leave". Becomes: "J'dois partir" "I see it." Becomes : "J'le vois." "I eat." Becomes : "J'mange." And in front of the words that begin with the F, K, P, S or T sounds we pronounce the sound SH (ch) instead of the sound J. For example:
"I'm cooking". Becomes : "Chfais la cuisine." "I think so." Becomes : "Chcrois bien." "I'll come by tomorrow." Becomes : "Chpasse demain." "I'm here." becomes : "Chui là." "I'm telling you". Becomes : "Chte dis." We're now going to take a look at the
pronoun "il" (he), which is also often contracted when we speak. In front of a consonant, we
rarely pronounce the "L" sound of the word "il", we simply pronounce "i". The result is: "He is coming." "I vient." "There are some."
"Y'en a." But that's not the case before a vowel. Here we connect the I with the L. For example: "He's
coming" or "He's opening". But what about the plural
pronoun "ils" (they) with an s? Well, when you say it,
you don't pronounce the L, we don't pronounce the L sound, but we're going to keep
the S to connect the words. It'll be a bit easier
when you see the examples. So we have : "They're coming." Which becomes : "Izarrivent." "They open." Which becomes : "Izouvrent." And in French we don't just contract pronouns, but we
also contract entire words. These are words that we
often use in our daily lives. When spoken, "peut-être" (maybe)
becomes "ptet". "Parce que" (because)
becomes "pasque". "Enfin" (finally/well)
becomes "fin". "Maintenant" (now)
becomes "main'nant". "Tout à l'heure" becomes "t'à l'heure". "Tout de suite" (in a while/just now)
becomes "tout' suite". And now that you know all that,
let's do a little exercise. Take a pen and paper and try to write
down the sentence I'm going to say in
natural spoken French. ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? When I was speaking, I
contracted all these words a lot. I said: "Shall I come over now or later? In any case,
you have to tell me because I might have to leave earlier." And in writing, we would write this: Shall I come over now
or later? In any case, you have to tell me because I
might have to leave earlier." I'm not saying that
you should do the same. and make contractions
when you speak French. It's really up to you to
decide whether you feel comfortable or not. At first it may seem a little
strange, but then it'll come more naturally. But in any case, you have to learn the
basic rules before you can understand the changes that native
speakers allow themselves to make. Another difference between
spoken and written French is the use of apocopes. That's what makes it a bit
difficult to understand at times. But what is an apocope? An apocope is a word
that has been shortened. And it doesn't just
exist in French, but in many languages. For example, we say mayo for
mayonnaise, "prof" for teacher, kilo for kilogram, etc. And there aren't really any rules
when it comes to choosing words which can or can't be shortened. It works with some words
and not with others. Why? We don't really know. What these words have in common
is that at the outset they have at least three syllables
and are fairly common words that we use every day. And as everything has to move fast
these days, we shorten words too. Alright, let's play a little game. I'm going to give you three seconds
to try and guess which words these apocopes come from. D'ac. D'accord
(I agree/alright). L'orga L'organisation
(the organisation) La compta La comptabilité
(accounting) Une manif Une manifestation
(a demonstration) Une cata Une catastrophe
(a catastrophe/disaster) Un appart Un appartement
(a flat/apartment) Le ciné Le cinéma
(the cinema/movies) Le resto Le restaurant
(the restaurant) The third difficulty
in understanding spoken French is the use of slang words. Slang words are words that are synonymous
with common French words but which we are used in a very informal context. With family or friends, in a
social circle where you can use very casual language. It's not the kind of language
you'd expect to hear from a politician, for example. And a few years ago, we even
had a small scandal when Emmanuel Macron, the current
President of the French Republic in France, used this phrase. He said: "Un pognon de dingue", which is
a very, very, very colloquial expression. "Pognon" means money
and "dingue" means crazy. "Un pognon de dingue" means
a crazy amount of money. So depending on the situation you
find yourself in, you may encounter people who use slang words. It's very, very common and
there are lots of them. So I'm going to tell you
some of the most common ones. In slang, work is "le boulot". A friend is "un pote". A man is a "un gars". A policeman is "un flic". A car is "une caisse". Clothes are "des fringues". And there are so many more,
I'll leave you a link here to a video that
I made on the subject. Now that you understand
the French, the French also need
to understand you. In this video, I give
you advice on how to be better understood by French people. Hello, have you made your choice? For me, the ? ? A blond wind? The blonde wind? What is a blond wind? Is it a cocktail? The blonde wind. The red wind. The blond wind. Ah! A white wine, a white wine. A white wine, okay, no,
because I understood... Okay, very well... And for you? A froute (?) cheek. A froute (?) Cheek? Orange froute cheek ? Ah, an orange fruit juice. Okay, okay, a white wine, an orange
fruit juice, alright. Did this little sketch bring up
any painful memories in you all? I think so. We've all been there. You're on a trip, and you want
the person you're talking to to understand you in their own language
and the person doesn't understand. It reminds me of a funny
moment I had in Italy. I was at a restaurant with my brother and
he didn't really feel like making an effort with his pronunciation and asked
the waiter: "Quattro tiramisù". and the waiter never understood
what he was trying to say. He even called his
colleague to take the order. In short, you may have understood
from the examples I have given you but if the French don't understand
you it's not because you're lacking vocabulary or beacuse
you have bad grammar. The most common problem is pronunciation. So when I say that the
French don't understand you, let's qualify that a little. Personally, if I have a conversation
with someone who's learning French but who's hesitating a little,
making pronunciation errors, searching for words etc. I'm going to be a bit patient and make
an effort to understand the person. But that's when you have time. We're having a coffee, a chat and so on. We're in no hurry. "Être pressé" is an expression that
means you don't have time, you have to hurry and get things done. And there are times in life
when you're in a hurry. The people who are most in
a hurry at work are often waiters in restaurants,
cashiers in supermarkets, bakery shop assistants. In short, people who have a
lot of customers and can't take much time for each individual. So it's the people who have a
little less time to make the effort to understand foreigners. So obviously I'm generalising,
there are people who are going to make an effort to understand you, but
it's usually in these situations that the that people will understand you the least. But why? You're making an effort to speak French,
you've been learning the language for ages And yet the French don't understand you. Might they be doing it on purpose? Are the French so arrogant that
they don't want to make any effort to understand you? Personally, I don't think so. Ever since you were a child, you've
been learning your mother tongue, your own language, be
it English or Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, etc. You learn sounds, you learn vocabulary, you learn grammar rules,
but you also learn to listen and recognise the phonetic
characteristics of your language. And often when we learn another
language, we tend to bring some of its characteristics into
the language we are learning. You could call it: having an accent. Imagine a Frenchman who speaks English. He will sometimes misplace the
stress on certain words. And in English, that's very important. For example, if I say "intenSIty",
you're going to tell me, "No, that's wrong, it's "inTENsity". " And in some cases, if the tonic
accent is placed at the wrong place, you may not even
understand what the person is trying to say. It happened to me a few days
ago with a Spanish friend. I said the word "acido" and she
looked at me a little strangely. and she said to me, "Acido, ha sido, Àcido!" For me, as someone with a French ear,
it's something that I find rather strange. I find it hard to understand how a word
can be incomprehensible just because the stress is not in the right place. I have the impression that it's
a tiny mistake, but I can imagine that you don't feel the same. And this is also the case in French. There are some small errors that make it
a little more difficult to understand. The first is getting
the vowel sounds wrong. The example I often give is that
of English speakers who often say: "J'edore" instead of "J'adore". If you mispronounce the A in adore we understand "I'm sleeping". For example, if you
say, "J'Edore la nuit." Is it, "I love the night." "I sleep at night."
We don't know. The second mistake is to make mistakes with the sound of nasal vowels. In French, we have lots of little words
with just one syllable, and if we change the sound of the vowel it becomes another
word with another meaning. In the sketch at the beginning of the
video I used the example of the words "vin" (wine) and "vent" (wind) and
"blanc" (white) and "blond (blond). But there are many more. For example: the bridge,
the peacock, the bread. Hunger, the fawn, the background/bottom. One, in, have.
Etc, etc. Of course, depending on the context, we'll understand you even if you make a mistake, but it's always better
to master those sounds. In my pronunciation course, you'll
also find a number of exercises to stop confusing them. I'm just saying. One of the last mistakes,
if you can call it that, is to pronounce words
the way we pronounce them in our mother tongue. French has many words in common
with English and other Latin languages. For example: Attention/attention, remarquable/remarkable, patient/patient And you can see that even if the
spelling is the same, the pronunciation is completely different. That's why you need to know
the pronunciation rules of the language you are learning. Imagine you're visiting Paris and you ask someone: "Where is the Eiffel Tower?" The person will probably reply: Aïffeul? The Aïffeul tower? Sorry, I've never heard of it. The Eiffel Tower, like this. Ah, the Eiffel Tower is that way. There is still a good chance that the
person will understand you because the tower you usually visit
in Paris is always the same. Let's get into the details now. Here's a more technical and
specific video on th pronunciation of vowels in French. There are 16 phonetic vowels in French. 16 is just crazy! If you look at other Romance
languages, there are 13 in Portuguese, 9 in Romanian, 7 in Italian,
and only 5 in Spanish. So you're probably thinking to
yourself, the French are crazy! And you're not wrong! But learning French pronunciation isn't
completely impossible, and I'm going to give you a little help! For this video, we're
going to use my accent. My accent is fairly standard,
i.e. not too pronounced. I lived in the north of France
until I was 10 before moving to the South, and I also
lived in Paris for five years. So my accent isn't really
marked by any particular region. And many of you have told me
that you like the way I speak, the way I pronounce words,
which I'm happy to hear. And that's what we're going
to base this video on. Let's start with the letter A. If we look at the phonetic
alphabet, there are two types of A. The /a/ and the /ɑ/. In France, to be honest, the sound /ɑ/ is
hardly used any more. It's a sound you might
find if you watch old French films. But personally I never say
it, and I don't know anyone who uses it either. To pronounce the sound
/a/ we pronounce a nice open /a/, as in Paris. Paris. And not Paris, as I sometimes hear. We can sometimes find accents on the letter A, but it doesn't
change the pronunciation at all. For example: an arm, a cake, here you are. All these /a/ sounds
are pronounced the same. French also has a closed /e/ sound. To write this sound, add an acute accent on the letter E. For example: Élisa, bike, video. Video and not vidio as I sometimes hear. In French, we also have the open sound
/ɛ/ and it's the same principle: we add this time a grave accent on the
letter E to write this sound. For example in the words:
mother or faithful. A circumflex accent can also
be added to the letter E, shaped a bit like a hat. If you look closely at this circumflex
accent, it's a bit of a combination of a grave accent and an
acute accent. Why is this? Because the circumflex
accent can make both sounds. For example, the closed /e/, as in : dressed. Or /ɛ/ open, as in: dream. How can you tell the difference? The /e/ sound will be
pronounced open, in the case where the last sound
of the syllable is a consonant. For example: We say, "rêve" The V sound is the last
sound of the syllable. But we say "to dream". Here we have two syllables. And I won't go into all of the possible spellings of the sounds
/e/ and /ɛ/ so that the video is not too long. Now let's talk about the letter E. It is found in many French words and it's important to
understand how it works. The letter e makes the
sound /ø/ when closed, As in the words: je, me
or petit, for example. You can also write the /ø/
sound with the letters EU, as in fire. Or OEU, As in the word vow. But in French, there is also an open /œ/ sound. As in masseur or coeur. Here, it's the same
principle as what I explained for the closed
/e/ and the open /ɛ/. If the last sound of the syllable is a consonant, then we have an open /œ/. For example, in the word lunch, the last sound of the
syllable is the /n/ sound. But in the word to eat lunch, the last sound of the syllable is the sound /ø/. In French we also have the letter O which makes the /o/ sound. For example, a motorbike. But you can also write the O sound with the letters AU, as in the word, too. Or with the letters EAU, as in the word skin. And you may have guessed it, the letter O also makes
the sound /ɔ/ open. For example, in the word apple. And it works again based on the same principle. If the last sound of the
syllable is a consonant sound. So it's an open /ɔ/. For example, the telephone. But phoned. Phoned In French, you also have to be careful not to confuse the /y/
sound with the /u/ sound. The letter U alone makes the sound /y/, as in the word rocket. But
the letters OU together make the /u/ sound, like an ant. And finally, the letters I
and Y make the sound /i/. It's quite a long I. The same I found in 'cheese', for example. They can be found in words
like "Paris" or "un lycée". You can even have both in the same word,
for example with the word 'physical'. They are pronounced the same way. Come on, let's take a little break. Let's go and see how the
Spanish manage with French pronunciation. And it's not easy for them. Trough/feeder No ! Feeder. In French, when you have
an E between a G and an O, or between a G and an A, it is silent. So we have the sound /ʒ/. So at the beginning of
the word we have "mange-". and then we have the letters O and I, which together make the "wa" sound. So, "mangeoire". Lion cub. Lion cub. When there is an E after the letter
C, the letter C makes the /s/ sound. And then we have the letters EAU,
which together make the sound O. It is therefore pronounced lionceau. Murder. Murder. Here we have the letters E and U
together to make the sound /œ/. Note that this is an open /œ/. But that's not always the case. Sometimes we also have the letters E and
U, which make the /ø/, much more closed, as in curious for example. A long time. A long time. In French, we have a lot of silent
letters, which are written but not pronounced when we speak. Very often these are letters found
in the Latin root of the word. For example, here "longtemps" comes
from "longus tempus" in Latin. This is a slightly special
case because it's a word which is made up of two words. We have the word "long", where
the final G is not pronounced, and the word "temps", where you don't
pronounce the P and the S at the end either. Together we have, "longtemps". To welcome. To welcome. Here we have a slightly
more difficult word. First we'll look at the end of the word. In French, when you have this sequence
of letters, I followed by two Ls, we get the /j/ sound. For example: a girl or a family. Watch out, there are a few exceptions. And here the letters UE
make the closed E sound. So we say, "accueillir". There's a little subtlety here. Here we pronounce "accueillir" with
a closed E because it's not the last syllable of the word. The last syllable is "-illir". But there's also the word "accueil",
where here we have an open E. A welcome. Because it's the last
syllable of the word. "Accueil", open. "Accueillir", closed. Turlututu.
(~The sound of a flute) Turlututu. What's interesting here is the
pronunciation of the /y/ that doesn't exist in Spanish, or in many other
languages for that matter. To pronounce the /y/ sound, the
mouth takes on the same shape as for pronouncing the /o/ sound, but
you should try to pronounce the /i/ sound. This will give /y/. And you can also blow
lightly as in: "Salut". There are a few sounds that
students hate in French. The ɛ̃, the õ and the ɑ̃. And yet these sounds are
extremely important. In other words, they're very
important in French pronunciation. In the following video, I explain
how to pronounce them correctly. In French, there are three nasal sounds. The IN /ɛ̃/, the AN /ɑ̃/ and the ON /õ/. Some people would say there are four. Particularly in the south of France,
there is a difference between two "in" sounds. The "in" and the "un". Personally, it's a distinction
that I don't make and I only pronounce the "in" sound. The first sound is the "in" sound. For example: "in the morning". To
pronounce the IN sound correctly, the mouth takes the same shape
as for pronouncing the I sound and then the sound becomes nasal. And keep your tongue flat in your mouth. There are many, many, many ways to write the IN sound in French. First with the letters
IN we saw in the morning or the garden. With the letters IM, as in simple or impossible. With the letters AIN as in train or human. With the letters AIM as in hunger. With the letters EIN as in painting or a kidney. And I'm sorry, the list
isn't finished yet! With the letters IEN, as in a dog or nothing. And finally, it can also be written UN, as in one and all. And it is precisely with this spelling
that the accent will perhaps change according to the region where, in the south, it's more
common to pronounce: "un et chacun". So that's a big list for the 'in' sound,
but just remember that it always includes either the letter I or the letter U. Now we'll move on to the "an"
sound. For example: to eat. For the AN sound, the mouth takes on the
same shape as when pronouncing the A sound, and then the sound becomes nasal. Once again, keep your tongue
flat in the back of your mouth. A, AN. And here too we have several
ways of writing the AN sound. With the letters AN as in an angel or France. With the letters AM like a lamp or a vampire. With the letters EN like in the wind or an adventure. With the letters EM as in an emperor or to fill. Here again, there are several possible
spellings, but remember that we always find the letter E or the letter A, accompanied by an N or an M. And finally, the last sound is
the simplest, the "on" sound. Like a lemon. For the ON sound, the mouth
takes on the same shape as for the O sound and
then the sound becomes nasal. Once again keeping the tongue flat in the mouth. Here, there are only two possibilities for writing the sound ON. First with the letters ON, as in a lion or a sweet. Or with the letters OM as in to count or a first name. So now that you know
everything, here's a quick test. I'll give you exactly ten seconds to read the sentence that
appears on the screen! The answer is: Five hundred kittens
singing five hundred songs. Five hundred kittens
singing five hundred songs. Now it's time for the test! In the following video we'll look at 5
words that are difficult to pronounce in French Let me know in the comments
whether you succeed or not! French is completely illogical, the
pronunciation is really complicated. You write a lot of letters
but you don't pronounce them! That's one of the things that I hear very often when talking
about pronunciation in French. And yet, it's not that complicated. It's much more logical than
in English, for example. For each word I'm going to give you 5
seconds to pronounce it before showing you the correct pronunciation. Here we go with the first word: Fog Fog is a cloud that forms
very close to the ground in slightly damp areas. And this word is pronounced BROUILLARD. There is a /j/ sound made
by the letters I and two Ls. In French we often find
this sequence of letters ILL and it makes the sound /j/. For example: a girl, a ball, make-up. And in the word "brouillard" we don't pronounce the final d. As is so often the case in
French, we don't pronounce the last consonant of the word. And a little subtlety,
be careful to distinguish between the
/u/ sound and the /y/ sound. Here we have the letters OU
which make the sound /u/, BROUILLARD, which is different
from the /y/ sound, which is made by the letter U alone. If that's something you're
still struggling with, I've got a pronunciation course with lots of exercises
to help you to distinguish between OU and U. I'll leave you the link
in the description. Second word: Happy. Here the word starts with an H
and in French we have many words that begin with the letter H,
but this letter is always silent, we never say it. So here the letter makes no sound. Then we have the letters EU which
together make the sound /ø/. It is a closed /ø/, and
the final X is, once again, a silent consonant. The last consonant of the word is not pronounced,
so we have the word happy. happy. Next word : Surgery. In this word, the letters
C and H make the sound /ʃ/. This is the case most of the time in
French, where the letters C and H make the /ʃ/ sound, but they
sometimes also make the K sound. This is very often the case
for words of Greek origin. For example: an orchestra, a choir, an orchid, etc. As I was saying, you have to make
a distinction between the sound /y/ and the /u/ sound. In the word surgery we use the /y/ sound. A little tip to pronounce this sound correctly. Place your mouth as if you were to say the O sound. And keeping the
shape of the mouth, try to pronounce the I
sound. This will give U. And that's the sound we
want to use in French. And here, at the end of the word, there's
no consonant but a silent vowel. Very often, when the letter E is
at the end of a word, it is silent. And in this case, when it's after
a vowel, you can't hear it at all. The last sound in the word
is the I sound, surgery. The next word isn't really a word, it's a very short sentence: We've got one. So I know that here it's a bit
difficult to say all these nasal sounds in a row. If you want to go even
further, I talk about it in my pronunciation classes. But what we're interested in here and
what will help you a lot when you say this sentence,
it's linking words together. In French, very often when
a word ends with a consonant and the next word begins with a vowel, we make what we call a
link. In other words, we say words as if they were a single word. So we're not going to say
here: "on, en, a, un," If you say the sentence like this we wouldn't even understand the meaning, you must link the words together. So make an initial link
between the N and the E. "On en", "on en", and we make another link between the N and
the A. We have one. We have one. I'll give you a few seconds to try and repeat: we have one. And finally, the last
word in this challenge: Infrastructure. In French we very often have syllables made up of several consonants, the
second of which is often the letter R and I know that it's quite difficult
for foreigners to pronounce sounds such as tr, fr, br, etc. Here we have the syllable FRA
inFRAstructure, and my advice is to break down the sounds. First, let's take a look at the R. The R in French sometimes poses
problems because it's a harder sound than in other languages. To pronounce the French R, try
to imagine that you're gargling in your bathroom. So it's
going to look like this: Then you say the other
sounds, before and after. We'll start with the /f/
sound, followed by the R sound. Faster. And then the R and the A. And now, all together! Does it work? Try to take your time and
try again several times. But with a bit of practice, it will come. And it'll be the same
for the other syllables. Infrastructure. For the TRU sound, do the same thing. Decompose the /t/ sound and the R sound, the /y/ sound we also saw earlier. Why are there so many letters in French that aren't even pronounced? In this special Halloween video, I
explain everything you need to know about phantom letters in French. Do you believe in ghosts? You should. You're looking at one right now. Right here. Have you ever wondered why the word
"genoux" (knees) is spelt with an X in the plural? But the word "gnous" (wildebeest)
is spelt with an S? Why is the word pharmacy written
with a P and an H and pronounced /f/, when you write the word "huit" (eight)
with an H that you don't pronounce? And what's that circumflex accent found just about everywhere? The ghosts of the French past. If you're learning French, I'm sure
you've already said to yourself, "But why does this language have such complicated spelling?" No, the explanation is
a bit longer than that. French is far from being a
phonetically spelled language. In Spanish and Latin, each sound
corresponds more or less to a letter. In French, we could have chosen this
logic, but we preferred to tell stories inside words. And today I'm going to tell
you some ghost stories. I'll start by telling you
the story of the first ghost of the French language, the letter X. You too may have learnt
this grammar rule. Words ending in OU take an S in the plural, except jewle, pebble, cabbage, knee, owl,
toy and louse (head lice). But why? What is it about these words that
makes them so special that they take an X in the plural form that
you don't even pronounce? Do you really want to know what this X is? It is the ghost of a scribe
monk that still haunts us today. And not just any monk. A lazy monk. This X isn't even a real letter. It's an abbreviation. In the Middle Ages, scribe monks were
responsible for copying manuscripts. And because it was such a long job,
they invented a few abbreviations. This symbol, for example, was used
to replace the sequence of letters US which is often found in Latin. Little by little, from copy to copy, we
think that the meaning of this symbol was lost and confused
with the letter X. For example, the word "cheval" (horse)
already existed in the 12th century. One horse, some...? Chevaux (horses)? Ah ah, not at that time. At that time, the plural of
the word horse was "chevaus", which was pronounced something like that. Chevaus, chevaus. And as I said, the monks
used this abbreviation to replace the letters US, which was
later confused with the letter X. And one day something like
this must have happened. A monk must have thought: "It's
a bit odd to write CHEVAX, when we say CHEVAUS. Come on, I think there's
a U missing, I'll add it." And boom! And then the diphthong AU was
transformed into O which is pronounced now in standard French. Horses. And from this abbreviation,
we have created this somewhat chaotic plural rule with X. So that's why we've ended up with
words with different plurals such as knees and wildebeests. And just imagine this story. Plural X's have haunted the nightmares of
generations and generations of students. All because some monks
wanted to save a bit of time. Bunch of lazy bastards! And the ghost of these monks
can be found in other words too. The word "huit" (eight), for example. What's with the H? The word eight comes from the Latin "octo",
and it is clear that there is no H at the beginning of the word. This time, we've added a letter
to make it easier to read. In the Middle Ages, the letters U and
V were confused in the Latin alphabet. If we wrote this, we wouldn't know whether it should be
pronounced "vite" or "huit". So to make things clear, we added an H. And it's the same story for the words oil
and oyster, which come from the Latin
oleum and ostrea without H. OK, so the Hs in the words oil,
oyster and eight are not pronounced. But what happened to the word pharmacy? Why do the letters P and
H make the sound /f/? Throughout its history, French spelling has undergone
a process of relatinisation. For example, for centuries we
wrote the word body, C O R S, phonetically. The same applies to the word "doigt"
(finger), which we find spelt D O I, in the novel Perceval by Chrétien
de Troyes, written around 1180. But writing is something that has
long been reserved for the elite of the population. The clergy, the clerics, the nobles, the
monks we have mentioned, and all of them also spoke Latin. And Latin was the language of reference,
the most prestigious language. So the French language couldn't
stray too far from this. So we added a few letters
to make the French words look like Latin words. That's why the word body (corps) is
spelt with a P today, because it comes from the Latin "corpus". And the same goes
for the word "doigt" (finger), to which we have added the G and the T which comes from the Latin "digitus". That's what happened
with the word pharmacy. It was spelt "farmacie"
with an F in a surgery textbook dating from 1314. It later became pharmacy
with a P and an H. The ghost of the Latin
pharmacia has passed this way. And if we want to be even more precise,
the words where we use the spelling PH are words of Greek origin that
came into French through Latin. Examples include "spelling,
alphabet, euphoric, philosophy" and so many others. And strangely enough, that's not the
case with "fantôme" (ghost/phantom). The word "fantôme" comes from the Greek
"phantagma", which also gave rise to the word "fantasy". And the word phantagma came directly from
Greece without passing through Latin. It was brought by the inhabitants of
Phocaea to Gaul where they founded the city of Marseilles, the Phocaean city
with a P and an H of course. And strangely enough, at a time
when French was being relatinised, we've forgot the word "fantôme". Coincidence? But there's another ghost
we haven't talked about. That little circumflex accent. The Greek word phantagma
has continued to evolve over the centuries to give "fantosme" in Old French
and today fantôme. The syllable has undergone what
is known as an amuification. In other words, over the course of time,
we have stopped pronouncing a sound. The S sound at the end of
the syllable has disappeared. But it's not the only one. Many other words have also
experienced this phenomenon. For a long time, we continued to write
this S, which had become mute, before deciding to replace it
with a circumflex accent. And if we compare French
words to other languages, it's even more obvious. For example, the word "forêt" means "forest" in English, "foresta" in Italian. The word "château" is "castle" in
English and "castello" in Italian. "Août" is the word for the month
of the year, "August" in English, "agosto" in Italian. And let's take the word "tôt" in French. This word means quickly, and it also means early in the morning. And once again we have the ghost of the S which has disappeared, the S in
the Latin word "tostus" which means to burn, to grill. It is thought that the meaning of the word
has evolved, and that it originally meant cooked quickly, and then took on the meaning
of quickly or early in the morning. In English, the word "toast"
always means to cook quickly, to grill something. And it's even come back to France,
as we now have the verb "toaster". And I find it very interesting to
think that when you get up early in the morning, you eat toast. To conclude and to motivate
you, I'm going to give you 5 good reasons to continue studying
pronunciation in French. There are 5 reasons why you should
concentrate on your French pronunciation. Number 1, it's easier than you think. Number 2, to boost your self-confidence. Number 3, for more authentic
interactions with French speakers. Number 4, to become fluent more quickly. And number 5, because you'll never
be as young as you are today. French pronunciation has a reputation
for being a little difficult. And so it's something that
students, and sometimes teachers also tend to neglect. But in my opinion, this is a
big mistake. But why is that? French pronunciation isn't as
difficult as you might think. If you're watching this video,
chances are you probably speak English. So let's have a quick
comparison of the two languages. In French, there are
officially 16 phonetic vowels. But you could say that
most people only use 14. In English, there are around 20. And it's even more complicated than
that because it depends on the dialects, accents, countries, etc. But that's not all! In English, if you've never heard
certain words, it's impossible to guess how they are pronounced. Do you see what I'm talking about? In French, there are clearly
defined pronunciation rules. And as their name suggests,
they are very consistent. The phonetics of French works
mainly by groups of letters. The group of letters EAU
will always make the sound /o/. Always! What you need to remember is
that there are often many different ways of writing the same sound. So you can see that phonetics in
French is a little simpler than phonetics in English, all you need is a good method. Working on your pronunciation is also a
great way of boosting your self-confidence. There's nothing worse than
trying to order at a restaurant and the waiter doesn't
understand what you're saying. It's happened to all of us, including me, and it's really frustrating and disappointing. I have many friends who have
learnt French and gone to France and they've told me, "When I was in
France, when I wanted to order at a restaurant, people didn't
understand what I was saying." So, first of all, let's
talk about this cliché: "The French don't understand on purpose". Maybe that's true for a small
percentage of the population, but I can assure you that most of
the time this is not the case. Maybe you learned French by
repeating the words you learned but you don't really know
the pronunciation rules. And if you get to a restaurant
and try to guess the name of the dishes rather than reading
the menu using the rules, then we're going to find it
hard to understand you. Once again, by understanding the
rules of pronunciation in French, it will be much easier to read. But as well as boosting your
self-confidence, you'll also have more authentic interactions
with French speakers. So we're going to talk about something
that can sometimes offend because it can hurt our egos a little bit, but there's a
difference between having a a strong, understandable accent and having a strong but incomprehensible accent. And unfortunately, that's the truth. If your accent makes the way
you speak incomprehensible, there's a good chance that the
French will have a hard time understanding what you're saying
or have trouble staying focused when they listen to you. And I remember when I started
giving private lessons that I had a student who had such
a strong accent that I really had trouble understanding
what he was telling me. I think you know me a
little bit by now, so no, I wasn't deliberately not
understanding what he was saying, it was really difficult for me. In fact, he had never really taken
the time to study the basics of phonetics and the basics of pronunciation, and he pronounced the words a
little bit randomly, pronouncing silent letters very often. That made his private lessons
really difficult because I had to really concentrate and try to
understand what he was telling me, and he couldn't really make
progress while making so many pronunciation errors. One day I decided to talk to him about
it because we couldn't go on like that and we really reviewed all the basics. For him, it helped enormously and he was
able to gradually correct his pronunciation mistakes. Good pronunciation will also help
you to become fluent more quickly. It's a bit like what I said
before, if you have better confidence in yourself and if you
have more authentic interactions with French speakers, then you'll
make much faster progress. What's more, by working on your
pronunciation, French sounds will become much more familiar to you. So you'll have better pronunciation, but
you'll also have a better understanding of French speakers. And finally, the last
reason why you should work on your pronunciation is that you'll never be as
young as you are today! So yes, I know, it's a bit dramatic when
I put it like that, but it's true. You know that children can learn
languages without an accent, teenagers too. And for adults, it's a little more
difficult, but not impossible. And it's true that the younger
you are, the better your listening and ability to reproduce
the sounds you hear are. That's why you need to concentrate on
pronunciation as early as possible. If you don't do this from the outset,
it's very likely that, like the student I told you about before, you'll develop
bad habits which are harder to correct later. If you start working on
your pronunciation today, you'll be very happy with your results in
a month's time, or two months' time, and just imagine
where you'll be next year! I hope that after watching this video,
you'll want to continue exploring the subject. If that's the case, you can
find the link in the description to my pronunciation course,
Flawless French Pronunciation. Thank you all for watching this video. Don't forget to download
the pronunciation guide. It is extremely comprehensive and free. See you soon!

Transcript for:Mastering French Pronunciation Challenges

Transcript for:
Mastering French Pronunciation Challenges