Alphabet & Pronunciation
Alphabet & Pronunciation
French uses the same 26 letters as English, but adds accent marks that change pronunciation (and sometimes meaning), and it has a family of nasal vowels English simply doesn't have. Get comfortable with the sound system now — it pays off in every lesson after this one.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Accent marks: é è ê ë à â ù ü ï ô ç
é (café), è (mère), ê (fête), à (voilà), ç (ça)
é (café), è (mère), ê (fête), à (voilà), ç (ça)
Accents are not decorative — they change the sound and sometimes the word entirely. é (acute) is a crisp 'ay' sound; è and ê (grave and circumflex) are a more open 'eh' sound; the circumflex often marks a letter that used to sit before a silent 's' in Old French (fête used to be feste, hôtel used to be hostel — English kept 'hostel', French dropped the s and added the accent). The cedilla ç softens a 'c' before a, o, or u so it's pronounced 's' instead of 'k' (ça = 'sah', not 'kah'). Unlike English, where stress and vowel quality are mostly left to memorization and instinct, French spells a lot of this information directly onto the letter.
Nasal vowels: a sound category English doesn't have
an/en (dans, enfant), on (bon, maison), in/ain/ein (vin, pain, plein), un (un, brun)
an/en (dans, enfant), on (bon, maison), in/ain/ein (vin, pain, plein), un (un, brun)
English has no nasal vowels as a distinct category — when a vowel in English sits before 'n' or 'm', you still fully pronounce the following consonant (compare 'ban' and 'bun', where the n is clearly sounded). In French, a vowel followed by n or m at the end of a syllable is instead pushed through the nose and the n/m itself is dropped from pronunciation: dans is not 'dahn' with a hard n, it's a single nasalized 'ahn' sound, air escaping through the nose. There are four nasal vowel sounds to learn: an/en ('ahn'), on ('ohn'), in/ain/ein ('an', a nasalized short a), and un ('uhn', a nasalized 'uh', though many speakers merge this with in/ain today). This takes real ear-training since nothing in English prepares you for it.
Silent final consonants
petit (the t is silent), beaucoup (the p is silent), nez (the z is silent)
petit (the t is silent), beaucoup (the p is silent), nez (the z is silent)
Most final consonants in French are simply not pronounced — a very different default from English, where final consonants are almost always sounded. As a rule of thumb, the consonants in the word 'CaReFuL' (c, r, f, l) usually ARE pronounced at the end of a word (avec, pour, chef, mal), while most other final consonants (especially s, t, d, x, p, z) are silent. This silence is exactly why liaison exists (see below) — French recovers some of that 'lost' consonant sound when the next word starts with a vowel.
Liaison: silent consonants reappear before a vowel
les amis (lay-zah-MEE, not lay-ah-MEE) — vous êtes (voo-ZET)
les amis (lay-zah-MEE, not lay-ah-MEE) — vous êtes (voo-ZET)
When a word ending in a normally-silent consonant is followed by a word starting with a vowel or mute h, that consonant often gets pronounced after all, linking the two words together — this is called liaison. les (silent s) + amis becomes lay-zah-MEE, with the s resurfacing as a 'z' sound. This has no equivalent process in English, where word boundaries stay fixed regardless of the next sound. Liaison is not optional in many common combinations (articles + noun, subject pronoun + verb), so it's worth learning the common cases early rather than treating it as an advanced afterthought.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| café | kah-FAY | coffee / café |
| mère | mair | mother |
| fête | fet | party / holiday |
| voilà | vwah-LAH | there it is / there you go |
| ça | sah | that / it |
| naïve | nah-EEV | naive |
| dans | dahn | in |
| bon | bohn | good |
| vin | van | wine |
| un | uhn | one / a |
| les amis | lay-zah-MEE | the friends |