There 26 letters in the French alphabet: 6 vowels and 20 consonants.

Some letters appear with accent marks, such as "à", "é", "î" etc.; we will learn more about their functions in a dedicated section for accent marks. Before we start learning the pronunciation rules, let's get familiar with a few important concepts on phonetics first.

In general, the number of vowels in a word indicates its number of syllables. A syllable can be an open or closed one, depending on its final pronunciation. Take the word "teacher" in French:

We can hear 3 syllables. The first two syllables are open syllables because they end with vowels, and the last syllable is a closed one because it ends with the consonant [r].

Attention: though many words in French end with consonants, these consonants are not pronounced. This means we need to rely on the actual pronunciation of a word instead of its spelling to find out the open-closed characteristic of the syllable.

The stress of a word usually falls on the last syllable. Please listen to the example words below.

The pronunciation patterns of French can be quite complicated for beginners; there are some patterns as well as exceptions. This introduction covers some of the most common patterns, which should be able to help you pronounce 80% of the words in this course.

1. The vowel "a" and its variations with accent marks, such as "â" or "à", are usually pronounced [a]. For example:

2. Vowel "e" is by default pronounced [ə]:

3. Vowels "i, î, ï, y" are usually pronounced [i]:

4. The vowel "o" is usually pronounced [ɔ] or [o]:

5. Vowels "u, û, ü" are usually pronounced as [y]:

The vowels "o" and "e" change their sounds a lot. It's not required to know them by heart at the beginning of your learning journey.

1. "o" is pronounced [o] in these situations:

① when "o" carries the circumflex mark and appear as "ô":

② in a word-final open syllable:

③ before the consonant sound [z]:

④ "o" is pronounced [ɔ] when it's before other consonants:

2. There are many ways to pronounce "e":

① when "e" appear as "é", it's pronounced [e]:

② when "e" is before two duplicate consonants or in a closed syllable, it's pronounced [ɛ]：

③ all other forms of "e", such as "è", "ê" and "ë" are pronounced [ɛ]：

④ "e" is silent when it's the last letter of a word:

1. "ai/ay", "ei/ey" are pronounced [ɛ]:

2. "au", "eau" are usually pronounced [o]:

3. "ou" and "aou" are pronounced [u]. Adding accent marks on them does not affect the pronunciations.

4. "eu", "œu" are pronounced [œ]:

but pronounced as [ø] in final open syllables:

For beginners, [ø], [ə] and [œ] may be hard to tell from each other, but we can assure you that as you spend more time listening to French, your ears will pick up the subtle differences.

Nasal sounds are produced by by the voice resonating in the nose. French nasal vowels are [ɛ̃]，[ɑ̃]，[ɔ̃] and [œ̃].

1. Letter combinations "an", "am", "en" and "em" are usually pronouned [ɑ̃]:

2. "in", "im", "yn", "ym", "ain", "aim" and "ein" are usually pronounced [ɛ̃] :

3. "on" and "om" are pronounced [ɔ̃]:

4. "un" is pronounced [œ̃]:

Semivowels are speech sounds that fall between vowels and consonants.

1. "ou" is pronounced [w] when it's before a vowel:

2. "oi" and "oy" are pronounced [wa]:

3. Letter "y" is usually pronounced [j] when it's the first letter of a word:

4. When "y" is between two vowels, it forms semivowels with both of them:

Take the word "voyelle" for example, "oy" together makes the [wa] sound, and "ye" together makes the [je] sound.

5. "i" is pronounced [j] if it's between a vowel and a consonant:

6. "il" and "ille" are pronounced [j]:

7. "u" is pronounced [ɥ] before vowels:

8. Common semivowel-nasal vowel combinations:

1. "c" is pronounced [k] before "a, o, u". It's pronounced as [s] when it's before "i, e, y" or appear as "ç":

2. "g" is always pronounced [g] before "a, o, u" or consonants, but it's pronounced [ʒ] when it's before "i, e, y".

3. "h" in French is always silent. Read more about "H muet" and "H aspiré" near the end of this introduction.

4. "s" is pronounced [z] when it's between two vowels:

5. "t" is usually [t], but it's pronounced [s] in "-tion":

6. "x" is usually found at the end of a word. In other cases, it may be [ks] or [s]:

*usually seen in numerals

7. Most final consonants are silent, but they are pronounced in these situations:

① when followed by "e": usually seen in the feminine forms of adjectives or nouns:

② when a word ends with one of "c, f, l, q, r, ct":

③ in a loanword, such as an English word:

Attention:

① Two duplicate consonants are pronounced as one consonant:

Accent marks have two important roles:

① to differentiate sounds; "e" is pronounced differently when it takes different accent marks.

② to differentiate words with the same pronunciations; for example, "sur" and "sûr" may sound the same but are two different words.

There are 5 accent marks in total. Take the letter "e":

All letters with accent marks:

In linguistics, elision refers to the omission of a sound or syllable when speaking. In French, it means the final unstressed vowel of a word is dropped when it's immediately before another word beginning with a vowel, for example: l'enfant, s'il, n'est.

We already know that in French most word-final consonants are not pronounced. But when they are immediately before a word beginning with a vowel or the mute h, they need to be pronounced and merged smoothly with the following vowel sound. This rule is called "liaison".

Liaison is required in these combinations: subject pronoun + the conjugated verb and definite article + noun.

Liaison is optional in other circumstances.

The letter "h" in a word is always silent, but there are two types of "h". Unlike with the mute h, when the word starts with the aspirated h, it does not partake in liaison or elision. For example, "le héro" cannot contracted to "l'héro" because the "h" in "héro" is an aspirated one.

There is no pattern to the mute-aspirated characteristic of the letter h. In other words, words with aspirated h should be memorized separately.