1.5: Phonétique
- Page ID
- 195164
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The French alphabet is the same as the English alphabet. It includes 5 letters for the vowel sounds and 21 symbols for the consonant sounds.
Listen and repeat.
OU is usually read as /u/ : vous (you, formal)
OI is usually read is /wa/: moi (me), toi (you, informal))
AI is usually read as either closed or open /E/ : maison (house)
AU and EAU are usually read as /o/ : eau (water), chaud (warm)
EU is read usually as /œ/ or /ø/ : peu (little), professeur (teacher)
CH is usually read as /ʃ/: chat (cat). But sometimes it is read as /k/: psychologie
Letter c is read as /s/ before i, e and y and with a cedilla (see below): c'est (this is), ici (here). In other cases it is read as /k/: carnet (notebook)
Letter g is read as /ʒ/ before i, e and y : gymnastique, manger (eat). In other cases it is read as /g/: gateau (cake)
Letter h is silent : habiter (to live)
Practise reading the following words:
Chimie
Biologie
Français
Anglais
Histoire
Ordinateur
Chat
Cochon
Mouton
Giraffe
Cirque
Bourgeois
Automne
Beau
Chose
Heure
Comme ci comme ça
When we write in French, we use various diacritic markers. They are:
l'accent aigu (´)
l'accent grave (`)
l'accent circoflexe (^)
le tréma (¨)
la cédille (ç)
The acute accent (´), l'accent aigu, and the grave accent (`), l'accent grave, are used to indicate the quality of the vowel sound represented by the letter e.
When used with letters other than e, the accent grave does not indicate a sound difference but serves to distinguish different words which have the same spelling but different meanings.
Listen and repeat:
| e accent aigu | e accent grave |
| année | très |
| Répétez! | après |
| André | Michèle |
Observe the differences in meaning:
| ou (or) | où (where) |
| la date (the date) | là (there) |
The circumflex (ˆ), l'accent circonflexe, arose historically as a marker for vowels which were followed by another letter (usually s) in an earlier state of the language:
être (<estre) hôtel (<hostel) forêt (<forest) plaît (<plaist)
The cedilla (ç), la cédille, is used only with the letter c to indicate the sound /s/ when it is followed by the letters a, o, or u:
Ça va ?
Cahier
The cedilla is not used with the letters e and i:
Ce
Merci
C'est
The dieresis (¨), le tréma, is used with vowels to indicate that they are pronounced separately from a preceding vowel:
Noël
Naïf
Aknowledgment: some parts of this page are partially adopted from Francais Interactif.