Sound-Spelling and Pronunciation in French

French spelling is not arbitrary, it is one-way

Everybody meets French spelling, notices that a good half of the letters are not pronounced, and concludes the whole thing is a mess. It is the opposite of a mess. French is extremely regular from WRITING to SOUND, and not regular at all from SOUND back to WRITING. Show a French speaker a word they have never seen and they will read it aloud correctly, because the rules run that way. Say a French word to them that they have never seen written, and they may not be able to spell it, because several spellings give that same sound. So the question to ask yourself every time is: am I going from letters to sound, or from sound to letters? Only one of those directions has rules. That one idea explains most of what feels unfair about French. Reading aloud is learnable, because it runs downhill. Spelling something you have only heard is genuinely hard, and not a sign that you are bad at French. And listening is hard for a third reason altogether, which is coming up.

Five words for talking about sound

This part of the course has its own vocabulary, and it is worth having, because the exam rewards knowing what is happening rather than just doing it.

Two things the rules will do for you

French spelling rules run one way. Tap the TWO tasks they can genuinely help you with.

• Reading a French word you have never seen before out loud, correctly
• Spelling a French word you have only ever heard
• Working out, from the written word, how many syllables you would actually hear
• Deciding which of three possible spellings a word you heard must have
• Telling from the sound alone whether a spoken word is singular or plural

Who is doing it

In spoken French, the forms je parle, tu parles and ils parlent sound exactly the same as each other. So when you are listening, how do you know who is doing the talking?

• From the little word in front of the verb, because the verb ending itself carries no sound at all
• From the ending, if you listen carefully enough
• Only from the wider context of the conversation
• From which syllable is stressed

Downhill and uphill

Everything else in this module is a consequence of this. The same system, run in two directions, gives two completely different experiences.

Five spellings, five different things happening

Reading an unfamiliar word aloud

You meet a written French word you have never seen. Put the steps of working out how it sounds into a sensible order.

• Look at the last letter or letters first, and decide what is silent
• Check for a vowel followed by n or m, which changes the vowel rather than adding a consonant
• Break what is left into the letter groups French treats as single sounds
• Use the accents, which are telling you which vowel sound is meant
• Look at the word after it, in case a silent ending has to join onto a vowel
• Say the whole thing evenly, without hammering one syllable

Why this is worth a fifth of the marks

On this course, knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and sound-spelling is its own assessed strand, worth about a fifth of everything. Three things follow. Know the rule, not just the habit. Being able to say a word correctly is worth less than being able to say WHY the letter is silent, because the rule transfers to every other word with that ending and the habit does not. Expect your listening to improve from the spelling side. Most people try to fix listening by listening harder. A quicker gain is knowing what will have vanished before you hear it: the endings that are silent, and the places where two words will be glued together. ⭐ And when you write, do not trust your ear. The commonest written errors in French are the endings that sound identical to each other. Your ear cannot tell them apart, because there is genuinely nothing to hear. That one has to be decided grammatically, every time.

Would these sound the same

For each pair of written French forms, decide whether a listener would hear any difference. Three lives.

The recipe and the finished dish

A recipe will tell you exactly what the dish is going to taste like. Follow it and there are no surprises: the same instructions produce the same result, every single time, in anybody kitchen. Now try it the other way round. Somebody hands you the finished dish and asks you to write out the recipe. You can get close. You will not get it exactly, because two quite different recipes can arrive at almost the same plate, and nothing you can taste tells you which one was used. Same system, two directions, two completely different difficulties. Nobody concludes from this that cooking is arbitrary. They conclude that recipes run forwards, and that working backwards from a result is a different and harder job. ⭐ And notice what an experienced cook does when asked to work backwards: they do not taste harder. They use what they know about how dishes are built to narrow it down.

Build the French sentence

Build a true sentence in French, then read it to yourself and count how many of the written letters you would actually say.

Finish the sound-spelling sentences

The relationship between how a word is written and how it is said is its _____, and in French it runs reliably in one direction only. A letter that is written and not pronounced is a _____, and in French most of them sit at the end of a word. When one of those endings IS pronounced because the next word begins with a vowel and joins onto it, that is a _____. A vowel written with n or m after it, where the n or m is not said as a consonant, is a _____. Because several spellings can give the same sound, French has a large number of words that sound alike and are written differently, and each of those is a _____. The practical result is that you cannot hear a verb _____, so when you write it you have to work it out from the grammar instead of from your ear.

Build the rule, not the habit

A question asks why the final letter of a French word is not pronounced. Assemble the answer that earns the mark.

Four moments in one week

A student is preparing for the listening and the written papers. Each stage sets out where they are and hands you the decision.

• They keep writing the wrong ending on verbs, and say they will fix it by listening to more French. Decide what to tell them.
• In a listening exercise they hear what sounds like one long word and cannot find it in anything they know. Decide what has most likely happened.
• They meet a written word they have never seen and freeze, saying they cannot know how it sounds. Decide.
• In a dictation exercise they write a word that sounds right and is spelled wrong, and they are upset about it. Decide what to say.

Explain the one-way rule

Explain in your own words why French is easier to read aloud than to spell from hearing, and what that means for how you revise.

• State which direction has reliable rules, and which does not
• Give one example of something written that is not pronounced
• Say what happens when a silent ending meets a word starting with a vowel
• Explain why you cannot hear the difference between some verb endings
• Finish by saying one thing you would change about how you practise