Tutorial Transcript

hi welcome to introduction to French my name is Alicia and I'm joined by hi everyone I'm Kandace in this lesson you'll learn the basics of French pronunciation in the previous lesson you learned that roughly 30% of all English words share their origins with French words because of this French pronunciation is quite similar to English in fact there are more common sounds than they are different ones for example boom sandwich dumb-dumb chances are you can imitate these words without much difficulty because these words use common sounds that exist in English of course there are a few differences between french and english sounds too and new who reads so these unfamiliar sounds are the ones that you need to focus on in practice let's take a look at some of those sounds a big aspect of French pronunciation relates to nasalization nasalization simply means to pronounce something through the nose for example the M&N sounds are considered nasal consonants because the air escapes your nose when you pronounce these sounds hmm in French some vowels can be pronounced through the mouth or through the nose compare all of our walls with nasal vowels in French in ah son some certain Seto nasal vowels are used often in French so it's important that you learn them in the near future another unique French sound is the guttural R sound whoo this T is this R sound is pronounced at the back of the mouth it sounds almost as if you're gargling lastly let's take a look at the French you sound hmm shit who to to pronounce this sound try saying e as in C and then from there slowly run your lips hmm French is renowned for being a language full of silent letters particularly at the end of words consider the following Jews emoji alistel the s in the world they D are in the world ma G and the T at the end of mr. ho are all silent letters we don't actually pronounce them in French listen to it again Jude emoji or histone in fact most of the time the last letter of a French word is actually silent coup hua vu there are of course exceptions to this rule let's look at the most common case when the next word starts with a vowel you ordinarily the final letter of a French word is silent hmm the final s in this word is silent but when the next word begins with a vowel vous savez the S is no longer silent and is instead pronounced like a Z sound vous savez the two words are connected by the Z sound and pronounced as if they were a single word this linking of words fruity activation of the silent letter is a common phenomenon in French known as jeezum is the special quality which makes French sound the way that does let's look at a few more examples of liaison in action to two tongue um enemies knife Nouveau Jean sue Jean cellphone liaisons may seem a little difficult to learn at first but they will only get easier and more intuitive by the time you get used to pronouncing whole sentences in French okay let's wrap up this listen by recapping what we've learned in this lesson you learned that there are more familiar sounds than unfamiliar sounds in French we showed you some unfamiliar sounds like nasal vowels the guttural R and the French you you also learned that the final letter in a French word is usually silent and that the letter becomes active if the next word starts with a vowel this process is known as liaison we've covered only the basics of French pronunciation if you're interested in learning more check out the entire course we created named the ultimate guide to French pronunciation in that course we cover and break down every single sound in the French language showing you mouth and tongue positioning and giving you tips to help you perfect your French pronunciation in the next lesson we'll introduce you to the basics of French grammar where you'll learn about French word order and how to build basic phrases in French see you in the next lesson bye bye

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