Languages

French sounds English does not have

By Ren · Updated October 20, 2026

French pronunciation is not random. It is consistent — just consistent with rules English never taught you. Four things account for most of the difficulty.

1. Nasal vowels

English has no nasal vowels. French has three or four depending on the accent, and they are not "vowel plus n" — the n is not pronounced at all. The air goes through the nose while the vowel is held.

The test: say the vowel, then pinch your nose. If the sound changes, you are nasalising correctly. If nothing changes, you are producing an oral vowel with a consonant after it.

2. The French r

It is made at the back of the throat, not the tip of the tongue — closer to gargling than to the English or Spanish r. Start from the "ch" in Scottish "loch" and add voice.

If it will not come, an English r is far better than stopping mid-sentence. Nobody will fail to understand you; it just marks you as a learner.

3. Liaison — why sentences run together

Final consonants are usually silent. But when the next word starts with a vowel, that silent consonant often reappears and attaches to it.

This is the main reason spoken French sounds like an unbroken stream. You are not failing to hear the words; the word boundaries genuinely move. Listening practice is the only fix.

Hearing liaison is one skill; making it yourself is another. The Académie française sorts every liaison into three groups: obligatory, optional and forbidden. For a beginner, the first and last groups are the ones that matter. Below, a letter in brackets such as (z) marks a link and | marks a break.

Obligatory liaisons: always link these

Every row below is on the Académie's obligatory list, but they are not equally strict. After a determiner, between a pronoun and its verb (in either order) and in some fixed expressions, speakers link in every style of speech, and leaving the link out is "immediately perceived as an error". Adjective + noun and short prepositions are, by the same account, better described as frequent than as truly mandatory. Link them anyway; that is the standard.

The pattern behind the list: the two words belong so tightly together that French treats them as one. An article never stands without its noun; a subject pronoun never stands without its verb.

Forbidden liaisons: never link these

Linking where you should not is just as noticeable — the same description of French liaison notes that a liaison where none is possible "is perceived as an error". Learn these five first; the Académie's entry lists a few more.

The h needs one more word. Many French words starting with h link normally: les hommes is "lay-zom", and you write l'homme, not le homme. Others have an "aspirated" h, which is just as silent but blocks the link, and the spelling gives no clue. The Académie points out that dictionaries mark aspirated h words with a conventional sign, so look each one up once. A shortcut: if you have seen the word with le or la rather than l' (le haricot, le héros, la honte, le hasard, le hibou), it blocks liaison. Get les héros wrong and it becomes "lay-zayro", which is les zéros, "the zeros".

Optional liaisons: your choice, and it changes the tone

Whatever is on neither of the Académie's lists is optional. In the Académie's words, making these links is rather "la marque d'un langage soutenu" — a marker of formal speech — and they are rarer in informal conversation than in careful speech. The same sentence can be said both ways.

The beginner's rule: when unsure, leave an optional liaison out. A missing optional link sounds relaxed. An extra forbidden one sounds wrong.

What the silent consonant turns into

The linking sound is not always the letter you see. Three endings change on the way: -s and -x link as z, -d links as t, and -f links as v in neuf ans and neuf heures.

Guessing the sound wrong has a name. The Académie calls a stray t a cuir (il s'est mis (t) au travail) and a stray z a velours (vingt (z) euros instead of "vin-teuro"); together they are pataquès. The fix for both is the spelling: no s, x or z on the page, no z sound; no t or d, no t sound.

Liaison or enchaînement?

Not every run-together sound is liaison. In elle arrive or avec elle, the final consonant is pronounced anyway; it simply slides onto the next vowel ("eh-lareev", "a-veh-kel"). That is enchaînement. Linguists describe the two as essentially the same process, and a liaison consonant slides across in the same way. The difference for a learner is that in enchaînement the consonant is always pronounced, so there is nothing to decide: do not pause between the words.

A five-step liaison check before reading aloud

1. Mark every word that ends in a silent s, x, z, t, d or n and sits before a vowel or a non-aspirated h.
2. Link it if it is a determiner, an adjective before its noun, a pronoun before its verb (or a verb before its hyphenated pronoun), a short preposition, c'est, or part of a fixed expression.
3. Draw a slash after every et, before every aspirated-h word, onze and oui, after any singular noun outside a fixed expression, and between a noun subject and its verb.
4. Read once with only those links. Leave everything else unlinked.
5. Read again in formal mode, adding the optional links, and record both versions.

Try it on: Les enfants ont invité un ami et une amie chez eux.

• les (z) enfants: obligatory, determiner + noun.
• enfants | ont: forbidden, noun subject + verb.
• ont (t) invité: optional, avoir + past participle.
• un (n) ami: obligatory, determiner + noun.
• et | une: forbidden, after et.
• une amie: enchaînement. The n of une is always pronounced and slides across.
• chez (z) eux: obligatory, short preposition.

4. The five accent marks and what they do

The circumflex is a useful reading aid: if a word has one, try adding an s where it sits and see whether an English cousin appears. hôpital → hospital, île → isle, bête → beast.

Practising without a tutor

1. Shadow. Play a short clip, speak along half a second behind. You copy rhythm and melody, not only individual sounds. Ten minutes is plenty.
2. Record and compare. Read a sentence, record it, play the original, play yours. The gap you hear is the thing to work on — and it is rarely the one you expected.
3. One sound a week. Nasals this week, the r next. Fixing everything at once fixes nothing.
4. Read aloud, always. Silent reading builds a French you cannot speak.