This tutorial presents an overview of the rules of European/metropolitan French pronunciation, focusing on the vowels, consonants, stress, and intonation patterns that are different from American English. For more practice with comprehension and pronunciation, please check the listening and repetition exercises.
For more French learning through authentic videos, I recommend Yabla French and FluentU. For audiobooks and lessons of modern French, try French Today. I've recommended some French books at Amazon, and Interlinear books are great for learning French by reading literal translations in English. French Listening and Authentic French provide audio and video clips of real, spoken French in various accents with transcripts so you can listen and read along, plus some exercises to test your comprehension. Need even more French? Try the French courses at Udemy or consider purchasing French Language Tutorial as an e-book to support ielanguages.com.
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For more French learning through authentic videos, I recommend Yabla French and FluentU. For audiobooks and lessons of modern French, try French Today. I've recommended some French books at Amazon, and Interlinear books are great for learning French by reading literal translations in English. Need even more French? Try the French courses at Udemy
La loi des trois consonnes states that [ə] may be omitted in pronunciation as long as it would not cause three consonants to be together. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and some dialects of French do not delete it anyway (such as in the south of France.) However, this is extremely common in everyday French and English speakers need to be able to comprehend words with dropped syllables.
Phrase-final e is always dropped, except in -le in the imperative. It is also dropped at the end of nouns, articles and verbs. One exception to the three consonant rule is in the case of consonant clusters, such as br, fr, gr, pr, tr, etc. If the e precedes these clusters, and the e itself is preceded by a consonant, then it can be dropped: un refrain = un r'frain
Disappearing e
samedi / lentement / sauvetage | sam'di / lent'ment / sauv'tage |
sous le bureau / chez le docteur | sous l'bureau / chez l'docteur |
il y a de / pas de / plus de | il y a d' / pas d' / plus d' |
je ne / de ne / tu ne | je n' / de n' / tu n' |
je te / ce que / ce qui | j'te / c'que / c'qui |
Notice that dropping e in je also results in [ʒ] to become [ʃ] whenever it is found before voiceless consonants, such as [p], [t], [k], etc.
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