How to Pronounce Informal Reductions in French

Reduced sounds in informal speech of French

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

French Informal Reductions

In everyday speech, there are other reductions in addition to e caduc. Many of these reductions are made for ease of pronunciation and are considered informal. The most common ones are reducing tu to t' before a vowel and omitting the final syllable of words ending in -re. Listen to these reductions in careful speech and informal speech:

Informal Reductions in Spoken French

Careful Speech	Informal Speech
tu es	t'es
tu as	t'as
tu étais	t'étais
tu avais	t'avais
mettre	mett'
notre	not'
autre	aut'
il	y
il y a	y a
ils + vowel	y'z
elle	è
elles + vowel	è'z
parce que	pasq'
quelque	quèq'
puis	pis

 

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