French pronunciation practice (with a real French speaker) - Comme une Française (2023)

FAQs

How do you practice French pronunciation? ›

The best way to learn French sounds is to practice with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Start listening and repeating French sounds and soon you will be able to pronounce any French word in the dictionary – even if you have never heard it before!

Forvo: Forvo calls itself the “pronunciation dictionary”, with the tagline “All of the words in the world. Pronounced.” The site currently contains audio recorded by native French speakers from around the world for over 100,000 French words and phrases.

Duolingo. Duolingo incorporates French pronunciation into every part of the app. Not only does the app dictate French text to you, it also makes you repeat French phrases into your microphone. This reinforces the pronunciation skills you've started to pick up by making you practice out loud.

Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) /ˈɛʒ/, also called the "tailed z", is a letter whose lower case form is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), representing the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant.

Pronunciation: The sound /ʒ/ is a voiced, alveo-palatal, fricative consonant. Lightly press the middle of your tongue between your alveolar ridge and your soft palate. The sides of your tongue should lightly touch your back upper teeth.

Serrurerie

Brace yourself: The hardest French word to pronounce is the word for locksmith – “serrurerie“. It was the most commonly repeated response.

How quickly can you learn French fluently? ›

French is a Category I language, so it's relatively easy to learn for native English speakers. It will take approximately 580 hours or 23 weeks of study to reach complete French fluency. Which we could break down as the following: If you study for 1 hour every day, you can learn French in 1.5 years.

#1 Parisian French

Of the accents of France, the Paris accent is perhaps the hardest to nail down. And that's because Parisian French is considered “standard French” – or French without an accent.

Compared with Parisians, Southern French people speak French at a slower rate, which can make it seem easy to understand.

Well, the short answer is this: Yes, Google Translate is very accurate for the most part. In some cases, it's 94%+ accurate! In fact, it's one of the top-rated translation tools when it comes to translation accuracy, though the exact accuracy will depend on the language pairs that you've chosen.

The Circumflex (Le circonflexe) in French

It doesn't change pronunciation, but it must be included in written French. The circumflex accent has the same pronunciation as the grave accent when used with the letter e. Some examples include tête, être, and fenêtre.

The biggest reason for unpronounced letters is that, at one time, the letters were pronounced. Spelling tends to reflect the language as it was spoken when the language was standardized, rather than how it's pronounced today.

The best app to learn French is Babbel. With a complete course designed by professional linguists, Babbel can take you from complete beginner to conversational in just a few months. Other great apps to learn French include MosaLingua, Mondly, and Busuu.

Duolingo is the fun, free app for learning 40+ languages through quick, bite-sized lessons. Practice speaking, reading, listening, and writing to build your vocabulary and grammar skills.

The symbol [ŋ] is usually called "eng" [ɛŋ] . It is like an [n] with the tail of a [ɡ]. Things to look out for: In spelling, the letter combination ng is usually just the single sound [ŋ], but occasionally there really is a [ɡ] sound too.

Is ɔ a diphthong? ›

Record your voice: To make the /ɔɪ/ sound: /ɔɪ/ is a diphthong, which is like a combination of two different vowel sounds. To begin, place your tongue at mid-low height in your mouth, shifted toward the back, to say /o/.

-tion: The ending -tion is always pronounced with /ʃ/ (pronunciation, definition) unless it is preceded by the letter s, in which case it is said as /tʃ/ (question). Vowel + -sion: The ending -sion is always pronounced with /ʒ/ when it's preceded by a vowel (conclusion, decision).

To make the /tʃ/ sound:

Push air forward out of your mouth. Stop the air completely at first, and then release it. After release, the air should create friction between the tip of your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Do not vibrate your vocal cords when you make this sound; it's voiceless.

The 'zh sound' /ʒ/ is voiced fricative (the vocal cords vibrate during its production). It is the counterpart to the unvoiced 'sh sound' /ʃ/. To create the /ʒ/, air is forced between a wide groove in the center of the front of the tongue and the back of the tooth ridge.

The/ʒ/ phoneme is made through the mouth and it is Voiced which means that you vibrate your vocal chords to make the sound.

There are a total of nine fricative consonants in English: /f, θ, s, ∫, v, ð, z, З, h/, and eight of them (all except for/h/) are produced by partially obstructing the airflow through the oral cavity.

All vowels are made through the mouth and are voiced so you vibrate your vocal chords to make the sound. It is similar to the /u:/ sound, but it is shorter. /ʊ/ not /u:/. To produce the ʊ sound put your tongue close to the top and near the back of your mouth and make a short voiced sound with your mouth closed.

Here is an estimate: 3-6 months. This is for people who speak similar-ish languages like English and who spend hours studying every day (probably 3+ hours per day)

Regardless of your definition of fluency, you'll need to practice the language if you want to master it. If you want a short answer, yes, you can become fluent in French in one year (or even less), especially if you follow the 10 steps included in the next section.

According to the Alliance Française, from learning how to say hello in French to reaching a B1 level requires 360 hours of training, whereas B2 would take about 560 hours of intensive courses (about 20 hours/week) – however, they are unable to determine the number of weeks needed to reach C1 or C2.

What is the most spoken French word? ›

The most commonly used words in French are: Oui (yes), non (no), merci (thank you), je (I), tu/vous (you), le/la/les (the), un, une des (a, an and some), le/la/les (it, them), et (and) and mais (but).

The 5 accents in French writing are:

l'accent grave (grave accent) – à, è, ù la cédille (cedilla) – ç l'accent circonflexe (circumflex) – â, ê, î, ô, û l'accent tréma (trema) – ë, ï, ü

3 The shortest French word with all the vowels is oiseau (bird).

It is estimated that you have to learn 5000 words to be fluent in French. Be selective and learn the 5000 most used words in French!

C1 and C2 French Levels

Communication is fluent, appropriate and well organized—you develop ideas in speech clearly and coherently.

Prickly Pronunciation

Without a doubt, the hardest part of learning French is the pronunciation. Written French and spoken French seem worlds apart at first, since there are a number of rules that dictate when certain letters are not pronounced, or words are suddenly squashed together.

We see this question a lot and the answer is: yes. Duolingo is a free language-learning platform, and every language and lesson is totally free!

So, can Duolingo make you fluent? By itself, no. But when used in the right way, I would say it can — but this will depend entirely on your definition of fluency, the quality of your language course, and whether you actually use the language away from Duolingo.

Overall, Duolingo is a great resource for children who want to learn French (or any other language). However, it is important to supplement Duolingo with other language learning activities such as: Reading French children's books.

The Parisian accent. Parisians might tell you that they do not have an accent. In a sense, it is true as the Parisian accent is the one you might be most familiar with since it is the closest to standardized French.

Is French more easy or Spanish? ›

Spanish pronunciation is easier to the English native speaker, while the French accent can be difficult to master. The French language has sounds that are unfamiliar to a native English speaker. Inability to roll the tongue can make speaking Spanish a challenge.

But you'll probably find that Italian is slightly easier than French. Grammar-wise, they're fairly similar in complexity. Most of this discrepancy goes back to French pronunciation being less phonetic than Italian, but that also depends on what kind of learner you are.

One 2011 study from the Université de Lyon looked at 7 languages, which reported the order as Japanese (7.84 syllables per second), Spanish (7.82), French (7.18), Italian (6.99), English (6.19), German (5.97) and Mandarin (5.18). But, you know, seven is pretty small.

Many find French hard to learn because of the complex grammar and linguistic nuances that don't exist in English, especially for those who have never studied another European language specifically Romance languages like Spanish or Portuguese. Spoken French can also be challenging!

The French language tends to be difficult to pronounce at first because there are simply sounds that native English speakers aren't used to making. To begin with, French is more evenly stressed. This means that while some parts of a word are stressed, it's not as distinct as in English.

French is a Category I language, so it's relatively easy to learn for native English speakers. It will take approximately 580 hours or 23 weeks of study to reach complete French fluency. Which we could break down as the following: If you study for 1 hour every day, you can learn French in 1.5 years.

The 'th' sound doesn't exist in French, and how could you know that 'ough' is pronounced differently in both words! French people can't help pronouncing this word the same as a female dog, much to most English people's amusement!

In French, -e is the most common silent letter that you will encounter. It is also the only vowel that isn't always pronounced. When the letter –e placed at the end of a word is after a consonant, it is not pronounced. For example, the -e at the end of the word voiture (car) is normally not pronounced.

According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), French is a category 1 language. This means learning French takes 23 – 24 weeks (575 – 600 hours) for most English speakers. This makes French one of the easiest (and fastest) languages to learn.

Do French speak faster than English? ›

One 2011 study from the Université de Lyon looked at 7 languages, which reported the order as Japanese (7.84 syllables per second), Spanish (7.82), French (7.18), Italian (6.99), English (6.19), German (5.97) and Mandarin (5.18).