French spelling might appear baffling because the written word is composed of several letters, whereas in speech only the last few of them can be heard. You might look at the French words petit, vous, beaucoup, or français and feel the urge to pronounce them all out loud and see what you get. But in the FrenchVista listening lesson the word sounds completely different. This is not because French spelling is random. It is because many words have endings that stay quiet unless a specific sound pattern changes them.
To begin, it might help to focus on consonant endings. French often leaves out the final consonant in a word. So the final t in petit, for example, is usually not pronounced. Similarly, the final s in vous is also usually not pronounced, as is the p in beaucoup. This doesn’t mean that every word ending with a consonant in spelling is actually silent when it comes to pronunciation, but this might give you some sort of starting point. Before you pronounce a final consonant in a word or in a sentence, take a moment and ask yourself if you’ve heard that final consonant before in either the slow audio of a French sentence or even in your vocabulary flashcard practice.
Try phrases as opposed to just a single word. Saying the word vous over and over again can help only a little bit with remembering the correct pronunciation. But what’s better is hearing and repeating the whole sentence vous allez, for example. In this sentence, the final s of the word vous connects to the next vowel sound, creating liaison. The word hasn’t changed, but the way it sounds when pronounced as a phrase certainly does. That is another reason why it is crucial to learn vocabulary in phrases rather than in flashcards as a FrenchVista learner. Knowing which word endings actually need to stay silent and which ones do get a liaison will be far easier when you’re working in sentence frames as opposed to in a word.
Go back to one of those short phrases you learned, like Je voudrais un café, s’il vous plaît, and start reading the sentence out loud slowly. Make notes of any sounds that you feel compelled to add that you’ve read in the French sentence but haven’t heard yet in the French audio. So when you see the s at the end of voudrais, don’t turn that s into a full English s sound, for example. The t in plaît is also never fully pronounced as a separate sound. Then listen back to the same French phrase, leave a moment of silence after the listening exercise, and try to repeat just the exact rhythm of what you actually hear. It doesn’t have to be fast or dramatic. You’re just working to keep your mouth off every letter that’s on the French page.
It’s also good practice to work on pronunciation when you are learning new French vocabulary. If you only learn the meaning of a word and what letters you have to see when spelling the French word, you’re essentially putting the wrong pronunciation in your memory. Take some notes in your vocabulary notebook about the pronunciation of the new word you’re learning. Make it a point to learn that the x in le prix is always silent, for example. Also that the s in les amis can connect before the vowel in amis. Be sure to include a French article like le, la, un or une when you’re writing down a French noun. The article is the article, so to speak, of the word when you’re speaking it. In this way, spelling, pronunciation and noun gender are all in the same place.
You should also try reading out loud in French when you can use it as self-correction. Choose some short French sentences of your choice and read them twice, but focus on different things on each round. The first time, focus on any letter in your French word and look for silent consonants at the end of a French word, words with an accent and word endings. Then the second time focus on what the sentence actually means and the overall French rhythm. It’s easy to just start saying something in an over-exaggerated accent if you start hearing French without really paying close attention. So if you can’t stop yourself from adding a full, English-style sound to every single French letter that ends with a consonant, go back and focus on just one French sentence. You can improve your French pronunciation a great deal by making smaller, more accurate corrections to what you’ve read instead of something like, try to sound more French.
A realistic sign of progress isn’t perfect pronunciation; it’s being able to notice that you’ve heard more French letter patterns which are usually left out before they really catch you off guard. You can look at a short French phrase and start to feel confident enough in your reading that you expect some of these French endings to stay silent, then double check with your slow audio or a reading exercise. This is how you can stop feeling like learning French spelling is a trap. Next time you read any short French café phrase or dialogue, notice any letter that your French mouth doesn’t feel like saying and see if this is another French letter combination that can just stay silent in your speaking. In a French phrase, what you can’t pronounce can still contribute to the overall sound!