French pronunciation: 36 minimal pairs to listen to

This list is shorter than the usual ones because it follows a single rule: it contains only the distinctions English does not have. A difference your own language already makes costs no effort; the ones it does not make are the ones worth practising.

That is why each of the 5 groups first says what an English speaker does instead. That is the real information; the words below are the evidence. There is no phonetic script here: if you know the symbols, you do not need this page, and if you do not, they tell you nothing.

What happens here: French has vowels that are made with the air flowing through the nose as well as the mouth, and they keep words apart: an, on and in (plus un, which most speakers now say like in). English has none of them as separate sounds, so an English speaker says a vowel and then an n or an ng: bon comes out as «bonn» or «bong». Both endings are wrong, because the n only colours the vowel and is not pronounced itself. The test: if the tip of the tongue touches the ridge behind the teeth, or the back of the tongue closes against the soft palate, it was not a nasal vowel. The two that run together most easily are an [ɑ̃], with the jaw dropped as for the «a» of «father», and on [ɔ̃], with the lips rounded and held forward. in [ɛ̃] is close to the vowel of «bang» with the ng left off. When a vowel or a second n follows, the vowel is no longer nasal and the n is heard: bon, but bonne.

What happens here: French ou [u] is a true back vowel, lips tightly rounded. French u [y] has no English equivalent: the tongue is where it is for «ee», the lips are rounded as for «oo». English speakers usually replace it with the «oo» of «too», or with «you» [ju], and either way tu turns into tout and rue into roue. The ou needs care too: the «oo» of southern British English has moved forward in the mouth over the last decades, and said that way it lands between the two French vowels and belongs to neither. To find [y], say «ee», freeze the tongue and push the lips into a tight round; if the tongue slides back as the lips round, it has become ou again. The pairs that hang on this are everyday words, and with dessus and dessous the difference is «on top» against «underneath».

What happens here: French é [e] is a closed, short, perfectly steady vowel. English has no such vowel and reaches for the «ay» of «day», which glides towards «ee» — the «café» of English menus. Hold the tongue high and still and cut the vowel off cleanly. è [ɛ] is more open, close to the vowel of «bed» or of «air» without the r. The difference can be all that separates two tenses: j’ai chanté and je chantais. The e without an accent is a third sound, a short rounded vowel, and in everyday speech it is often dropped altogether, so that je ne sais pas shrinks to two or three syllables. What does not happen in French is the English habit of reducing every unstressed vowel to a murmur: an é keeps its full value wherever it stands, and le and les stay two different words.

What happens here: Most consonants at the end of a French word are not pronounced: petit, grand, tard, temps, vous. The ones that usually are heard are c, r, f and l — the consonants of «careful», which is the usual way to remember them — with plenty of exceptions, the r of the infinitive ending -er among them. English speakers are used to pronouncing every consonant they see, and many French adjectives look like English words: said the English way, grand is already the feminine grande. A feminine is usually made by adding an e, which is silent itself but makes the consonant before it heard: petit ends on the vowel, petite on a clearly released t. Sound the t in the masculine and you say the feminine every time; swallow it in the feminine and the difference is gone.

What happens here: The French r [ʁ] is made at the very back of the mouth, where the back of the tongue meets the uvula: take the «ch» of Scottish «loch», add voice and soften it until it is a light rub. The English r, with the tongue curled up and the lips rounded, is understood but heard at once as foreign. British speakers have a second habit to break: they drop an r after a vowel, and French does not — mer, pardon and rire keep every r, even if the one at the end is faint. The h works the other way round. French never pronounces it, and English speakers tend to sound it in héros or homme. There are nonetheless two kinds of h. Before most, the article merges with the noun as if a vowel came next: l’heure, l’homme. Before the so-called aspirated h it does not: le héros, la haine. Which kind a word has cannot be worked out from a rule; the dictionary marks it.