1.2 Spelling → sound is regular; sound → spelling is not — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read a French word you have never seen before and say it out loud correctly, using the vowel groups ai , ei , au , eau , oi , ou and eu and the consonant rules that go with them. Explain why the same trick does not work in reverse, and give six sets of French words that sound identical and are spelled differently. Recognise that the verb ending -ent is silent, so that a plural verb form is not longer in speech than a singular one. Read a short unfamiliar sentence aloud at first sight, which is something you cannot reliably do in English. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English L'arbre est vert. [1] The tree is green. L'herbe est verte. [2] The grass is green. Buvons un verre. [3] Let's have a drink. J'aime l'eau. [4] I like water. Prerequisites : 1.1 — you should be able to name the five marks and to read é apart from è , because the tables in this lesson assume it and add the groups of two and three letters on top. See 1.1 Spelling if you need it. English spelling is famously bad in both directions. You cannot reliably say an English word you have only read, as anyone who has met colonel or yacht in print can confirm, and you cannot reliably spell an English word you have only heard. French is bad in one direction only, and that turns out to be the direction that matters less. Going from the page to the mouth, French is close to mechanical. There is a finite list of letter groups, each group has a sound, and the exceptions are few enough to name. Learn the list and you can read aloud, accurately, a page of French you do not understand at all. Learners regularly find this unsettling: they can pronounce a newspaper and follow none of it. That is exactly the skill this lesson gives you, and it is worth having, because it lets your ears and your eyes learn the same word at the same time instead of separately. Going the other way, from a sound to a spelling, French is hopeless. One sound has many spellings, the choice between them is decided by grammar and etymology rather than by anything audible, and the only way through is to know the word. This is why dictation is a serious school exercise in France in a way it rarely is in an English-speaking classroom, and it is why the next lesson is a dictation lesson. Spelling to sound Here is the machine. Work down it once now, then use it as a reference. The two-letter and three-letter groups are the part English speakers have to learn consciously, because in English the letters in a group often keep something of their own value and in French they usually do not: the group usually represents one sound, or a predictable sequence of sounds. Vowel groups Letters Sound, with examples ai , ei [ɛ], one vowel: lait [lɛ] — milk; mais [mɛ] — but; neige [nɛʒ] — snow au , eau [o], one vowel: aussi [osi] — also; eau [o] — water; beau [bo] — beautiful ou [u], the vowel of English too : vous [vu] — you; jour [ʒuʁ] — day; rouge [ʁuʒ] — red oi [wa], a glide and a vowel: moi [mwa] — me; trois [tʁwa] — three; voix [vwa] — voice eu , œu [ø] or [œ], from lesson 0.2: peu [pø] — little; sœur [sœʁ] — sister ui [ɥi], a rounded glide and a vowel: huit [ɥit] — eight; nuit [nɥi] — night y [i], the same as a single i : style [stil] — style. Between two vowels it counts as two i s and brings in a [j]: payer [peje], voyage [vwajaʒ] vowel plus n or m a nasal vowel, from lesson 0.3, and the n is not pronounced Consonants that have two values Letters Sound, with examples c [s] before e , i , y ; [k] elsewhere: cinéma [sinema], carte [kaʁt] g [ʒ], the sound in English measure , before e , i , y ; [ɡ] elsewhere: gilet [ʒile], gare [ɡaʁ] s [z] between two vowels; [s] elsewhere, and ss is always [s]: maison [mɛzɔ̃] against poisson [pwasɔ̃] ch [ʃ], the sound in English ship . It is usually [ʃ], but can be [k] in words of Greek origin such as orchestre : chat [ʃa] — cat gn [ɲ], as in the middle of English onion : montagne [mɔ̃taɲ] — mountain qu , gu [k] and [ɡ]; the u is a spelling prop and is not a vowel here: quatre [katʁ] — four ill usually [ij]: fille [fij] — girl; famille [famij] — family h always silent as a sound of its own; ph is [f] and th is plain [t] j [ʒ], never the sound of English judge : jour [ʒuʁ] — day r [ʁ], at the back of the mouth, from lesson 0.4 Endings Ending How it is read the infinitive ending -er , and -ez [e], closed, with the consonant silent: parler [paʁle], parlez [paʁle] -e silent, but it makes the consonant in front of it audible -es silent as a block: tu parles [ty paʁl]; but in one-syllable words it is [e]: les , des , mes the 3rd person plural ending -ent on a verb silent as a block: ils parlent [il paʁl] -ent in an adverb or a noun a nasal vowel and audible: vraiment [vʁɛmɑ̃] — really -s , -t , -d , -x , -p silent, unless liaison revives them That is the whole machine, give or take a handful of irregular words. Notice how much of it is fewer sounds than letters . French almost never adds a sound that the letters do not lead you to expect; what it does, constantly, is drop one. So when you are reading aloud and you are unsure, the safe guess is to leave something out rather than to put something in, but remember that some consonants like c, r, l, f can be pronounced. Why the reverse trip fails Turn the tables round and the regularity evaporates. Read the vowel-group table again from right to left: the sound [ɛ] can be written with a bare e in a closed syllable, with è , with ê , with ai or with ei , and that is before you count the silent consonants that may follow it. The sound [o] can be written o , au , eau , ô , or any of those with a silent t , d , s or x after it. Two forces made it this way and neither of them was the ear. The first is history: the spelling was fixed when the words sounded different from one another, and it did not move when the sounds fell together. The second is grammar. French writing carries a great deal of information