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Il paraît que le C est caché par le S muet dans "crocs" mais pas devant S dans becs.

Il doit y avoir une règle d'exceptions autre que prononcer "c, r, f, et l" que je ne connais pas car google translate auto prononce la dernière voyelle dans "break", "infect" et "bled".

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The c in -cs can be pronounced or not. There is no real rule I'm aware of but there are two or three times more words where the c is pronounced.

Here are some words with the c in -cs pronounced:

Alambics, allocs, aqueducs, arcs, bacs, becs, bivouacs, blocs, boucs, caducs, chics, chocs, clics, couacs, ducs, déclics, échecs, grecs, hamacs, lacs, laïcs, parcs, publics, rocs, sacs, secs, trocs, ...

and here are common words with that ending c mute:

Accrocs, ajoncs, bancs, blancs, brocs, caoutchoucs, clercs, crocs, entrelacs, escrocs, estomacs, flancs, francs, joncs, marcs, porcs, tabacs, troncs.

Both pronunciations are accepted with:

Crics

but nowadays, the c is usually pronounced.

Regional French might pronounce the ending c in porcs and other words like caoutchoucs, clercs, tabacs...

The ending c in zincs is expected to be pronounced g.

Both c and s are pronounced in pacs (from the acronym PACS: pacte civil de solidarité).

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  • We see a trend in those words, which is that words with nasal vowels or with the cluster -rc- tend to have kept their c mute, while words that would otherwise end in a single vowel have had the /k/ restored. Part of it is that rC clusters were simplified to just r before liaison appeared as a system, which removes one big way in which final consonants were regained (and diminishes the other, since analogy with other such words will work against spelling pronunciation)
    – Eau qui dort
    Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 20:35
  • Which means that "croc" (and prefixed forms like accrocs and escrocs) are a bit unusual. I suspect the reason why they escaped the restoration of their /k/ is that crocs is almost always used in the plural, which also stops the generalisation of its liaison form to other contexts, since it's /z/ and not /k/ that'd have appeared in liaison.
    – Eau qui dort
    Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 20:38
  • @Eauquidort That's such a good CV analysis it should be an answer.
    – livresque
    Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 21:39

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