Livre, entre, autre, article, règle are examples of what I'm talking about.
I've never been sure whether I should pronounce those final two letters. When a native speaker pronounces such words, sometimes I can hear them and sometimes I can't.
asked Jul 11, 2012 at 15:40
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1It depends on the situation. Are you talking normally, singing, or are you angrily yelling at someone?– ZootJul 11, 2012 at 19:35
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2....the second two.– temporary_user_nameJul 11, 2012 at 20:06
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Related answer: french.stackexchange.com/a/11979/79– Stéphane GimenezNov 7, 2014 at 10:10
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2 Answers
Dropping liquids after consonants (e.g. in words that ends with -ble, -dre, -tre, -fle etc.) is an extremely common feature of everyday pronunciation in French (Grevisse 14th ed., §36c). Pronouncing many final schwas would be the primary reason for the recognition of these consonants and is generally considered either an affectation or a dialectal feature.
In French it's not the the re or le that is left unpronounced, but the final e.
Pronouncing livre is like pronouncing livr. Some people may actually force the last consonant and you get a sound like livreu.
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1Well in relaxed speech, you even drop the R in certain cases. Example : if you want to say quickly "un livre de peinture", you could say either "un livr-e'd'peinture" (which sound a little ch'ti-ish) or more probably "un liv'de peinture".– XouDoJun 15, 2021 at 10:01