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Regarding the pronunciation of final 'e' in French words, I have recently been looking at 'juste', 'presque', and 'quelque'. In most cases, it seems that for the isolated word, the final 'e' is not pronounced. However, in phrases such as 'juste pour', 'presque six heures', and 'quelque chose', the final 'e' is pronounced much more frequently. I hope some of you native French speakers can help me to understand this.
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The reason is simple, French tend to avoid three consonants in a row so in this case the schwa is indeed often pronounced.
This doesn't apply to all combinations of consonants, some of them like "str" aren't an issue. There are even a few cases where four consonants in a row can be pronounced:
Il a pas de scrupules -> [i.la.pa.dskʁy.pyl]
Note also that whether a schwa elision happen or not can vary depending on the speaker, the region and the register.
