51 votes
Accepted

Where did French's silent ending consonants come from?

This is a huge question. If someone has the time to give a more thorough overview, I invite them to, but here's a quick set of points to consider. Most of these end consonants are no mystery: they ...
Luke Sawczak's user avatar
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24 votes
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Quelle est la règle pour utiliser « mon » avec des noms féminins ?

La règle : Quand le déterminant possessif ma, ta et sa se trouve devant un mot féminin qui commence par un son voyelle, on emploie mon, ton et son. Ceci pour éviter d'avoir à prononcer deux voyelles à ...
None's user avatar
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23 votes

How at normal speed, is "on en a un en haut, hein?" pronounced by natives?

On en a un en haut, hein ? is a reasonable and common French sentence. It doesn't surprise French ears at all. There are only mandatory (the first two) or forbidden liaisons here so no variants to ...
jlliagre's user avatar
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21 votes
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Correct pronunciation of 'Chez Albert': is there a liaison?

There is no single "liaison rule" in French but a gazillion of small scope "liaison rules" each one often with exceptions. Here is what the TLFI says about "z" liaisons: c) Liaison. Cf. Kamm. 1964,...
jlliagre's user avatar
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21 votes

Where did French's silent ending consonants come from?

In addition to Luke's answer, here are some comments about each of your examples: Temps was often written tems, tens or even tans in Old French. When French spelling was standardized, the variant ...
jlliagre's user avatar
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20 votes
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What exactly do the French diacritics denote? And can they be implied/expelled?

Diacritics are part of French orthography. To take one example, "dû" is the past participle of "devoir". If you remove the circumflex, it becomes "du", the contraction of "de" + "le". Different ...
btrem's user avatar
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19 votes
Accepted

Is the second 'T' silent in "petites" ?

The man actually pronounces the second t. Even though it is not as clear as the sounds from the beginning of the word, I distinctly hear it. If you play the video at half-speed, you can hear it being ...
Max D's user avatar
  • 486
19 votes

When and where is "oui" read /wei/?

Approval is often expressed with ouais (pronounced /wɛ/, sometimes /we/) instead of oui (/wi/) in relaxed spoken French. The difference is similar to using yep vs yes. A final /j/ might be heard in ...
jlliagre's user avatar
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19 votes

Prononciation "bonshommes"

Bonhomme a une grammaire particulière car formé par agglutination d'un adjectif et un nom commun. Contrairement à bonheur qui suit le même schéma (bon + heur=chance, destin), le nom commun bonhomme ...
jlliagre's user avatar
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18 votes
Accepted

Prononciation en français des mots d'origine anglaise

Il n'y a pas de règle absolue, c'est souvent l'usage qui dicte la prononciation des mots étrangers, comme celle des mots français d'ailleurs... Les mots comme python, Apache, Oracle, Android (androïde)...
jlliagre's user avatar
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17 votes

When and where is "oui" read /wei/?

"Oui" is always pronounced /wi/ "Ouais" is vey common in French, it is slang for "Oui" like "Yeah" is slang for "Yes".
Jonathan's user avatar
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17 votes
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I do not understand the pronunciation of "et notre petit dernier"

In everyday speech, notre reduces most of the time to /nɔt/ when the following word begins with a consonant. Petit has a e-muet/schwa (/ə/) in its initial syllable which is notoriously unstable and ...
Eau qui dort's user avatar
  • 9,744
16 votes

What exactly do the French diacritics denote? And can they be implied/expelled?

For reference, the usual diacritics are as follows. Accent aigu: é Pronunciation: Uniformly causes the vowel to be pronounced [e] (as in English "may"). There are some rare exceptions where it's ...
Luke Sawczak's user avatar
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15 votes

Does French have the English "short i" vowel?

No, standard French does not have the vowel /ɪ/ (near-close front unrounded vowel), which is the English “short i”. The vowel which is normally written with the letter I in French is a close front ...
Gilles 'SO nous est hostile''s user avatar
15 votes
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Prononciation : "aidée" contre "aidé"

Il y a une variation régionale, oui. Historiquement, les séquences voyelles + schwa en fin de mot ont donné naissance à des voyelles longues quand ces schwas finaux ont cessé d'être prononcé. Cette ...
Eau qui dort's user avatar
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15 votes
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Proper Middle French c. 1450 pronunciation for the "Le Roy Engloys" song

The most complete freely accessible source for the dating and chronology of sound changes in French is in my opinion the histolf site of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and especially its pages on ...
Eau qui dort's user avatar
  • 9,744
14 votes

Correct pronunciation of 'Chez Albert': is there a liaison?

L'exemple donné soulève deux questions : La liaison après chez : elle est obligatoire* : La liaison est aussi obligatoire entre une préposition ne comportant qu’une syllabe et le mot qui suit. ...
None's user avatar
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14 votes
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How is /a/ pronounced before n/m in French?

The widespread pronunciation is [pano] with no nasalisation. You might hear [panɔ] in eastern France, but this is unrelated to your question. A non native speaker might hear a slight kind of ...
jlliagre's user avatar
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14 votes

Aren't all schwas sounded like /ø/?

Depending on the dialect of the speaker, schwa might be realised as [əʷ], [œ] or [ø]. Whatever this realisation might be, it's still its own phoneme, since it has a very different behaviour from /ø/: ...
Eau qui dort's user avatar
  • 9,744
14 votes

Is there a difference in pronunciation for un, a, à, as and et, es and est?

Note: It is difficult to avoid using IPA to describe pronunciation. English vowels are absolutely not equivalent to French ones, so comparisons in dictionaries (e.g. "like the a in angel") are often ...
Maroon's user avatar
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14 votes

Does the French language have an "oy" sound?

There are several words of foreign origin used in French that contain the /ɔj/ diphtong, including barzoï, boy-scout, boycotter, cow-boy, foil, goy, joystick, spoiler, and monoï. In addition, there is ...
jlliagre's user avatar
  • 148k
13 votes
Accepted

Raison pour laquelle « é » s'appelle « e accent aigu » et pas « e accent grave »

Les langues évoluent et les intonations changent, mais l'origine des accents aigu et grave remonte pratiquement à l'Antiquité. Les accents français ont été hérités principalement du grec ancien, mais ...
Kareen's user avatar
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13 votes
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Is there any hidden 'W' sound after 'comment' in : Comment est-elle?

In both the video and Google Translate's pronunciation, I think I understand what you're hearing. It seems to be an implicit glide between the /ɑ̃/ and the /ɛ/ simply as a function of the first being ...
Luke Sawczak's user avatar
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12 votes
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Why is there no cedilla on the c in porcelaine ?

C can be pronounced [k] or [s]. C is pronounced [k] before a, o, u, or any consonant (except h). Call this the "hard" C. calembour cour cul croquer C is pronounced [s] before e, i, y. Call this ...
Luke Sawczak's user avatar
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12 votes
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Prétéqueuseuteu

Ce n'est pas du patois, c'est vraiment comme dit le texte (« comme eût prononcé la cuisinière de mon grand-père ») un élément de prononciation. Les enfants qui ne savent pas encore bien parler, et ...
None's user avatar
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12 votes
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Prononciation de "2h41"

Parce qu'il s'agit en fait de minutes : deux heures quarante-et-une [minutes]
Toto's user avatar
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12 votes

Does French have the English "short i" vowel?

The French generally spoken in France does not have [ɪ] either phonemically or phonetically, and to my knowledge no variety of French would use it for the first vowel in « s'il vous plait » (though ...
Luke Sawczak's user avatar
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12 votes

Do I have to learn /o/ or /ɔ/ separately?

A contrast between close-mid /o/ and open-mid /ɔ/ is present in many varieties of French. But the distribution of the two sounds varies between accents. Some accents have distinctions in vowel length ...
sumelic's user avatar
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