French Pronunciation Lessons and Activities
French pronunciation lessons, with thousands of sound files. Lessons on liaisons, contractions, rhythm, and every other aspect of French pronunciation.
Simplified chart of French pronunciation, to help new French students get an idea what French sounds like without getting bogged down in exceptions.
Many students find that pronunciation is the hardest part of learning French. The new sounds, the silent letters, the liaisons... they all combine to make speaking French very tricky. Here are the top French pronunciation difficulties and mistakes, with links to detailed lessons and sound files.
Speaking French is more than just knowing the vocabulary and grammar rules - you also need to pronounce the letters correctly. Unless you started learning French as a child, you're unlikely to ever sound like a native speaker, but it's certainly not impossible for adults to speak with a decent French accent. Here are some ideas to help you improve your French pronunciation.
The International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, is a standardized alphabet for phonetic notation: a comprehensive set of symbols and diacritical marks used to transcribe the speech sounds of all languages in a uniform fashion. The most common uses of the International Phonetic Alphabet are in linguistics and dictionaries.
You can learn a lot of French grammar using the internet and books, but if you want to be able to understand others and make yourself understood, you need to work on your listening and speaking skills. These French audio resources can help.
These resources include detailed explanations of French sounds and some audio tools for listening and speaking practice.
Detailed information about the pronunciation of every French letter.
