Consonants (the French r and others)

Summary

French consonants differ from English in four big ways: the r is uvular /ʁ/ (from the back of the throat, not the English retroflex r); /p t k/ are unaspirated (no puff of air); /t d/ are dental; and gn spells /ɲ/. Final consonants are usually silent, except often the 'CaReFuL' set c, r, f, l. The letter h is never pronounced.

Explanation

Most French consonants have a close English counterpart, so learners can lean on sounds they already have: /b d f g k l m n p s t v z/ are all broadly familiar. A handful, however, are made differently from English and give away a foreign accent immediately. This rule focuses on those points of difference — the r, aspiration, the dental /t d/, the palatal /ɲ/ — and on the single biggest spelling puzzle for beginners: which final consonants are actually pronounced.

The famous French r is uvular /ʁ/, produced at the very back of the mouth where the uvula meets the back of the tongue, often with a soft friction or a light vibration. It is nothing like the English r, which is retroflex or bunched with the tongue tip raised in the middle of the mouth. Say rouge /ʁuʒ/, Paris /paʁi/ and rue /ʁy/: the tongue tip stays down behind the lower teeth while the back of the tongue rises toward the uvula. A useful starting trick is to begin from a soft gargle or from the sound of /g/ and relax it into friction. Note that in some regional and traditional varieties the r may be a trill or tap, but standard French is uvular.

The voiceless stops /p t k/ are unaspirated. In English, the p of 'pin', the t of 'top' and the k of 'kill' are released with a small puff of air (aspiration) at the start of a stressed syllable; hold a hand in front of your mouth and you feel it. In French there is no such puff: père, table and café begin with a clean, crisp /p t k/ that sound almost like the English b, d, g to an untrained ear. Suppressing that puff of air is one of the quickest ways to sound less anglophone. Related to this, French /t d/ (and /n l/) are dental: the tongue tip touches the back of the upper teeth, not the ridge behind them as in English, giving a slightly softer, more forward contact.

The digraph gn spells the palatal nasal /ɲ/, a single sound like the ny in 'canyon' or the ñ of Spanish señor — not a sequence of /g/ + /n/. It appears in montagne /mɔ̃taɲ/, agneau /aɲo/, gagner /ɡaɲe/ and campagne /kɑ̃paɲ/. Do not pronounce the g separately: montagne is 'mon-tañ', never 'mon-tag-ne'. (The letters ch and other spelling-to-sound correspondences are treated in a separate rule.)

Final consonants in French are usually silent. The written endings of petit /pəti/, trop /tʁo/, tabac /taba/, prends /pʁɑ̃/ and vous /vu/ are all mute, which is why so many words seem to end in a vowel when spoken. A classic memory aid is the English word CaReFuL: the consonants c, r, f and l are the ones most often pronounced at the end of a word — sac /sak/, hiver /ivɛʁ/, chef /ʃɛf/ and sel /sɛl/. The aid is only a rough guide, not a law: some final r are silent (the infinitive -er ending, as in parler /paʁle/, and the noun ending -ier as in premier /pʁəmje/), and words such as tabac, clef and gentil break it too. Treat CaReFuL as a helpful default and learn the exceptions as you meet them.

Finally, the letter h is never pronounced in French — there is no /h/ sound at all. Words are said as if the h were not written: homme is /ɔm/, hôtel is /otɛl/, thé is /te/. Even so, h comes in two grammatical kinds. A mute h (h muet) behaves like a vowel for elision and liaison (l'homme, les‿hommes), whereas an aspirate h (h aspiré) blocks them (le héros, les héros with no /z/), even though neither is actually voiced. That distinction is developed in the rule on h aspiré vs h muet; here the key point is simply that h itself carries no sound.

Examples

rouge — red (/ʁuʒ/ — uvular r from the back of the throat, tongue tip down; not the English retroflex r.)

Paris — Paris (/paʁi/ — the p is unaspirated (no puff of air) and the final s is silent.)

table — table (/tabl/ — dental, unaspirated /t/: tongue tip on the back of the upper teeth, no puff.)

montagne — mountain (/mɔ̃taɲ/ — gn = a single palatal /ɲ/ (like Spanish ñ), never /g/ + /n/.)

un sac, l'hiver, le chef, le sel — a bag, winter, the chef/boss, the salt (The 'CaReFuL' finals are pronounced: /sak/, /ivɛʁ/, /ʃɛf/, /sɛl/.)

l'homme, le héros — the man, the hero (h is never voiced: /lɔm/ (mute h, elision) vs /lə eʁo/ (aspirate h blocks elision).)

Common mistakes

Related rules

• Spelling to sound (ch, gn, -ill-, qu…)
• Silent letters
• h aspiré vs h muet
• Liaison