Final consonants and the liaison

In French, certain consonants are silent when they are the final letter of a word. The letters p (as in'coup'), s (as in 'héros'), t (as in 'chat'), d (as in 'marchand), and x (as in 'paresseux'), are never pronounced at the end of a word.

b and p

Unlike English, when you pronounce the letters 'b' and 'p' in French, little to no air should be expended from your mouth. In terms of phonetics, the difference in the French 'b' and 'p' and their English counterparts is one of aspiration (this is not related to the similarly named concept of 'h' aspiré below,but is a slight extra puff of air accompanies the stop). Fortunately, in English both aspirated and unaspirated variants (allophones) actually exist, but only in specific environments. If you're a native speaker, say the word 'pit' and then the word 'spit' out loud. Did you notice the extra puff of air in the first word that doesn't come with the second? The 'p' in 'pit' is aspirated [pʰ]; the 'p' in 'spit' is not (like the 'p' in any position in French).

Exercise for you

1. Get a loose piece of printer paper or notebook paper.

2. Hold the piece of paper about one inch (or a couple of centimeters) in front of your face.

3. Say the words baby, and puppy like you normally would in English. Notice how the paper

moved when you said the 'b' and the 'p' respectively.

4. Now, without making the piece of paper move, say the words belle (the feminine form of

beautiful in French, pronounced like the English 'bell.'), and papa, (the French equivalent of

"Dad").

• If the paper moved, your pronunciation is slightly off. Concentrate, and try it again.

• If the paper didn't move, congratulations! You pronounced the words correctly!

Aspirated vs. non-aspirated h In French, the letter h can be aspirated, (h aspiré), or not aspirated, (h non aspiré), depending on which language the word was borrowed from. What do these terms mean?

• Ex.: the word héros, (hero) has an aspirated h, because when the definite article le is placed

before it, the result is le héros, and both words must be pronounced separately. However, the

feminine form of héros, héroïne is a non-aspirated h. Therefore, when you put the definite

artcle in front of it, it becomes l'héroïne, and is pronounced as one word.

The only way to tell if the h at the beginning of a word is aspirated is to look it up in the dictionary. Some dictionaries will place an asterisk (*) in front of the entry word in the French-English H section if the h is aspirated. Other dictionaries will include it in the pronunciation guide after the key word by placing a (') before the pronunciation. In short, the words must be memorized.

Here is a table of some basic h words that are aspirated and not aspirated:

aspirated                               non-aspirated

héros, hero (le héros)         héroïne, heroine (l'héroïne)

haïr, to hate (je hais            habiter, to live (j'habite...)

orj'haïs...) 

huit, eight (le huit               harmonie, harmony (l'harmonie)

novembre) 

Exercise for you

1. Grab an English-French-English dictionary, and find at least ten aspirated h words, and ten non aspirated h words

2. Make a column of the two categories of h-word.

3. Look at it every day and memorize the columns.