In the last How To Learn French post, I introduced the concept of anchor words as a way of improving your pronunciation. Anchor words are words that students absolutely know how to pronounce. They’ll be different for everyone, but the trick is to start gathering a little stock of your own which you can use to refer to in order to at least have a very good stab at pronouncing new words correctly.

French pronunciation has a reputation for being difficult, but I think this stems from a misunderstanding. Yes, French certainly has sounds that do not in any way resemble English, however, the good is that they do resemble one another in many cases. That is, there are several ways of spelling the very same sounds in French.

So, to get going, let’s take a look at the ones we covered last time, and then we’ll advance from there. Un petit rappel*, if you’d like to be 100% sure of the pronunciation of any of these words, make the most of this great little website, where you can hear a variety of native speakers saying them. It’s a very good resource and one I still use when I’m faced with a word I’m not entirely certain how to pronounce.

A comme* ÇA VA
E comme JE
I/Y comme ICI
O comme TOMATE
U comme TU

We’re going to tackle dipthongs, which are vowel combinations that create a syllable. Ne vous inquiétez pas*, even if you’ve only been learning French for a very short time, you’ll have come across them already, possibly without realising it. A classic example is found in the word bonjour, where the o and the u produce a particular sound.

You’ll notice that some of the sounds below are exactly the same as the anchor words above. Tu vois*? French pronunciation is already becoming easier.

My hope is that learning how certain sounds are grouped will not only take away the guesswork, but will start to arrange French pronunciation into a grid format in your mind, replacing what may currently look more like you’ve upended a cylinder of pick-up sticks from a great height in a strong wind.

où
douze
voudrais
bouteille

deux
neuf
heure
sœur

SOUNDS LIKE: E comme JE

trois
poisson
chinois
toilettes

raisins
treize
seize
retraité

bureau
château
restaurant
gâteau
australien

SOUNDS LIKE: O comme TOMATE

nuit
huit
oui
huile

As we continue with growing your collection* of anchor words, you’ll see that many of them start to refer back to our original group. I’d really encourage you to start keeping a little list in the back of one of your notebooks to refer to. I think you’ll be happily surprised by how quickly you’ll discover that French pronunciation is not only beautiful, but also rather orderly and comprehensible. In fact, it’s one of the rare elements of French where exceptions are truly exceptional, rather than the rule. Lâche pas*!

How to Learn French - Another piece of the pronunciation puzzle