Learn French Pronunciation

It’s not easy to learn French pronunciation. For a start, if you’re an English speaker your mouth has always learned to be the wrong shape!

There’s a lot to grasp when you’re learning a new language. If you’re a native English speaker there aren’t just the words but also new verb forms, different grammatical construction and, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve got to learn French pronunciation – and your mouth shape isn’t used to that at all!

Now that might sound a bit odd to you, but the truth is that you’ve always pronounced words in a certain way, and it’s affected the way your mouth and tongue works. Pronouncing French words – especially those with certain vowel combinations and the famous ‘rolled r’ – is quite different. Believe me, once you start you’ll soon discover exactly what ‘tongue tied’ means. Sometimes it seems you just can’t make that sound, and the harder you try, the worse it gets!

The answer of course is not just practice but the right kind of practice. It’s no good, for example, getting a French book and just reading the words out – how will you know if your pronunciation is correct? Fortunately you’ve got the perfect tool right in front of you – your computer.

For a start, a quick search of the internet will find quite a few free French audio files. It’s a good place to start because you can listen and repeat the sounds yourself. The drawback is that what you sound like to yourself may not be what you really sound like. If you’ve ever listed to a recording of your own voice you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Your PC can come to the rescue again here. If it hasn’t already got a microphone built in you can buy one for a few dollars and record yourself, that way you’ll know exactly what you sound like. Listen to the example, record yourself, listen to yourself. How do you sound? Now to be honest you’ll probably feel a little foolish at first, most of us do, but you do want to learn French pronunciation don’t you? Can you think of a better way?

A good place to start is the French alphabet. There are several places online that offer free MP3s. Another way to learn is to download these to a player or a CD so you can listen to them while you’re on the move. You can’t do the ‘record and playback’ thing, but hearing French over and over again will help it sink in. Once you’ve got the alphabet learned you can move on to useful phrases. Again you should find quite a few online.

As you progress you’ll soon get beyond what’s available for free. I would then suggest you go for one of the downloadable courses or perhaps a CD. Good ones can definitely help accelerate your learning and will offer interactive lessons you can play on your PC and text files in addition to the all-important sound files you can use while you’re at home or on your MP3 or CD player (before you buy, make sure you’ll be able to do this).

I wouldn’t be being fair if I said that learning French pronunciation was easy. Sometimes it’s very frustrating. I still get it wrong sometimes, much to the amusement of my French friends. It really doesn’t matter, the benefits of being able to speak to the French in their own language is far more rewarding than the occasional faux pas that you’ll make!

Learn French pronunciation and get six FREE language lessons at How2LearnFrench.com. By Dennis Cordy
Published: 5/26/2008

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Learning French Numbers

Did you know that the French actually count some numbers quite differently to you and me? Here are some quick and easy lessons to learn French numbers and avoid any mix-ups.

You would think that French numbers are pretty much the same as English, wouldn’t you? 1,2,3,4,5… how can they be different? Well of course French numerals when written like that are exactly the same. However, when you write them out in full, for example one, two, three, etc., there are a few differences between the French and the English and a few little traps for the unwary. This article will teach you how to avoid them.

Everything is OK from one to ten: the French numbers are un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix. Of course “un” (one) can also be “une” because in French things have gender. “Un” if it’s masculine, for example “un table” (easy one that, a table), “un chat” (a cat) but “une” if it’s feminine, “une chaise” (a chair) and “une girafe” (a giraffe).

There are no problems from eleven to twenty either: onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize, dix sept, dix huit, dix neuf, vingt.

French numbers have just a small change when you get to twenty one: “vingt et un”. Literally translated they say “twenty and one”. We’re OK for the rest of the numbers though, the French revert to the same style as English for twenty two “vingt deux” and the remainder of the numbers until thirty which is “trente”. Thirty one is like twenty one “trente et un” – you see, it’s that “thirty and one” thing again.

Forty (quarante), fifty (cinquante) and sixty (soixante) give us no problems either, as long as we remember the “and one” thing: “quarante et un” is forty one but for forty four we just use “quarante quatre”. “Soixante sept” is sixty seven but we use “soixante et un” for sixty one.

When we get to seventy, however, is when the French really throw a spanner in the works. There is no French number seventy! I’m not kidding. No seventy at all. So what do they do?

What they do is say “sixty ten”. Now don’t ask me why but that’s the way they do it. Seventy is “soixante dix”, sixty ten. Note it’s not sixty and ten, it’s sixty ten. Then sixty eleven, “soixante onze”, sixty twelve “soixante douze” and so on.

So what do you suppose eighty is? If you’ve guessed sixty twenty you’re way off! In fact it’s four twenty, no not forty twenty, four twenty: “quatre vingt”, like four multiplied by twenty I suppose. Again, don’t ask me why. Someone once said that you don’t have to like the rules, just understand them and if you want to learn French numbers the principal is the same. Don’t worry about why, just learn them.

Then just when you thought you’d got the hang of the “and one” bit, the French change it. Eighty one is “quatre vingt un” and so on for the rest of the eighties: “quatre vingt deux” eighty two, and so on.

I bet you’re really looking forward to ninety, aren’t you!

Ninety is four twenty eleven: “quatre vingt onze” and afterwards we have four twenty twelve “quatre vingt douze” and so on, the same pattern as with the seventies, all the way up to a hundred “cent”. Yes, that’s where the word Cent comes from.

After that, it’s mostly repetition. Two hundred is “deux cents” (note the ‘s’ on the end of cent because there’s more than one of them), three hundred is “trois cents” and so on. We don’t do the “and one” thing for two hundred and one, we do “deux cents un”. Same for the other hundreds.

A thousand is “un mille”, a million is “un million” and a billion is “un milliard”. So for example 243,586 is “deux cents quarante trois mille cinq cents quatre vingt six” that’s two hundred forty three thousand five hundred four twenty six. Simple really isn’t it!

In fact when you break it down and go over it a few times it’s not that difficult to learn French numbers. It’s a bit different, yes, and it takes a bit of practice, but that’s all it is. Write down a few random numbers and practice. Whenever you see a number – we do it with license plates – just try to translate it into French. You’ll soon get the hang of it and by the end of the year (2008 or “deux mille huit” – note not two thousand ‘and’ eight) you’ll be completely fluent!

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