As if a guttural R and four different nasal vowels aren’t enough, we’ve found loads of ways that we completely “stuff-up” the French language. Most are pretty obvious, like the French R and the nasal vowels but we want to focus on the pronunciation mistakes you probably don’t know your making. They are subtle but […]

The final consonants C, F, L and R have been given their own page and form Part 2 of our two part series on final French consonants. If you missed Part 1, follow this link: Final French Consonants Part 1 (D, P, T, S, X, Z) The letters C, F, L and R are usually, […]

Ever wondered why some final French consonants are voiced and some aren’t. Some rules seem quite random, for example the letter f in “un œuf” is voiced but both letters f and s are silent in “des œufs”. This 2 part tutorial is all about the mysteries of voiced final French consonants… Lets start with […]

Looking down a list of French verb tenses can be overwhelming when you first start French. Learning the terminating spellings for each of the regular verbs is difficult enough without worrying about the irregular ones. To make matters worse, the sounds of some endings are not what you’d expect them to be. Let’s take a […]

“Learn French in 4 weeks? Impossible!” I hear you say. I agree!! Many Learn French programs make tantalising statements like this but I haven’t found one that delivers the goods (not in a really short space of time anyway). What’s on offer here is not a miracle learning program offering dazzling results with minimal effort […]

Distinguishing between each subtle sound of French isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. Let’s face it, to many of us, whole groups of French speech sounds (phonemes) seem the same. Spell and Sound Charts purposely group similar sounds to help beginners enjoy their speaking journey by giving them a place to start. […]

Anyone learning French in a non-French speaking country understands how slow the learning process is. Really, how do you learn to speak another language when all you hear is your own? Most of us are comfortable with the writing and reading parts of learning French but not many us are comfortable speaking it – regardless […]

No wonder speaking French is hard, there are around 8 pure sounds in French that are completely different to the English language! And that doesn’t include some of the more troublesome sound combinations. The good news… There are less sounds to learn in French. English has around 44 sounds or phonemes and French has 37. […]