French letters hard C and soft C

champs elysees french phonetics In the French language there are the three C’s, not to be confused with the three seas of France (granted one is a channel and the other is an ocean). But there are only 2 sounds to the letter c; the hard c has a K sound as in kite and the soft c has a s sound as in sit. The third c is c with a cedilla, a little sickle mark at the base of the letter like this ç.

So how do we know which sound the letter c makes in French words? Your Spell and Sound French chart can show you the way.

On the consonants page of your Spell and Sound French Chart with Examples you will find at the top the letter C with 4 sound boxes underneath.

You can always watch our short video about the French letter C and the cedilla accent.

Soft C

soft c table Lets take a look at the box with the sound “sit”. There is a normal letter c and a c with a cedilla, which we’ll come back to later. The examples in your French Chart for the sound sit are;

cent
cinq
cyclisme

Note the letters after the c = E, I, Y

French words with the letters E, I or Y after the letter c make the c sound soft as in sit.

Now lets take a look at ç

What happens when you want to use a soft c sound but the next letter isn’t “e”, “i” or “y”? You use a cedilla. The cedilla makes the c soft again even if it’s followed by an “a” or “u” or “o”. How would we say ça va? without this little notation?

Some words use use a cedilla when we don’t want the root of the word to change with a tense change, such as “recevoir” which becomes reçu. The soft c sound is maintained due to the presence of the cedilla.

Hard C

hard c table In you French Chart under the letter C and next to the “sit” sound box is the sound kite. This hard C sound is also made by the letter c but with different circumstances to the soft c. Lets investigate…

Your Spell and Sound French Chart with Examples shows 4 examples of when the letter c is pronounced like k in kite.

caler
copain
cuisine
sucre

Notice the letters after the c = A O U

The letters A, O and U always make the letter C a hard sound, unless there is a cedilla on the c. The forth example, sucre shows a consonant after the c. This also makes the c sound hard. If you go back to the work we covered on Soft C you will notice that in the example “cyclisme”, the first c has a soft sound but the second has a hard sound.

These rules are pretty ridged in French. To demonstrate this I’ll use the letters that make up the sound fur “eu”. When these letters are placed after the letter c the sound of the c is soft as in sit. But, if we wanted the c to have a hard sound as in kite, we would need the cedilla notation or the letters “a” or “o” or “u” to be next to the letter c in the word. So how does it work?

Switch-switch! The letter “u” in the “eu” letter group, changes places with the letter “e” to make the sound of the letter c like k in kite.

For example; cueillir would not sound the same if the “e” was before the “u”. The “ue” in this case makes the same fur sound as it did when it was “eu”. In your Spell and Sound French Chart you will notice that the “ue” letter combination is not with the fur sound box but represented in the sound combinations boxes.

In French, the letters can switch places to follow the rules.