About Spell and Sound French Charts

Your FREE Spell and Sound French Chart is a composition of 37 French sounds or phonemes and their spellings, in a double-sided, one-page chart with lots of features. And for those more difficult sound combinations extra sound boxes have been included especially for the beginner.

French Chart Features

There are so many features to Spell and Sound French Charts so we’ve just highlighted the most important ones.

Alphabetical Order

Find the sounds that go with particular French spellings quickly by scanning down the alphabetised yellow boxes with letters on your chart

Grouping letter combinations or spellings by Alphabetical order is perfect for the student learning French in a non-French speaking country

Separate Vowels and Consonant pages

Look up spellings and sounds easily on either the vowels or consonants page.

All three French semi-consonants are found in the vowels section because the spellings for these sounds all start with vowels

International Phonetic Alphabet IPA

The small symbol in brackets[ ] in each sound box is the internationally recognized symbol for that particular sound. This static reference point allows you to check if you’re making the correct sound and helps differentiate between sounds that have been grouped together

Your teacher can also use these symbols to help guide you through the Sounds of French as you use your chart

French Examples

One of the most important features of the Spell and Sound French Charts is the use of French examples. French examples show how the spellings are used in French words

Examples can also demonstrate particular pronunciation rules such as those for the Hard C and Soft C and Cedilla Accent sounds

Colour Coded

French Charts are colour coded so you can easily move from the chart with Examples to one without examples.

Red backgrounds contain English words with the French sound underlined and highlighted in yellow.

Yellow backgrounds contain all French spellings as they occur in French words. These are in alphabetical order, so you just need to scan the yellow boxes to find the spelling choice for the word you are looking up.

Consonant sounds are grouped together by colour, rather than location, like the vowels chart. Just match up the background colours of the examples.

Pure, IPA French Charts

Include all the features mentioned above, without English equivalent sounds or phoneme groupings.

Choosing a French Chart

There are three charts you can choose from;

French Chart With Examples
French Chart Without Examples
IPA French Chart

The Chart With Examples is recommended. Not only does it give you some context to French spellings but shows you how to use those spellings. Many handy spelling and pronunciation rules are contained within these examples – another bonus!

The down side to the French Chart With Examples is the size of the print on the chart. French is often described as being a vowel rich language and it definitely seems that way when you take a look at the vowels page. Lots of vowel sounds and lots of spelling variations mean that the vowels page is crammed with information that has been squeezed on to one page. If you choose to print this chart, the text might seem small. If you use the chart on your computer you can always adjust the zoom so it’s easier to read.

If you can, bear with the small print. The information contained within the examples is valuable, especially for the beginner. You will find that in a short space of time you will no longer need the chart with examples and can move onto the chart without examples, and shortly after that… you won’t need either chart!

The French Chart without examples has larger print and is more tempting to start with. If you haven’t used the Chart with Examples before but feel confident that you don’t need it, we recommend that you download it as a reference.

And if you’re only interested in the pure French phonetic chart in our unique “alphabetized order” the IPA French Chart can guide your phonics journey.

Best ways to use your Spell and Sound French Chart

Currently, French Charts are available in PDF versions and can be saved and printed as you need them.

Here are some ways you can keep yours handy.

Print it out and keep it in your French file
Stick it into your notes
Laminate it
Shrink it (best with large print version) and keep it on you

Once you have downloaded your chart, you can start straight away or take a couple of minutes to look through the How to use Spell and Sound French charts information.

All of our French Charts are FREE to download and for personal use only.

You are asked not to copy, recreate or distribute the charts or the information contained within them.

Prefer a book to a chart?
Get our “New” French Phonics Handbook in alphabetical order: An every day pronunciation and spelling resource available from Amazon!