Listen to French Sounds

Palace and palace gardens france Hear all 37 French sounds or phonemes often called the French Phonetic Alphabet, spoken by a French native, compiled into 4 charts;

vowels,
nasal vowels,
consonants and
semi-consonants.

Each sound is represented by it’s International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol. Just click on the IPA symbol to reveal the sound. Underneath each IPA symbol is an example of the sound within a French word. The spellings within the examples represent only one of the many spelling possibilities for each particular French sound.

If you would like to know what the other spelling possibilities are, take a look at our free and printable French Charts. The table or sound box starting with the word Bed is an example of all the French spellings that make up the “e” sound as in Bed. Your French chart is full of these sound boxes to help guide through the sounds of French and their spellings.

Our sound files are in the form of MP3′s but if you’re still having trouble accessing them, please let us know.

French Vowels

ɑ	a	ø	œ	ə	ɛ
flamme	barrique	ceux	cœur	demander	maison
e	o	ɔ	i	y	u
aller	agneau	robe	farine	rhume	vous

French Consonants

b	d	f	g	ɜ	k
bonbon	dinde	fleur	gant	jambon	caler
l	m	n	p	R	s
ville	comment	nous	pneu	rose	sucre
t	v	ŋ	ɲ	ʃ	z
thé	avion	camping	agneau	chapeau	zizanie

French Nasal Vowels

ɑ̃	ɔ̃	ɛ̃	œ̃
lent	trompette	plein	brun

French Semi-Consonants

w	j	ɥ
voir	million	huit

Common Groupings of French Sounds

You can see that there are no International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols in this last table. The letters or graphemes that make up these combination sounds are presented. Luckily, there are not many spelling alternatives to these sounds. For a brief explanation of using “euil/euille” in French, watch this short video.

ail/aille	euil/euille	eil/eille	oi/oy	ti
taille	fauteuil	reveille	voir	dictionnaire

Visit our Audio Lounge to record and playback your own “French Sounds”!

About Phonemes

Phonemes are described as distinct language sounds here at spellandsound.com. I prefer to keep this site jargon free so I don’t use the terms “phonemes” or “graphemes” very often.

If you listen to the above sounds or phonemes, you might think that a phoneme is only one sound, but that is not entirely true. A phoneme is a group of sounds. Lets use an English Example; the p in “pin” sounds differently to the p in “spin” but they both have the same phoneme group [p]. The same is true for French phonemes, each sound can be voiced in a different way depending on the word.

If you are a beginner or intermediate French language learner, the phonemes recorded on this site and illustrated in your Spell and Sound French Chart can help you understand the subtleties of the French language and get you started.

If you are keen to know more, understanding the International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA) and it’s notation will shed more light on the intricacies of French pronunciation.

What is the International Phonetic Alphabet?

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardised or universal system used to describe the sounds of oral language. It means that the sounds of French and English and many other Latin based languages have been transcribed into IPA symbols.

Most bilingual dictionaries have IPA symbols in brackets next to the word. You can use these symbols to help you pronounce a word by looking up English sounds in the IPA Index in your dictionary. Of course, for French you just need your Spell and Sound French Chart.

You might find these sites interesting if you want to know more about the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The International Phonetic Association
Wikipedia IPA

It’s always best to listen to authentic French sounds when learning French, so all the sounds you hear at spellandsound.com are produced by our own French native speaker