French for American Speakers

Americans naturally nasalise vowels before 'n' and 'm' — say 'can't' slowly and notice how the vowel buzzes in your nose before you hit the 'n'. French nasal vowels are exactly that buzz, but you STOP before the 'n' or 'm'. Say 'bon' — start with 'boh', let it buzz into your nose, but don't let your tongue touch the roof of your mouth for the 'n'. The vowel IS the nasality.

You already come close in words like 'onion' and 'canyon' — the 'ny' sound in the middle. French 'gn' is this same sound but produced as a single unit, not 'n' followed by 'y'. Press the middle of your tongue against your hard palate and release through the nose.

Your 'ay' in 'say' starts in the right place but glides upward — it's a diphthong (two sounds). French 'é' is just the FIRST part of your 'ay', frozen in place. Say 'say' but cut it short before your jaw moves up. That clipped, pure first half is the French 'é'.

You already use a schwa in unstressed syllables — the 'a' in 'about' or 'the' before a consonant. The French schwa is similar but with slightly more lip rounding and a more fronted tongue position. Think of your 'about' vowel but with your lips gently pursed. The bigger challenge is knowing when to pronounce it and when to drop it — in French, the schwa is often optional.

You have both sounds in English but may not distinguish them cleanly. Open 'ɔ' is your 'bought' or 'caught' vowel — jaw dropped, lips gently rounded. Closed 'o' is the START of your 'go' — but freeze it before it glides to 'oo'. French requires you to keep these clearly separate. 'Bonne' uses the open one, 'beau' uses the closed one.

English has two 'l' sounds: a 'light' one at the start of words (like 'light') and a 'dark' one at the end (like 'full', 'bottle'). French ONLY uses the light 'l', always. The dark 'l' — where the back of your tongue rises — sounds heavy and foreign in French. For words like 'belle' and 'table', keep your tongue tip pressed behind your upper front teeth and the back of your tongue LOW. It should feel thin and bright.

Your 'cat' vowel is close to French front 'a' but slightly too raised and tense — relax your jaw and open wider. Your 'father' vowel is close to French back 'a' — the 'ah' quality in 'pâte'. The distinction is disappearing in modern Parisian French (most speakers use front 'a' everywhere), so if you can produce a clear, open front 'a', you're covered for most contexts.

This is about UN-learning something. In French, 'h' is NEVER pronounced as a sound — there's no breath or friction. 'Hôtel' is simply 'ôtel'. 'Homme' is 'omme'. The hard part for Americans is suppressing the strong 'h' you naturally produce. The twist: some French h-words allow elision and liaison (l'homme, les hommes) while others block it (le haricot, NOT l'haricot). This is a vocabulary memorisation issue, not a pronunciation one.