Liaison, elision and rhythm

Les amis is said lay-za-mee: the silent s wakes up as a z and joins the next word.

In speech French words do not stand apart. They run together into smooth groups, and three habits make that happen: elision, where a small word loses its vowel; enchaînement, where a final consonant slides onto the next word; and liaison, where a silent final consonant is pronounced because a vowel follows. These are the reasons a sentence you can read perfectly may sound like one long word when you hear it. Learning them helps your listening as much as your speaking.

Elision

A handful of short words drop their final vowel before a word that starts with a vowel or a mute h, and the dropped vowel is replaced by an apostrophe. Le and la become l’: l’ami (the friend), l’école, l’hôtel. Je becomes j’: j’aime (I like), j’habite (I live). The same happens to me, te, se, ne, de and que: c’est (it is), n’est, d’accord (OK), qu’il. Si (if) only elides before il and ils, which is why the phrase for please is s’il vous plaît. Elision is not optional. Writing le ami or je aime is a spelling mistake, and saying them sounds wrong to any French speaker. Before an aspirated h there is no elision: le héros, la honte.

Enchaînement

When a word ends in a consonant that is pronounced anyway, and the next word starts with a vowel, the consonant moves across and starts the next syllable. Il arrive (he is arriving) is said i-la-rive, and avec elle (with her) a-ve-kel. Nothing new is pronounced; the sounds are just regrouped. This is why French syllables so often begin with a consonant and why word boundaries are hard to hear at first.

Liaison

Liaison goes one step further. A final consonant that is normally silent is pronounced because the next word starts with a vowel or a mute h. Some letters change their sound when they link: s and x become z, and d becomes t. Les amis is lay-za-mee, deux heures (two hours) is duh-zuhr, un ami is uh-na-mee, petit ami is puh-tee-ta-mee and grand homme is grahn-tom. The University of Texas course Français interactif sorts liaisons into three kinds. Some are obligatory: after a determiner (les enfants, un ami), between a pronoun and a verb (nous avons, ils ont), between an adjective and the noun after it (les petites annonces), after short prepositions and adverbs (chez eux, très utile) and almost always after the verb être (c’est impossible).

Other liaisons are forbidden. There is never a liaison after et (and), so un homme et une femme has no link after et. There is none before an aspirated h (les haricots), none between a singular noun and the adjective after it (un client honnête), and none after a person’s name (Vincent est policier). A third group is optional, for example after pas, trop and plus: pas encore can be said with or without the s. Optional liaisons are made more often in careful or formal speech than in casual conversation.

Rhythm

English stresses one syllable in each word: PA-ris, ba-NA-na. French gives its syllables roughly equal length and adds a slight lengthening at the end of each group of words. Paris is pa-RIS only in the sense that the last syllable is a little longer; there is no heavy beat. In a sentence such as Je voudrais un café, s’il vous plaît, the weight falls on the end of each group, ca-FÉ and PLAÎT, not on every word. Saying every syllable evenly will make your French sound more natural than any single sound you fix.