Sons et lettres: A Pronunciation Method for Intermediate-level French

31 General Rule A consonant at the end of a word is not pronounced. This rule applies especially to the following letters: - s , - x , - t , - d , - n , - p , - g , - z . Many of these letters occur regularly in three predictable grammatical contexts (see chart on page 34). These three contexts are: • Verb endings: singular forms ( -es , -s , -t , -d , -x ) and plural forms ( -ons , -ez , -ent ) • Adjectives: masculine forms ( -t , -d , -s , -x , -n ), e.g., fort , grand , gros , faux , bon • Plural markers: ( -s, -x ) Exception #1 Any consonant followed by the letters - e or - es at the end of a word is pronounced. This refers only to the - e without an accent mark, and occurs regularly in feminine forms of words (compare: un / une , petit / petite , froid / froide , etc.), but also applies to pairs of unrelated words, such as coup [blow] and coupe [cut]. The letter - e itself is usually not pronounced; it only signals the pronunciation of the preceding consonant. (The verb ending -ent has the same effect: it is not pronounced, but it causes a preceding consonant to be pronounced, e.g., ils attendent, elles servent .) Note that this rule is valid not only for - e , but for any vowel that follows a consonant. However, in the case of vowels other than e , the vowel itself is also pronounced and adds another syllable (as in sort / sorti , perd / perdu , rat / raté ). Exception #2 In words borrowed from English, the final consonant is pronounced. Such words do not follow the general rule precisely because they are loan words which have retained this feature of their original pronunciation. Some common examples are: un short, un tee-shirt, des baskets, un jean (or un blue-jean ) , le fun, un modem, un clip, le blues ; le parking ; le jazz . Exception #3 In words ending in - c , - r , - f , or - l , this letter is usually pronounced. Inmost cases these are short, single-syllable words. The following chart shows the most common words that follow this rule. You will notice that all of THE RULES IN DETAIL