Article on the pronunciation of final consonants in French

As a follow-up to a previous article I mentioned a few days ago, readers may be interested in another article of mine that has just appeared on When to pronounce final consonants in French. The article gives some rough rules of thumb, along with some slightly more detailed guidance, for when to pronounce consonants on the ends of French words. It also touches briefly on the issue of liaison, although this is surely a subject I will come back to in a future article.

Read the article here: http://ezinearticles.com/?When-to-Pronounce-Final-Consonants-in-Fre...

Enjoy!

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Permalink Reply by Jean Dervin on January 29, 2013 at 8:19pm

How about place names ending in -as? There really isn't any kind of rule. Gigondas, Valréas, Carpentras, Aubenas, Juliénas ...

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on January 29, 2013 at 8:37pm

Yes, place names are generally more problematic because they can be rooted in local languages/dialects, and be more susceptible to having their pronunciation "fixed" by local customs. For that reason, the article wasn't really focussing on place names, though of course the pronunciation of place names still bears out some of the general rules.