A quick tour of silent letters, liaison, and enchaînement — the three things that make spoken French sound nothing like it's spelled.
French spelling is a museum: it preserves letters that stopped being pronounced centuries ago. The good news is that the rules behind the silence are mostly regular. Three of them do most of the work.
1. Silent final consonants
Most final consonants are silent — les amis ends on a vowel sound, the s
mute. But that sleeping s can wake up…
2. Liaison
…when the next word starts with a vowel. The silent s of les resurfaces as a
/z/ and bridges into amis: les‿z‿amis. This is liaison, and after short
function words (articles, pronouns, numbers) it’s obligatory.
3. Enchaînement
A consonant that’s already pronounced just slides onto the next vowel — no new
sound, pure resyllabification. il arrive → i‿l‿arrive.
Try it yourself below — type any French sentence and watch the silent letters dim and the links appear:
That widget is the same tool you’ll find under Pronunciation in the nav — dropped straight into this post because the blog is MDX.