The French pronunciation can be quite bizarre to the not-yet-French-accustomed-to-ear. Many words are not pronounced as they are spelled, some letters are not pronounced loud, and you may even encounter some strange sounds that you’ve never heard in your life! Don’t despair just yet as that doesn’t mean that you’ll ever produce a truly understandable French utterance with no traces of your French pronunciation being out-of-place! It does, however, mean that you have the chance to better your current pronunciation and speech patterns.

There are 3 extremely crucial secrets to perfecting your French pronunciation that you need to know.

The number one most important tip on how to speak French with better pronunciation is to

listen to what the French sound like.

Before trying to utter any word out loud, acquaint thyself with the sounds characteristic of the target language. Listening closely will help you grasp the cadence and the differences between sounds peculiar to the French language. You will notice the French language has a unique rhythm to it that is completely different from your mother tongue. The best way to do active listening is to listen to French music or watch French TV shows or movies every day for a little while. Even if you don’t understand much, your ear will still get used to the sound of it, and your pronunciation will greatly benefit from that!

The number two most important tip on how to speak French with better pronunciation is to practice your french sounds, not your french spelling.

There are certain sounds in French which simply aren’t present in English. There are also digraphs which in French are pronounced as nasal vowels, which may prove challenging to both spell and read! Instead of trying to tackle the challenge of separating sounds according to the French specific phonics, it’s better to memorize the sounds and try to repeat them as best as you can.

My final tip to you on how to speak French with better pronunciation is to

speak out loud every day.

While reading texts out loud is a splendid way to both learn to read French, it’s also vital that you speak, even if there is no one to speak to. You can even try reading simple sentences out loud to yourself! Another helpful method is shadowing, where you speak out loud what the French person is speaking, but with a fraction of a second delay, so that you’re always on time with the French model speaker. You can even shadow yourself in a mirror! It’s imperative that you don’t feel embarassed to say foreign sounds which have no equivalent in your own language.