The ‘n’ sound in French

When a word in French has the sound ‘n’, or it ends with an ‘n’, you make this sound from your nose. You almost scrunch your nose up, as if you were showing disgust! A great way to make the sound is by holding your nose!! However, you need to remember to master the sound and not walk around holding your nose every time you say the ‘n’ sound!

It is not as hard sound like ‘n’ [enn] in English. That is why you will see in our pronunciation guide with square brackets[...] that the ‘n’ is often in brackets….you make a nasal soft sound. For example, the number 20 = vingt [vah(n)].

There are other words that end in ‘nne’, you would then use the hard ‘n’ [enn], for example

Let’s look at the difference between bon and bonne…both words mean good when we are talking about food or smells, or saying someone is good at something…. in fact bon is one of those words that is commonly misused so I don’t want to go into too much detail here as I feel it’s a word for another blogging session and a grammar lesson in itself!

so….bon pronounced [boh(n)] in its masculine form and bonne pronounced [bon] in its feminine form, with heavy emphasis on the ‘n’ sound.

une personne [oon person] or Personne [person] = nobody

Note that the word ‘une’ also has the sound ‘n’, however as it is followed by the ‘e’ you pronounce it like [nuh] [oonuh].

As you master the pronunciation you will find that you put less effort and emphasis on the sounds…the key is to relax and remember it’s all about communication and getting our point across!

 

 

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