French phonology

French phonology is the sound system of French. This article discusses mainly the phonology of all the varieties of Standard French. Notable phonological features include its uvular r, nasal vowels, and three processes affecting word-final sounds: liaison, a specific instance of sandhi in which word-final consonants are not pronounced unless they are followed by a word beginning with a vowel; elision, in which certain instances of (schwa) are elided (such as when final before an initial vowel); and (resyllabification) in which word-final and word-initial consonants may be moved across a syllable boundary, with syllables crossing word boundaries:
An example of the various processes is this:
Consonants.
Phonetic notes:
Geminates.
Although double consonant letters appear in the orthographic form of many French words, geminate consonants are relatively rare in the pronunciation of such words. The following cases can be identified.
The geminate pronunciation is found in the future and conditional forms of the verbs ('to run') and ('to die'). The conditional form "il mourrait" ('he would die'), for example, contrasts with the imperfect form "il mourait" ('he was dying'). In some other words, most modern speakers have reduced to , such as "il pourrait" ('he could'). Other verbs that have a double orthographically in the future and conditional are pronounced with a simple : "il pourra" ('he will be able to'), "il verra" ('he will see').
When the prefix combines with a base that begins with "n", the resulting word is sometimes pronounced with a geminate and similarly for the variants of the same prefix "im-", "il-", "ir-": 
Other cases of optional gemination can be found in words like ('syllable'), ('grammar'), and ('illusion'). The pronunciation of such words, in many cases, a spelling pronunciation varies by speaker and gives rise to widely varying stylistic effects. In particular, the gemination of consonants other than the liquids and nasals is "generally considered affected or pedantic". Examples of stylistically marked pronunciations include ('addition') and ('intelligence').
Gemination of doubled and is typical of the Languedoc region, as opposed to other southern accents.
A few cases of gemination do not correspond to double consonant letters in the orthography. The deletion of word-internal schwas (see below), for example, can give rise to sequences of identical consonants: "là-dedans" ('inside'), "l'honnêteté" ('honesty'). The elided form of the object pronoun "l'" ('him/her/it') is also realised as a geminate when it appears after another "l" to avoid misunderstanding:
Gemination is obligatory in such contexts.
Finally, a word pronounced with emphatic stress can exhibit gemination of its first syllable-initial consonant:
Liaison.
Many words in French can be analyzed as having a "latent" final consonant that is pronounced only in certain syntactic contexts when the next word begins with a vowel. For example, the word ('two') is pronounced in isolation or before a consonant-initial word ("deux jours" → 'two days'), but in "deux ans" (→ 'two years'), the linking or liaison consonant is pronounced.
Vowels.
Standard French contrasts up to 12 oral vowels and up to 4 nasal vowels. The schwa (in the center of the diagram next to this paragraph) is not necessarily a distinctive sound. Even though it often merges with one of the mid front rounded vowels, its patterning suggests that it is a separate phoneme (see the sub-section Schwa below).
The tables below list vowels in contemporary Parisian French. Other dialects may have more vowels.
Some dialects feature a long distinct from and a distinction between an open front and an open back instead of just one open central vowel. Some dialects also feature a nasalized () which has merged with in Paris.
In French French, normally is distinct only phonologically from and as its phonetic quality tends to coincide with either of those.
Close vowels.
In contrast with the mid vowels, there is no tense–lax contrast in close vowels. However, non-phonemic lax (near-close) appear in Quebec as allophones of when the vowel is both phonetically short (so not before ) and in a closed syllable, so that e.g. "petite" 'small ()' differs from "petit" 'small ()' not only in the presence of the final but also in the tenseness of the . Laxing always occurs in stressed closed syllables, but it is also found in other environments to various degrees.
In French French, are consistently close , but the exact height of is somewhat debatable as it has been variously described as close and near-close .
Mid vowels.
Although the mid vowels contrast in certain environments, there is a limited distributional overlap so they often appear in complementary distribution. Generally, close-mid vowels () are found in open syllables, and open-mid vowels () are found in closed syllables. However, there are minimal pairs:
Beyond the general rule, known as the "loi de position" among French phonologists, there are some exceptions. For instance, and are found in closed syllables ending in , and only is found in closed monosyllables before , , and .
The Parisian realization of has been variously described as central and centralized to before , in both cases becoming similar to .
The phonemic opposition of and has been lost in the southern half of France, where these two sounds are found only in complementary distribution. The phonemic oppositions of and and of and in terminal open syllables have been lost in almost all of France, but not in Belgium or in areas with an arpitan substrate, where and are still opposed as and .
Open vowels.
The phonemic contrast between front and back is sometimes not maintained in Standard French, which leads some researchers to reject the idea of two distinct phonemes. However, the distinction is still clearly maintained in other dialects such as Quebec French.
While there is much variation among speakers in France, a number of general tendencies can be observed. First of all, the distinction is most often preserved in word-final stressed syllables such as in these minimal pairs:
There are certain environments that prefer one open vowel over the other. For example, is preferred after and before :
The difference in quality is often reinforced by a difference in length (but the difference is contrastive in final closed syllables). The exact distribution of the two vowels varies greatly from speaker to speaker.
Back is much rarer in unstressed syllables, but it can be encountered in some common words:
Morphologically complex words derived from words containing stressed do not retain it:
Even in the final syllable of a word, back may become if the word in question loses its stress within the extended phonological context:
Nasal vowels.
The phonetic qualities of the back nasal vowels differ from those of the corresponding oral vowels. The contrasting factor that distinguishes and is the extra lip rounding of the latter according to some linguists, and tongue height according to others. Speakers who produce both and distinguish them mainly through increased lip rounding of the former, but many speakers use only the latter phoneme, especially most speakers in northern France such as Paris (but not farther north, in Belgium).
In some dialects, particularly that of Europe, there is an attested tendency for nasal vowels to shift in a counterclockwise direction: tends to be more open and shifts toward the vowel space of (realised also as ), rises and rounds to (realised also as ) and shifts to or . Also, there also is an opposite movement for for which it becomes more open and unrounds to , resulting in a merger of Standard French and in this case. According to one source, the typical phonetic realization of the nasal vowels in Paris is for , for and for , suggesting that the first two are unrounded open vowels that contrast by backness (like the oral and in some accents), whereas is much closer than .
In Quebec French, two of the vowels shift in a different direction: → , more or less as in Europe, but → and → .
In the Provence and Occitanie regions, nasal vowels are often realized as oral vowels before a stop consonant, thus reviving the <n> otherwise lost in other accents: quarante → .
Contrary to the oral , there is no attested tendency for the nasal to become central in any accent.
Schwa.
When phonetically realised, schwa (), also called "e " ('dropped e') and "e " ('mute e'), is a mid-central vowel with some rounding. Many authors consider it to be phonetically identical to . Geoff Lindsey suggests the symbol . state, more specifically, that it merges with before high vowels and glides:
in phrase-final stressed position:
and that it merges with elsewhere. However, some speakers make a clear distinction, and it exhibits special phonological behavior that warrants considering it a distinct phoneme. Furthermore, the merger occurs mainly in the French of France; in Quebec, and are still distinguished.
The main characteristic of French schwa is its "instability": the fact that under certain conditions it has no phonetic realization.
In French versification, word-final schwa is always elided before another vowel and at the ends of verses. It is pronounced before a following consonant-initial word. For example, "une grande femme fut ici, " in ordinary speech, would in verse be pronounced , with the enunciated at the end of each word.
Schwa cannot normally be realised as a front vowel () in closed syllables. In such contexts in inflectional and derivational morphology, schwa usually alternates with the front vowel :
A three-way alternation can be observed, in a few cases, for a number of speakers:
Instances of orthographic that do not exhibit the behaviour described above may be better analysed as corresponding to the stable, full vowel . The enclitic pronoun , for example, always keeps its vowel in contexts like "donnez-le-moi" → ('give it to me') for which schwa deletion would normally apply (giving *), and it counts as a full syllable for the determination of stress.
Cases of word-internal stable are more subject to variation among speakers, but, for example, "un rebelle" ('a rebel') must be pronounced with a full vowel in contrast to "un rebond" → or ('a bounce').
Length.
Except for the distinction still made by some speakers between and in rare minimal pairs like ('to put') vs. ('teacher'), variation in vowel length is entirely allophonic. Vowels can be lengthened in closed, stressed syllables, under the following two conditions:
When such syllables lose their stress, the lengthening effect may be absent. The vowel of is long in "Regarde comme elle saute !", in which the word is phrase-final and therefore stressed, but not in "Qu'est-ce qu'elle saute bien !" In accents wherein is distinguished from , however, it is still pronounced with a long vowel even in an unstressed position, as in "fête" in "C'est une fête importante."
The following table presents the pronunciation of a representative sample of words in phrase-final (stressed) position:
Devoicing.
In Parisian French, the close vowels and the mid front at the end of utterances can be devoiced. A devoiced vowel may be followed by a sound similar to the voiceless palatal fricative :
In Quebec French, close vowels are often devoiced when unstressed and surrounded by voiceless consonants:
Though a more prominent feature of Quebec French, phrase-medial devoicing is also found in European French. 
Elision.
The final vowel (usually ) of a number of monosyllabic function words is elided in syntactic combinations with a following word that begins with a vowel. For example, compare the pronunciation of the unstressed subject pronoun, in "je dors" ('I am sleeping'), and in "j'arrive" ('I am arriving').
Glides and diphthongs.
The glides , , and appear in syllable onsets immediately followed by a full vowel. In many cases, they alternate systematically with their vowel counterparts , , and such as in the following pairs of verb forms:
The glides in the examples can be analyzed as the result of a glide formation process that turns an underlying high vowel into a glide when followed by another vowel: → .
This process is usually blocked after a complex onset of the form obstruent + liquid (a stop or a fricative followed by or ). For example, while the pair "loue"/"louer" shows an alternation between and , the same suffix added to "cloue" , a word with a complex onset, does not trigger the glide formation: "clouer" ('to nail'). Some sequences of glide + vowel can be found after obstruent-liquid onsets, however. The main examples are , as in "pluie" ('rain'), , and . They can be dealt with in different ways, as by adding appropriate contextual conditions to the glide formation rule or by assuming that the phonemic inventory of French includes underlying glides or rising diphthongs like and .
Glide formation normally does not occur across morpheme boundaries in compounds like "semi-aride" ('semi-arid'). However, in colloquial registers, "si elle" ('if she') can be pronounced just like ('sky'), or "tu as" ('you have') like "tua" ('[(s)he] killed').
The glide can also occur in syllable coda position, after a vowel, as in ('sun'). There again, one can formulate a derivation from an underlying full vowel , but the analysis is not always adequate because of the existence of possible minimal pairs like ('country') / ('paycheck') and ('abbey') / ('bee'). Schane (1968) proposes an abstract analysis deriving postvocalic from an underlying lateral by palatalization and glide conversion ( → → ).
Stress.
Word stress is not distinctive in French, so two words cannot be distinguished based on stress placement alone. Grammatical stress is always on the final full syllable (syllable with a vowel other than schwa) of a word. Monosyllables with schwa as their only vowel (, , , etc.) are generally clitics but otherwise may receive stress.
The difference between stressed and unstressed syllables in French is less marked than in English. Vowels in unstressed syllables keep their full quality, regardless of whether the rhythm of the speaker is syllable-timed or mora-timed (see isochrony). Moreover, words lose their stress to varying degrees when pronounced in phrases and sentences. In general, only the last word in a phonological phrase retains its full grammatical stress (on its last full syllable).
Emphatic stress.
Emphatic stress is used to call attention to a specific element in a given context such as to express a contrast or to reinforce the emotive content of a word. In French, this stress falls on the first consonant-initial syllable of the word in question. The characteristics associated with emphatic stress include increased amplitude and pitch of the vowel and gemination of the onset consonant, as mentioned above. Emphatic stress does not replace, but occurs in tandem with, grammatical stress.
For words that begin with a vowel, emphatic stress falls on the first syllable that begins with a consonant or on the initial syllable with the insertion of a glottal stop or a liaison consonant.
Intonation.
French intonation differs substantially from that of English. There are four primary patterns: