Liaison

You might wonder why, if letters at the ends of words are often silent, we still write these. One of the reasons is that these letters were once pronounced and stuck around in the orthography. However, a more important reason is that French children learn unconsciously that there were once such letters before they even learn to read. This sounds all rather mysterious. Let me clarify.

Consider the words "les amis". In theory, it should sound something like "le ami". However, if you say "le ami", it sounds a little jerky. It does not flow nicely. People in general like their languages to flow but few like it more than the French. To make the speech flow in the example given, French speakers attach the 's' to "amis" and pronounce it as a 'z'. This process of adding the last consonant of a word to the following word is called "liaison".

Now, it needs to be borne in mind that in the old days, liaison was always observed. However, nowadays it is applied most of the time, not always. There is no rule for when it should not be applied. When in doubt, rather just use it. The easiest way to learn when not to use liaison is to have conversations with French speakers. You will then pick up their speech habits without even trying.

Here are a few more examples of liaison:

Je veux une boisson.
[The x is joined to "une" and is ponounced as a 'z'.]

Il est allé.
[The 't' is joined to "allé" and is pronounced as a 't'.]

Apprend-il?
[The 'd' is joined to "il" and is pronounced as a 't'.]


I would like to share a tip with you that worked for me when I was trying to use liaison. I found that when I tried to add the consonant of the one word to the beginning of the second word, my speech was still a bit staggered and slowed down. Thus, for example, I would say "le zami" with a pause between "le" and "zami". I found that if I looked at liaison differently, my pronounciation improved. Instead of adding the consonant to the next word, I pronounced it as part of the first word. Thus, I started to pronounced "les amis" as "lez ami". I found that the pause between the two words disappeared and my speech flowed. Perhaps this tip will work for you too or perhaps I am just a little off balance :-).