English pronunciation for French speakers

French gave English thousands of words, which makes French speakers feel at home in English vocabulary — and then makes the pronunciation harder, because the loanwords sound nothing like the French originals. Two structural facts do most of the damage.

English has vowel sounds French does not. French has a tidy set of pure vowels; English adds the lax vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, the open /æ/, and a habit of stretching vowels before voiced consonants. French speakers usually map all of them onto the nearest French vowel, so ship becomes sheep and the difference between bit and beat disappears.

English is stress-timed; French gives every syllable equal time. In French, syllables march along at a steady rate and stress falls near the end of the word. In English, stressed syllables arrive at even intervals and everything else collapses into a schwa. Speaking English with French rhythm — un-der-STAND-ING rather than UN-derstan-ding — marks the accent more than any single sound.

Play each pair until they sound like different words. If they still sound the same, that is a listening problem before it is a speaking one — you cannot reliably produce a contrast you cannot hear.

The single most useful correction: /ɪ/ in ship is not a quick /iː/. It is a different vowel, made with the tongue lower and the lips relaxed. If you try to say a fast ee, an English ear still hears sheep. Aim for a sound that feels lazier, not faster — like the French i in si but with the jaw opened a little.

The vowel in cat has no French equivalent. Start from French è and open the jaw further without moving the tongue back. It should feel exaggerated and slightly unpleasant — that is the correct /æ/.

French has no /θ/ (as in think) and no /ð/ (as in this). The tongue goes to the bottom edge of the upper teeth and air is pushed through the gap, with the tongue visible. French speakers typically substitute /s/ and /z/, which turns think into sink, thank into sank and this into zis.

A useful bridge: the French d in dame said very softly, with the tongue barely touching, is only a millimetre away from /ð/. Push the tongue forward until it touches the teeth and keep the voice running — the voiced th appears. The th guide has the full method.

French h is never pronounced, so the first instinct with English h is to drop it: otel, appy, house with no h. The second instinct, once you notice English has the sound, is to force it out too hard. English /h/ is a plain breath — the h of hotel should feel like fogging a mirror, with no friction in the throat.

And remember the other half of the rule: some written h's are silent in English too. Hour, honest and heir drop the h — matching your French instinct — so an hour takes an, not a.

Because French has no word-final clusters like kt or pt, the instinct is to say walk-ed — a full extra syllable. In English, -ed is a separate syllable only after a t or d sound: wanted, needed. Everywhere else it is one consonant glued onto the verb.

The -ed endings guide gives the full rule in about a minute of reading, and it removes one of the most audible French-accent features.

Two genuine advantages. French has /ʒ/ — the sound of the s in pleasure — which most learners do not, so vision, measure and garage are free. And French nasal vowels prepare your ear for the way English speakers nasalise vowels before n and m, so can't and man feel less alien than they do to speakers of languages without nasal vowels.

1. Rhythm and the schwa. The highest return, because it affects every sentence. Let unstressed syllables fall away instead of giving them French-style equality.

2. The -ed ending. One rule, instantly audible progress.

3. Initial h. A plain breath; practise it on hotel, house, happy.

4. /ɪ/ vs /iː/. Ear training; start it early and expect it to take weeks.

5. TH. Worth having, but last — substituting s or z is understood fine, and stress matters more than this sound ever will.

Vowel minimal pairs · -ed endings · Schwa sound words · Silent H words · all guides

When you are ready to hear whether you can actually tell the pairs apart, the listening quiz includes the /ɪ/–/iː/ contrast.

The TH sound · -ed endings · The schwa · Word stress · Pronunciation for non-native speakers

Read slowly first. Pronounce each syllable deliberately before trying to blend them at full speed. Rushing hides the vowel and consonant shapes your ear needs to learn.

Record yourself. Most phones have a voice memo app — record a word, then compare it to the playback here. Hearing the gap between your version and the model accent makes targeted practice far easier.

Focus on one accent. Jumping between American, British and Australian in the same session creates confusion. Pick the accent you encounter most and stick with it until the patterns feel natural.

Every word above is a button. Set the accent and voice you want on the main screen, then come back — the guides use whatever you chose. To hear two accents against each other, use Compare; to test whether you can actually hear a contrast, use the listening quiz.