Enchaînement and liaison in spoken French

It is difficult to catch individual words in the flow of French speech.

When I first learned about enchaînement and liaison, which make speech flow almost without pauses, I felt quite intimidated. At the very beginning, mastering this magic seemed completely impossible.

Now I understand that the devil is not as scary as he is painted. So that the voice does not break between words and the speech seems continuous, you need to observe only 

three rules:

1. Always build one syllable between the pronounced consonant of the previous word and the vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.

For example, in the phrase “Il habite à Moscou” (He lives in Moscow), we divide into syllables like this 👉 /i—LA-bi-ta-mos-ku/. The second syllable consists of sounds from two different words.

2. Never do not pause in your voice if two adjacent words end and begin with a vowel sound.

For example, the phrase “Tu es au Sahara” (You are in the Sahara) will sound continuously 👉tu_es_au_sa_ha_’ra. We pronounce the first two syllables in the word “A_airport” in a similar way.

3. Sometimes pronounce the unpronounceable (pardon the pun) consonant sound of the previous word and build a syllable with the initial vowel sound of the next word.

Just like in the phrase “petit ami” we hear 👉 /pe-ti-TA-mi/, although the letter t at the end of the first word should not be pronounced according to the reading rules.

The first two cases, as a rule, do not present any difficulties for anyone. But with the third there are nuances: there the sounds can change and there are cases when it is completely impossible to connect words or when you choose whether to do it or not, if it seems more harmonious to you.

We'll talk about the nuances a little later.