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 know it is not as daunting as it first seems. To avoid breaks between words and keep your speech flowing, you only need to follow 

three rules:

1. Always form a single syllable from the pronounced consonant at the end of one word and the vowel at the start of the next.

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 pause between two adjacent words when the first ends and the second begins 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. The Russian word “aeroport” (“airport”) illustrates a similar sequence of vowel sounds.

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.