Consonants
Where symbols for consonants occur in pairs, the left represents a voiceless consonant and the right represents a voiced consonant.
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palato- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | plain | lab. | |||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ1 | (ŋ)2 | ||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | ʁ5 | |||||
| Approximant3 | j4 | ɥ | w | |||||||||
| Lateral | l | |||||||||||
Phonetic notes:
- ^1 In current pronunciation, /ɲ/ is merging with /nj/.
- ^2 The velar nasal /ŋ/ is not a native phoneme of French, but occurs in loan words in final position such as parking or camping. Such words can also be heard pronounced with the sounds or (or even with the spelling pronunciation ).
- ^3 The approximants, and correspond to /i/, /y/ and /u/ respectively. While there are a few minimal pairs (such as loua 's/he rented' and loi 'law'), there are many cases where there is free variation.
- ^4 Some dialects of French have a palatal lateral /ʎ/ (French: l mouillé ), but in the standard variety this phoneme has merged with /j/. See also Glides and diphthongs, below.
- ^5 The French rhotic has a wide range of realizations., (both the fricative and the approximant), and will all be recognized as "r", but most of them will be considered dialectal. See map at right.
| IPA | Example | Gloss | IPA | Example | Gloss | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /m/ | mou | 'soft' | /n/ | nous | 'we, us' | ||
| /ɲ/ | agneau | 'lamb' | /ŋ/ | parking | 'parking lot' | ||
| /p/ | pou | 'louse' | /b/ | boue | 'mud' | ||
| /t/ | tout | 'all' | /d/ | doux | 'sweet' | ||
| /k/ | cou | 'neck' | /ɡ/ | goût | 'taste' | ||
| /f/ | fou | 'crazy' | /v/ | vous | 'you' | ||
| /s/ | sous | 'under' | /z/ | zoo | 'zoo' | ||
| /ʃ/ | chou | 'cabbage' | /ʒ/ | joue | 'cheek' | ||
| /l/ | loup | 'wolf' | /ʁ/ | roue | 'wheel' | ||
Read more about this topic: French Phonology