Liasion, Elision & Enchainement

Liasion

• When one word ends in a consonant & the following begins with a vowel.

• Pronouns that end in a consonant is used with a verb that begins with a vowel.

• When a verb that ends in a consonant it is used in a question constructed with inversion and the subject pronoun starts with a vowel, liasion occurs.

• Certain adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and other expressions use Liasion.

  Example:

  • Chez-lui (shay-loo-ee)

  • Comment allez-vous (commuhn-tallay-voo)

  • Vingt et un (vehn-tay-uhn)

From the book "The Everything French Book"

Liasion

From the book "The Everything French Book"

​French	​Pronunciation	​English
​un enfant	​uhn-nahn-fahn	Child​
​les abricots	​lay-zab-ree-ko	​Apricots
​deux hommes	​doo-zom	​Two Men

Elision

• When two vowels are combined - one at the end, and the other at the start of the word immediately following it. One vowel is dropped, leaving it to join the other word with an apostrophe.

• Dropping a vowel occurs with; ce, de, je, la, le, me, ne, que, se, si ,te.

• It usually rhymes with Je.

  Example:

  • l'eau (low) is an elision of La + eau (water)

  • l'ete (lay-tay) is an elision of Le + ete (summer)

From the book "The Everything French Book"

Elision

From the book "The Everything French Book"

Enchainment

• A matter of Pronounciation ONLY! It does not affect written french. Its governed by phonetic sounds - pushing the sounds together.

  Example:

  • il a (Ee-la)

  • une ecole (ooh-nay-kohl)

  • Elle est (el-lay)

From the book "The Everything French Book"

Enchainment

From the book "The Everything French Book"