Bonjour tout le monde. Welcome back to the French Made Easy Podcast. This is episode number 108, numéro 108!

Today is part III of our series on French homophones, where I share 5 sets of homophones with you. 

If you want to listen to parts I & II, head over to episodes 84 and 85.

Quick recap: A homophone is a word that has the same pronunciation as another word. But with a different meaning and spelling. 

So in today's lesson, we are going to deconstruct the pronunciation of these 5 sets of words, so you can understand better why they're pronounced the same way, even though they aren't spelled the same way.

And if you're new here, make sure you have your lesson's cheat sheet in front of you, so you can see the words while listening to the lesson. It will pretty useful for this episode as you won't be able to differentiate between the words because they sound the same. And after the lesson, you can head over to the French Made Easy Exercise library to practice and download your lesson's exercises. It's free. And all the links are in the episode notes on your podcast platform.

[o] au / eau / haut

1. au (to, at, in) → 'à' becomes 'au' when followed by the article 'le'. The letters A+U are pronounced [o].
2. l'eau (water) → The letters E+A+U are also pronounced [o].
3. haut (high, tall) → The letter H is silent, the letters A+U are pronounced [o] and the final consonant T is silent. 

[kur] cour / cours / court 

1. la cour (courtyard, playground, court) → The letter C is pronounced [k], the letters O+U are pronounced [u] and the final R is not silent.
2. le cours (class, lesson) → The final consonant S is silent.
3. court (short) → The final consonant T is silent. 

Just keep in mind that it's not because, in a particular word, a letter or a group of letters is pronounced a certain way that it's always pronounced the same way. So the letter C in that example is not always pronounced [k] for example. It all depends on where the letter, or group of letters, is located inside the word. One letter or group of letters can have many sounds, as well as being silent.

I explain all of that in my pronunciation course, French Pronunciation Made Easy.

[vwa] voie / voix 

1. la voie (rail track, lane, platform, way) → The letters O+I are pronounced [wa] the final E is silent.
2. la voix (voice, vote) → The final X is silent.

[pɔr] port / porc

1. le port (port, posture) → The letter O is pronounced [ɔ] (not [o]) and the final consonant T is silent.
2. le porc (pig, pork.) → The final C is silent.

[dɑ̃] dans / dent

1. dans (in) → The letters A+N are pronounced [ɑ̃] and the final S is silent.
2. dent (tooth) → The final T is silent.

And that's now the end of today's episode. Don't forget to download your exercises and practice what you've learned today! I'll chat with you next time.

À bientôt. 💖