French silent letters: what you write but don’t say
French spells far more letters than it pronounces. The big patterns are easy to state: most final consonants are silent, a final -e is silent, the verb ending -ent is silent, and the letter h is never pronounced. So petit sounds like “p’tee”, grand like “grahn”, and ils parlent sounds exactly like il parle. Knowing what to drop is half of sounding French.
| Word | Silent letter(s) | Roughly sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| petit | final t | “puh-TEE” |
| grand | final d | “grahn” |
| beaucoup | final p | “boh-KOO” |
| prix | final x | “pree” |
| trois | final s | “trwah” |
Final consonants are usually silent
As a rule, a consonant at the end of a French word is not pronounced. This is why plural -s is silent (les chats sounds like le chat) and why so many words seem shorter than they look.
Les petits chats sont gris.
The little cats are grey. (the -s on petits, chats and gris are all silent)
The CaReFuL exception
There is a handy memory aid: the consonants in the word CaReFuL — c, r, f, l — are often still pronounced at the end of a word. Avec, bonjour, neuf and animal all sound their last letter.
| Word | Final letter | Pronounced? |
|---|---|---|
| sac | c | yes — “sak” |
| bonjour | r | yes — “bon-ZHOOR” |
| neuf | f | yes — “nuhf” |
| avril | l | yes — “av-REEL” |
Treat CaReFuL as a tendency, not a law: the infinitive ending -er keeps a silent r (parler = “par-LAY”), and a few common words like tabac (c silent) and gentil (l silent) break it. Still, it catches most cases.
Silent final -e and the -ent verb ending
A final -e with no accent is silent; it mainly tells you to pronounce the
consonant before it. And the third-person plural verb ending -ent is
completely silent — a classic trap.
Elle parle. / Ils parlent.
She speaks. / They speak. (both sound identical)
So grande sounds like “grahnd” (the -e makes you say the d), while grand is “grahn”.
H is always silent
French never pronounces the letter h. Whether it is a “mute h” or an “aspirated
h”, you do not make an h sound.
un homme, une heure, l’hôtel
a man, an hour, the hotel
The difference between the two kinds of h only matters for whether you can link or contract before it — the h itself is never spoken.
A note on liaison
Silent final consonants do not vanish forever. When the next word starts with a vowel, that consonant often “wakes up” and links — this is liaison. Les amis sounds like “lay-z-ami”, and vous avez like “voo-z-avay”. For now, just know the silent letter can come back to bridge into a vowel.
Common mistakes
Pronouncing the final consonant
Say the word without its last consonant unless it falls under CaReFuL.
petit → “p’tee”, not “puh-TEET”; salut → “sah-LU”, not “sah-LUT”
Sounding the -ent on verbs
The plural verb ending -ent is silent.
“ils parl-ENT”→ ils parlent = “eel parl”
they speak
Trying to pronounce h
There is no h sound in French at all.
homme → “om”, not “hom”
One word that proves the rule is salut: the final t is silent, so it sounds like “sah-LU”. In Fluera you hear every word as you learn it, so the gap between French spelling and French sound closes by ear instead of by memorizing rules. Try it when you practice French.
Practice
Question 1 of 10