How to Learn French - Tchao for now!

Bonjour* !

In the last How to Learn French post we looked at the sonorous French sound, ‘ch’. A joy to pronounce, we’re lucky that it’s a common sound so you’ll have plenty of practice in perfecting it.

A less common sound in French, though, is a hard ‘ch’ as in the English word ‘cheese’. So rare, in fact, that it doesn’t really exist. It wasn’t until the French started borrwing words from other languages that they even saw the need for such a sound. Since it didn’t exist, they set about inventing it, by popping a ‘t’ in front of the ‘ch’ to mimic the pronunciation of those foreign words.

Though it can look a little strange, don’t be afraid of it. Just ignore the ‘t’ and proceed with a ‘cheese’ sound and you’ll be on your way!

The following words have all been borrowed from other languages. See if you can work out which ones.

tchao
tchèque
tchécoslovaque
tchador
tchadien(ne)
tchat

*Hello