Sounding the 'f' at the end of a word

Michel Thomas in his language course tells us that consonents sounded at the end of the word can be remembered by the phrase ‘careful consonents’. So the c, r, f, and l are pronounced. Going through my Linguaphone course however, I hear la clef pronounced as la cle.
Is clef a word where a silent f is an exception to the rule?

Clef is also (more commonlyI think) spelled Clé.
So yes, a bit of a one off I guess

A friend told me that the end of a word is not sounded unless by “not sounding” the ending it would make the word sound like something else… that works for me :upside_down_face: … or perhaps my neighbours are very “understanding” :thinking:

eg un idiom , un idiot … the m is sounded… the t is not…

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I was told that you only normally pronounce the consonants at the end of a word if they are in the phrase “for luck”.

But if that was the defining rule, how would you decide whether to avoid the confusion by saying Idiom / idio or Idiot / idio :grin: Some people might decide on one and some the other.

not saying it was a defining rule… it was some advice I was given. We all find something which seems to work for us. I don’t even think about it now… just relax and get chatting… they seem to understand ok.

The ‘m’ is sounded because it is written idiome, not as written in English :grinning:
The place in Auvergne, Riom, is pronounced with a nasal õ sound that could be an n, certainly not an m.
Names are tricky, the normal rules don’t apply.

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I was pulling an idea out of the air… you know what I mean, can’t think of it when you need to and 20 minutes later you will remember all sorts of things. :upside_down_face: :relaxed:

As I say… if I am stopping to think how a word is sounded… it is probably a word I have not come across before… thus I try it out without the ending and if it sounds too much like it could be confused with something else… well… I do the other thing.

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tôt
taux

trait
très

how about these… :sweat_smile: :roll_eyes: no idea what rule covers this sort of thing for a beginner…

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Names are a minefield.

Yep, sound virtually the same.
So do bough and bow :grinning: English doesn’t make it easy either

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Frankly, (in my case) there is nothing quite so useful as sitting and listening while folk talk… and talk… the music of the language sort of sinks in gradually… over time.

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Aller
Allez
Allais
Allait
Allaient
Allés
Allées

All similar enough to be indistinguishable for foreigners I should think, they would just hear allé.

And so many francophones just don’t hear the difference between eg
Ship/sheep

Hence all the ‘hilarious’ quiproquo jokes about I wanna shit onna bed/ I wanna fuck onna table.

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we could go on all night. :grin: I have completely misunderstood stuff, simply due to the use of words which sound so, so similar and my “misunderstanding” did make sense (to me) in the context of the various conversations… aaaargh. We’ve had some great laughs with our long-suffering French pals… :laughing:

Isn’t “verre” supposed the be the French word with the most homonyms ?
Verre vers vert what else?

Now then @Vero… I liked your post well before you added the colourful anecdotes… :crazy_face: :roll_eyes:

I heard a wretched man asking for djuss dee fruit when he meant zhü der frwee and not getting very far.

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Vair as in Cinderella’s slipper, ver as in worm.

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But back to our moutons, I have a trace memory that clé is the only word in french that can be spelt with either an é or an f? So makes sense that the f is silent.

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and then there is the … clé anglaise … :thinking:

yep, we’ve got various ones… :upside_down_face: a friend asked to borrow one to do some work … took us a few fun moments to figure out what he wanted…
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