LA LIAISON OBLIGATOIRE
Salut chers amis (pronounced - saloou sherzami)!
-Hello dear friends! You'll be hearing from me this week more often than normal due to the peculiarity of the topic at hand. It wouldn't be nice for us to take about four weeks to learn the French liaison as it is divided into 4 parts for better understanding. For this reason, I've decided to make all the remaining parts of the lesson come up this week so we can move on to something new.
Alright! So, permit me to officially welcome you to another episode of French Class with Prof. Josh.
From our previous lesson, we understand that there are three categories of French liaison. We are going to see one of the 3 categories today which is La liason obligatoire - Compulsory liaison.
Before we dive into this, may I quickly state that when liaison is made between two words (the preceding word ending with a consonant that is naturally not pronounced and the next word beginning with a vowel), the preceding words that end in s,x,z are pronounced /z/ as in "Les amis -lay-z-ami"; words that end in t,d are pronounced /t/ as in "quand est-ce - quan-t-es"; words that end in f are pronounced /v/ as in "neuf ans - neu-v-an" and words that end in a nasalized n,m are denasalized as in "mon ami - monami". Clear enough? Good.
Back to "liaison obligatoire", Compulsory liaisons are logically required, that is they must be pronounced no matter what register of French is being spoken.
Compulsory or obligatory liaison occurs between syntactically related words. The following guidelines should give you an idea about the grammatical situations where liaisons are compulsory,but as always, there are some exceptions.
N.B: The letters between which liaison is made are in bold format.
1. NOMINAL GROUP
A. Article + noun/adjective
Les étudiants - the students
Un homme - a man
Un ancien professeur - a former lecturer.
B. Number + noun/adjective
Deux hommes - two men
Trois anciens directeurs - three former directors.
C. Adjective + noun
Un grand homme - a great man
2. VERBAL GROUP
A. Pronoun + verb
Ils ont - they have
Nous avons - we have
B. Verb + pronoun (inversion)
Ont-ils mangé? - Have they eaten?
Est-elle belle? - Is she beautiful?
C. Pronoun + pronoun
Voulez-vous en? - Do you want some?
3. AFTER MONOSYLLABIC ADVERBS, CONJUNCTIONS & PREPOSITIONS
Chez-eux - at their place
Très utile - very useful
Quand as-tu mangé? - When did you eat?
=>Quand + est-ce que
Quand est-ce que tu vas partir? - When are you going to
leave?
=> Quand + pronoun
Quand ils sont arrivés - when they arrived
Quand on parle - when one is speaking
4. FIXED EXPRESSIONS
liaison is compulsory for many fixed expressions in french. Here are few of them:
pas à pas - step by step
vis-à-vis - towards / as regards
c'est-à-dire - that is (to say)
avant hier - before yesterday
comment allez-vous? How are you?
I hope we've been able to learn some few things. This is where we'll end the lesson for today.
See you next time. Other types of liaison will come up in the next lessons. Feel free to drop your comments and ask questions. Enjoy the rest of the day.
- Awodirepo Bayo
