Hello everyone, bonjour tout le monde! Welcome back to the French Made Easy podcast. Today, we're learning the pronunciation of the French expression: ‘au revoir’, which means goodbye. In this episode we’ll deconstruct the expression sound by sound, I’ll give the pronunciation of the slow version and I’ll give you the pronunciation of fast, more casual version, and then I’ll share a few sentences so you can practice your pronunciation with me.
‘Au revoir’ is used, as I was saying before, to say goodbye in French. The word for word translation is ‘until we see [each other] again.’
‘Au revoir’ is not formal per se, but it's a little bit more formal than just saying ‘salut’, which means ‘bye’ (as well as “hi”), which is more casual. On that note, I’ve also created an episode on 10 ways to say Goodbye in French, so if all goes well it should come out this Tuesday.
Let's deconstruct the pronunciation of the expression ‘au revoir’.
HOW TO PRONOUNCE ‘AU REVOIR’ IN FRENCH 👋
Au revoir: [o rəvwar] if pronounced slowly or [ɔrvwar] if pronounced faster. So as you can hopefully hear, there’s a difference in pronunciation, but don't worry I’ll explain both of them.
Let’s start by the slow one [o rəvwar]
- ‘au’: The letter combination 'au' in French is, most of the time, not always, pronounced [o]. Simple enough.
- ‘r’: We have the French R, [R]. It sounds a little bit as if you’re clearing your throat , gently. And for a detailed lesson on how to pronounce the French R, you can listen to episode number 21.
- ‘e’: Next, we’ve got the letter E. There are a few different ways to pronounce the E in French, but here, in this particular word, it is pronounced [ə]. This letter E, in this word, is called, un E muet, a mute E [ə], meaning, it’s often dropped by French speakers in fast speech. But, give me a few minutes I’ll talk about this type of E later. But nevertheless, it is pronounced [ə].
- So far, we have: [o rə]
- ‘voir’: The 'v' is pronounced just like in English. Nothing complicated here. And the combination of letters 'oi' is pronounced [wa]. And then you’ve the R again. That gives us [vwar].
If we are putting everything together: [o rəvwar].
Now that we all know the basic pronunciation of that word, if you’re not too overwhelmed and ready for a little bit more, I’ll teach you the version that is mainly used by French speakers, in fast speech. And again, I always say that, but for beginners, learn to pronounce the words properly, learn the rules, and then when you’re ready, you can start playing a little bit with the pronunciation.
‘Au revoir’ in fast speech: [ɔrvwar].
We’ve got two pronunciation differences: first with the [ə] sound, and with the [o] sound.
Let’s start with the sound [ə].
In spoken French, fast speech, when there’s a mute E, pronounced [ə] in a word, we can drop it. There are rules around it, but to make it short and quick for you today, in this expression, we can drop it. Attention, not in writing, in speech.
If we drop this [ə], we’re not going to say [o rəvwar] anymore, we’re going to say [ɔrvwar]. I’ve dropped the [ə] sound.
This [ə], that we can drop in casual, fast speech, is called le E muet in French, or the mute E in English.
In the Sounds of French, also known as the IPA chart for French, which by the way you can download for free—I've created one for you—it includes all the sounds of French, with word examples and audio, etc. In this Sounds of French cheat sheet, you’ll see that the mute E, is represented by a special symbol, a reversed E (ə). This symbol indicates that in casual speech, this E [ə] can be dropped.
Back to our expression, [ɔrvwar] that was the first change, the drop of the E.
Something else happens in this expression, if we drop the E, in casual, fast speech. Something happens to the sound [o], made by the letters au together. I’m not going to go into too much technical pronunciation detail, but if we decide to drop the E, because we are now pronouncing ‘au revoir’ really in one single word, and not two separate words, the letter ‘au’ that were creating the sound [o], changes to a [ɔ] sound. Slight difference in pronunciation, but still a difference in pronunciation.
Now this was a bit technical, so don’t panic if you’re not ready for that step yet. That’s all fine, but at least you’re aware of both pronunciation.
Now, let’s practice with some sentences:
- Au revoir, à demain! (Goodbye, see you tomorrow!) 🌅
- Je dis toujours au revoir avant de partir. (I always say goodbye before leaving.) 🚗
- On se dira au revoir à l'aéroport. (We will say goodbye to each other at the airport.) ✈️
Alright, that wraps up our episode! Don't forget to downlaod your free Sounds of French Cheat Sheet from the website. All the links are in the episode notes. It's got all the French sounds, example words, and audio to help you practice your pronunciation. I always ask my students to study the French sounds first, it's super necessary to help you improve your pronunciation. Alright, well au revoir et À bientôt!
