The nasal sounds… Les voyelles nasales*! You’ll either find them utterly charming or incredibly challenging. To some, they’re the essence of French’s melodic charm, adding a sophisticated flair to almost every word. En même temps*, others find these sounds foreign and challenging to master. But let’s not tourner le nez*!

Also called nasal vowels, or les voyelles nasales en français*, are formed when the consonant “n” or “m” follows a vowel (a, e, u, i, o). The nasal sound, or le son nasal*, is then produced by the air passing through the nose. It is important to pronounce these sounds correctly for a better understanding of the French language.

📚In French, there are four nasal vowels. I promise they sound easier than what /they look like/!

• /ɛ̃/ as in “vin” (in)
• /ɑ̃/ as in “enfant” (en, an)
• /ɔ̃/ as in “bon” (on)
• /œ̃/ as in “brun” (un ) – though this is merging with /ɛ̃/ in many dialects

Bonne nouvelle*: these nasal vowels sound the same regardless of whether they’re followed by an “n” or an “m” in spelling. Indeed, the following “n” or “m” is not pronounced as a separate consonant. It’s only role is to indicate that the preceding vowel should be nasalized :

• “temps” and “teint” both have the /ɑ̃/ sound
• “bon” and “bombe” both have the /ɔ̃/ sound

More examples :

• en / em → “vent”, “temps”, “entendre”, “ensemble”
• in / im → “vin”, “timbre”, “indien”, “impossible”
• an / am → “banc”, “lampe”, “chanter”, “campagne”, “ambiance”
• on / om → “bon”, “pomme”, “oncle”, “ombre”
• un / um → “brun”, “parfum”, “lundi”, “humble”

Nasal sounds in other languages

While this principle is most notable en français*, similar phenomena occur in other languages, such as Portuguese, Polish and even Hindi. So if you speak at least one of those, you’ve got a head start in mastering French pronunciation and those tricky nasal vowels. Tu as un nez fin!* You’re a natural!

Bref*, this concept it demonstrates how written and spoken language can diverge in interesting ways.🚀

If you’d like to practice les voyelles nasales*, I highly recommend watching this video :

📚If you’re looking to improve your French pronunciation skills, you can book your online French lesson with Teacher Lola here : French lessons. Also, follow me on Instagram @lola.frenchteacher.

🥐 French vocab used in this article :

• Les voyelles nasales – the nasal vowels
• En même temps – at the same time
• tourner le nez – to turn your nose up at smth, to refuse to accept, to avoid smth
• les voyelles nasales en français – the nasal vowels in French
• le son nasal – the nasal sound
• Bonne nouvelle – Good news
• en français – in French
• Tu as un nez fin! – you’re good at it, you have a (good) nose for it
• Bref – to cut it short