How do you pronounce the S in the French phrase "Les filles écrivent?"?

Question

I assumed it would be vocalized as "Z" (lay fee-z-aycreev), but I just heard a French speaker pronounce it with the S silent (lay fee aycreev). Have I forgotten some rule? Does an S remain silent before an accented é? Or was this speaker just off?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

I once asked a professor of French about this thorny problem.
She said that both pronunciations are correct and it's
your choice in a case like this. The pronunciation
varies with the speaker.

Answer 2

in french when a word is plural, you don't pronounce the "S". so whoever was listening would just have to listen to whether it was le la or les to tell if the noun was plural.

Answer 3

I'm pretty sure that the "Z" sound would be in there. You're correct. If was a native French speaker, then it would be natural to assume they used a sort of slang. Like an English speaker might drop the "G" in "ING," so too might the speakers of another language make casual mistakes in conversation and pronunciation.

Answer 4

lay feez ecrivent,guy was off

Answer 5

When I studies French in high school many years ago, "Les filles ecrivent" would have been pronounced "Lay fill ecrivent". It was the same way when I was stationed in France. The term "Voulez vous..." is pronounced "Voolay voo", so dropping the last consonant is not limited to only S. The French vehicle Raunault is pronounced "Row now". I found German much easier to learn than French.

Source(s):

Colonel, USAFR

Answer 6

No, the S before any silent H or vowel, including É, is prounounced as a Z. The speaker was off.

Source(s):

I speak French