Dangerous Liaisons

About liaison, my old Concise Oxford Dictionary, tells me that it is “the sounding of a consonant that is normally silent at the end of a word, because the next word begins with a vowel”. And then it adds: “Origin C17 (as a cookery term): from Fr. lier – to bind”. Here you are. As scientific as phonetics may sound, we’re back to the kitchen.

Fatal attraction

Take the word petit. The final “t” is not pronounced. Take petit animal, it is. And with the liaison binding the final “t” to the initial “a”, you could be misled into hearing a whole new word – the word “petitanimal”.

The consequence of this is simply mind-boggling for new learners: in French, individual words don’t always sound the same as the same words in the middle of a sentence.

Phonic-graphic divorce

On top of creating what sounds like new words, liaisons will sometimes even change the sound of a consonant. As with human relationships, liaisons can be a cause for divorce, namely here a graphic/phonic divorce, or differently put a divorce between written letters and spoken letters. Let’s illustrate this with “ils sont” (they are) and “ils ont” (they have).

In the above example, ils ends with a consonant, sont starts with a consonant, hence there is no liaison. Hum, that’s almost too easy… Here is a little trick question then: what is the consonant sound at the end of ils? Answer: [l] since the “s” is “normally silent” at the end of words.

Now in this example, ils ends with one consonant (even 2), ont starts with a vowel sound. Hence there is a liaison. But don’t forget, the liaison occurs with the consonant which is “normally silent”, i.e. the “s” at the end of ils. That’s when things go seriously wrong, leading to a clear phonic-graphic divorce: the written “s” no longer sounds [s] as you may have expected, but it sounds [z].

Let’s look at another example: vous savez (you know) and vous avez (you have).

In the above example, vous ends with a consonant, savez starts with a consonant sound, hence there is no liaison. However, avez starts with a vowel, hence the liaison with the “s” letter turning into a [z] sound – which makes more sense here as a single “s” surrounded by vowels always sounds [z].

Let’s settle it

Let’s call what we’ve just been looking at the “S divorce”. I’m aware that it’s a pretty nasty case – I’ll tell you about the much milder “D divorce” another time.

One thing to remember is that some of these liaisons are mandatory. As you may have concluded from the above examples, it is very important to use them between personal pronouns when these are subjects (see my Il est - Elle est - C'est article if you need brushing up on grammatical terms) and the following verbs. The difference between “they have” and “they are” or “you know” and “you have” is no small one…

So here is a quick reminder of when liaisons are mandatory:

• Between personal pronouns (subject) and verbs

• Between articles and nouns: les, mon, cet, vos, etc.

• Between prepositions and nouns : en Australie, aux États-Unis, etc.

• In Verb-Subject inversions : Quel temps fait-il ? Où va-t-elle ?

• In some hyphenated phrases : c’est-à-dire

And no hard feelings

Once you get the hang of liaisons, you’ll start hearing them and in turn, you’ll start using them. The reason why I didn’t indicate any difficulty level at the beginning of my article is that it all depends on what kind of language learner you are, and how you started learning.

When you think about it, native speakers just go through the reverse process of an adult language learner. First they hear, then they speak, and finally they learn how to read and write. When we’re kids, we spend the first years of our lives just listening and repeating, with lovely creative surprises along the way. I remember one of my kids saying un zongle instead of un ongle (a nail) for a long time, because you generally mention nails in the plural form, i.e. with a liaison, and she logically inferred from it that the singular form starts with the [z] sound:

All this to say it’s not worth any nail biting (sorry). Rely on the Oxford dictionary (“the sounding of a consonant that is normally silent at the end of a word, because the next word begins with a vowel”), to which I would add: when the silent consonant is an “s”, its sound turns into [z] – [z] like in liaison–, the spoken result of which sounding sometimes like a whole new word. The Oxford did say its origins are to be found in cookery speak. A Béchamel sauce, for example, is all about binding its original ingredients into something completely different, and it certainly takes a little bit of practice to get the hang of it!

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