EUIL and EUILL

French pronunciation

The letter combinations euil (at the end of a word) and euill (almost anywhere*) have no English equivalent: they are pronounced like the oo in "foot" plus a "y" sound. The IPA spelling is [Å“j], and the Lawless phonetic spelling is [ooy].

* euill followed by é (as in the past participle feuillé) or by er (in the infinitive feuiller) is pronounced [œj] but the y sound is transferred to the next syllable: [fœ je].

French sound filesPar exemple…
le seuil doorstep
le deuil mourning
le treuil winch
le fauteuil armchair
un écureuil squirrel
la feuille leaf
le portefeuille wallet

  The sound [Å“j] has two other spellings:

  1. After the letters c and g, [Å“j] is spelled ueil
  2. At the beginning of a word, [Å“j] is spelled Å“il

 Related lessons

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French pronunciation

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1 Response

  1. mmeb 14 January 2015 / 14:42

    J’adore cette leçon! Avec mon ancienne classe de français nous avons joué des jeux avec les mots difficile à prononcer comme ceux avec le son -euil(le).

    J’adore le site, Laura!