ŒIL and ŒILL

French pronunciation

The letter combinations œil and œill have no English equivalent: they are pronounced like the oo in "foot" plus a "y" sound. The IPA spelling is [œj], and the Lawless phonetic spelling is [ooy].

Note that œill in a multi-syllable word is pronounced [œj] but the y sound is transferred to the second syllable: for example, œillade is pronounced [œ jad].

Par exemple…
un œil   eye
une œillade   wink
un œillet   carnation
une œillette   poppy
un œilleton   eyepiece, spyhole

  The sound [œj] is spelled œil only at the beginning of a word. Other spellings:

  1. After the letters c and g, [œj] is spelled ueil
  2. After any other letter, [œj] is spelled euil

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French pronunciation

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