UEIL and UEILL

French pronunciation

The letter combinations ueil (at the end of a word) and ueill (almost anywhere*) 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].

* ueill followed by i (as in the past participle cueilli and the infinitive cueillir) is pronounced [œj] but the y sound is transferred to the next syllable: [kœ ji] and [kœ jir].

Par exemple…

orgueil (masc)		pride
un accueil		reception, welcome
un cercueil		coffin
un recueil		collection
cueillir		to gather

  The sound [œj] is spelled ueil only after the letters c and g. To understand why, see the "hard and soft vowels" section of the vowels lesson.

Other spellings:

1. After any other letter, [œj] is spelled euil
2. At the beginning of a word, [œj] is spelled œil

 Related lessons

• Letters: U | E | I | L
• French vowels

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