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].
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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:
Related lessons
- Letters: U | E | I | L
- French vowels
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