Module 2 of 8
Spelling your name
The alphabet, and the eight letters that cause the trouble.
You will be asked Comment ça s'écrit ? — how is that spelled — far earlier than you expect: at a registration desk, on a phone call, any time your name is not one the other person has heard before. It is the first thing in French you genuinely cannot improvise, because the letter names are not the English ones and there is no way to reason your way to them while somebody waits.
Twenty-six letters is a list; eight of them are the lesson. E, G, H, J, Q, R, U, W and Y are where English speakers lose the thread — the French G sounds close to an English J, and the French J does not sound like either. Learn those eight properly, learn the rest in groups of five, and then drill the only string you are certain to need, which is your own name, out loud, until it comes out without assembling it first.
Played by your device’s own French voice. It is a synthetic voice, not a recording of a teacher — close enough to learn the shape of a word, not close enough to copy exactly.
- EThe letter E
- GThe letter G — close to an English J
- HThe letter H — the name is said, the sound is not
- JThe letter J
- QThe letter Q
- RThe letter R
- UThe letter U
- WThe letter W
- YThe letter Y
- Comment ça s'écrit ?How is that spelled?
- L-U-C-A-SLucas, spelled out
- M-A-R-CMarc, spelled out
Comment ça s'écrit ? arrives early and cannot be improvised. Eight letters cause nearly all the difficulty — E, G, H, J, Q, R, U, W, Y — and the string worth drilling is your own name.