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I practiced French speaking on Busuu.com and they repeatedly failed me for the pronunciation of 'ç'.

I was asked to speak out loud the sentence

Elles sont françaises.

The feedback was 'It seems you had trouble with "françaises". The "ç" is pronounced like an "s".'

I thought the pronunciation of ç was almost the same as that of 's'. How can I differently and correctly pronounce ç in "françaises"?

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    Going by the feedback you got, it seems you were not pronouncing ç as an s. So how exactly were you pronouncing it? Commented Oct 26 at 23:15
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    You've misinterpreted the statement "The 'ç' is pronounced like an 's'." Technically it's ambiguous -- you've taken it to mean "You are pronouncing the 'ç' like an 's'", and technically it can mean that -- but this statement nearly always means "The correct pronunciation of the 'ç' is like an 's'", and that's what they mean by it. (The same is true of "spelled"; if someone says "You misspelled 'françaises'. It's spelled with an 'f'", what they mean is that the correct spelling is "françaises" with an "f", and you've spelled it some different way.) Commented Oct 28 at 0:16

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The letter ç always produces the sound /s/.

The letter s can be that same sound, but not always. Between two vowels, a single s is usually pronounced /z/ instead, as in maison, rosé (with a few exceptions, including if the s follows a prefix as in asocial, antiseptique, aérosol, ...)

For this reason, in françaises, the ç is pronounced /s/ and the s is pronounced /z/. (Of course, the last s is silent.)

Note that a double ss is always pronounced /s/. Compare désert with /z/ to dessert with /s/.

Finally, to round out the picture, when c is soft (usually before i, e, y), it's still that same sound /s/.

More examples:

  • super /s/
  • absurde /s/
  • tisane /z/
  • tissu /s/
  • reçu /s/
  • facile /s/
  • céder /s/
  • cygne /s/
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  • « Of course, the last s is silent », dans ce cas, oui, mais si un mot commençant par une voyelle suit, alors il est prononcé... Commented Nov 1 at 22:45
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Luke is correct, ç is pronounced /s/. Nevertheless, it is sometimes used to represent an emphatic pronunciation of /s/. For example, in a translation of the Quran into French, the 38th surah, whose Arabic name is ص, is translated as “Çad”. The Arabic letter ص denotes an emphatic /s/ sound, which does not exist in the French phonological system; therefore, the letter used in the French translation can only be an approximation. The translator has used “Ç” instead of “S” to signal to the (French-speaking) reader that it is not an ordinary /s/.

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  • Cool! New to me. Commented Oct 29 at 11:54
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    Je ne sais pas si cet usage est bien répandu. Commented Oct 29 at 14:13
  • Ce n'est certainement pas répandu, mais ça fait partie des possibilités quand on a plusieurs graphèmes pour un même phonème. Ce choix est très créatif. Commented Oct 29 at 14:47
  • Ce Ç pourrait aussi un peu ressembler à une lettre en arabe, visuellement. Commented Oct 29 at 16:50
  • fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B9%A2%C4%81d Commented Oct 29 at 17:49

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