Should I be making 'liaison' errors intentionally to sound less formal?

u/MadameJ_FrenchTeacher / Jun 2, 2026 / 56 upvotes

As a teacher, I tell my students: precision first, style later. You cannot 'relax' into natural speech if you haven't mastered the mechanics yet. If you intentionally make errors, you risk fossilizing bad habits that will be very hard to fix later. If you want to sound less formal, work on your clitic order and filler words (like 'en fait' or 'du coup') rather than dropping sounds. Use the 'Shadowing' technique with French vloggers on YouTube. By mimicking their speed and intonation, you'll naturally pick up which liaisons they drop without having to overthink it.

u/PhoneticsGuy_PronunciationCoach / Jun 2, 2026 / 42 upvotes

Don't 'make' errors; that just creates bad muscle memory. Instead, learn the distinction between the 'liaison obligatoire' (e.g., 'les amis') and the 'liaison facultative.' In casual speech, most people drop the facultative ones. If you try to force an error, you'll sound like you're mocking the language. A better drill: listen to French radio (France Inter) and track which words they link. You'll notice they never skip the mandatory ones, but they often omit the optional ones. Focus on the flow of the phrase rather than individual word endings.

u/QuebecExpat_AdvancedLearner / Jun 2, 2026 / 28 upvotes

I live in Montreal and I promise you, nobody is going to care if your liaisons are perfectly 'textbook'—they'll just be happy you're trying. The real trap for learners isn't 'too much' liaison, it's the rhythm. If you're stressed about sounding like a robot, stop focusing on the consonants and focus on the nasal vowels. If you nail the 'on/en/in' sounds and the French 'r', you can get away with clumsy liaisons and you'll still sound much more natural than someone with perfect grammar but a flat, English-inflected vowel set.