Matthew got great answers, however I'd like to add some things to what he said.

Although there aren't real silent letters the most common letter that you will not pronounce are the ones at the end of the word, best way to get used to it is by listening with subtitles and see how it is being pronounced.

My personal recommendation on how to learn french is listening a lot, but that of course depends on each one's learning style, if this is your first language seems like you will need to figure it out because language learning can be quite different than learning at school.

Best of luck!

Isa

Hi Nelly,

Glad to hear that you just started learning French! It's certainly a wonderful language and lots of fun. With regards to your questions,

For example, blanc (white) is pronounced blONG, so the C & N are silent <em>in this case</em>.

However, in donc (therefore), the C is pronounced. So it completely depends on the word.

Pertaining to 1,2: my approach with French was to start with some basic rules of pronunciation and grammar, as taught in many beginners' videos on Youtube. Learning pronunciation through reading might be quite inconducive in French, given the incongruity between it's writing system and pronunciation. However, the important thing (at least for me) was to NOT stick for too long with grammar, but rather just jump to videos of real French people speaking, and put on the YT Close Captioning/Subtitles system. Slowly you will get there.

3.Contrary to what people think, I don't believe that French is difficult to pronounce at all. French has a very limited base of sounds -an/en, -in, -on, euh, and is quite 'neutral' as well, so once your brain figures out the correlations between the written words and sounds, it shouldn't be that difficult.

I personally know people who have picked up the language at 23, and can speak with no trace of accent at 25. I wouldn't be able to say the same about Spanish (especially with the Rolled Rs and the preponderance of tongue movements'. However, I'd say not to worry too much about pron at first. With enough listening to people speaking, you will get there naturally.

Hope this helps!

Matt

Hi Nelly !

Just to add to previous comments :

Silent consonants are indeed those at the end of the word. Usual consonants that might be placed at the end of the word are : t (candidate), d (cafard), x (cheveux). May be a couple more but I don't remember now.

Note that when these words get a plural forme by getting an 's' the BOTH consonants are silent.

How to remember all that ? My advice would be to get a good Phonetics book.

Good luck !