How to Pronounce ‘Joyeux Anniversaire’ (Happy Birthday) in French [Effortless French Pronunciation]
In this episode, you'll learn how to pronounce the French expression 'joyeux anniversaire' (happy birthday.) 🎂
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Transcript
Bonjour et bienvenue à tous! 😊
I'm your host, Mathilde, and you're listening to 'Effortless French Pronunciation'. This is a special pronunciation series from the French Made Easy podcast, specifically designed for French beginners wanting to perfect their pronunciation.
So today is a bit of a special day, the podcast is turning 4, woohoo! I created my first episode, which was how to pronounce the French Alphabet, on the 9th of March 2020! So yes, it’s been 4 years! That went pretty fast. And as always, thank you so much for all the support over the years. But anyways, I thought that would great timing to do a quick pronunciation lesson on how to say and how to pronounce ‘happy birthday’ in French.
So first I’m going to teach you how to say it, and then we’ll deconstruct the pronunciation of that expression. I'll talk to you about something in pronunciation called ‘the liaison.’
To say happy birthday in French, we say ‘joyeux anniversaire’ (happy birthday!) That’s the first expression.
You can also say ‘bon anniversaire’, which means the exact same thing.
But today I want to focus especially on the first expression. ‘joyeux anniversaire.’ [ʒwa.jø.z‿a.ni.vɛr.sɛr]
Now, I know I’m going to receive some questions about the [z] sound because I often do, and I know some of you are going to wonder where this [z] is coming from since there’s no ‘z’ (depending on how you pronounce it), in this expression. And that is because of the infamous 'liaison.'
There’s what’s called a ‘liaison’ between the words ‘joyeux’ and ‘anniversaire.’
I’m not going to go into a deep explanation on what the 'liaison' is in French. But if you are in my French Pronunciation Made Easy course, you already know about it, and if you’re not, what are you waiting for, come and join us inside.
But yes, there’s a 'liaison' between the word ‘joyeux’ (because the word 'joyeux' ends with the letter ‘x’) and the word ‘anniversaire’ (because the word 'anniversaire' starts with the vowel ‘a’) you’ve got to add an extra sound. And that extra sound, that we need to add between the two words, is called the liaison. Maybe try to visualise a bridge between the two words. It's not written, it's only spoken. It’s linking those two words together, as if they were pronounced as one word, rather than two separate words.
And also there are different kinds of ‘liaison’ in French, but this particular one, for these two words that we have here, for 'joyeux' and 'anniversaire', they are linked together with a [z] sound. (Same sound as the ‘z’ in ‘zebra’ or ‘zero.’)
Now that the liaison out of the way, let’s deconstruct the whole expression together.
-> joyeux [ʒwa.jø]
'joy': For English speakers, seeing the letters ‘joy’ together, there’s a tendency to want to pronounce this letter combo as ‘joy’, and fair enough, but in that word it’s pronounced [ʒwa]
'yeu': that combination of letters, inside this word, is pronounced [jø].
‘x’: and finally, we have the letter ‘x’. And this letter, in that word, is silent.
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-> anniversaire [a.ni.vɛr.sɛr]
'a': Simple enough, pronounced [a]
'nni': The double n, is pronounced like a normal ‘n’, and the letter ‘i’ is pronounced [i]
'ver': There are many ways to pronounce or not pronounce the letter ‘e’ in French, but in that particular combination of letters, it is pronounced [ɛ] -> so we have [vɛr]
'saire': the letter ‘s’, different ways to pronounce it, but in that particular case it's pronounced [s], same as the 's' from ‘snake.’ And the letters ‘ai’ are pronounced also [ɛ]. Then the [r], and the final ‘e’ is silent.
Now we have learned to pronounce ‘joyeux’ and we have learned to pronounce ‘anniversaire.’
Now let’s add our liaison.
As I said 'joyeux' ends with the letter ‘x’ even if it’s silent right, doesn’t matter, and the next word ‘anniversaire’ starts with the vowel ‘a’, therefore with have a liaison with a [z]. And we’re going to add this extra sound in between the 2 words to link them together when we speak only, not in writing.
That gives us:
Very slowly first:
joyeux anniversaire: [ʒwajø] + [z] + [anivɛrsɛr] = [ʒwa.jø.z‿a.ni.vɛr.sɛr]
And there you go, you know now how to pronounce 'joyeux anniversaire' (happy birthday) in French! So that’s it for today’s episode! You can obviously re-listen to it to practice if you need. Thank you ao much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you found it helpful. Merci beaucoup, et à bientôt! 🤍