Mute e Ah yes, the mute e, silent e, e-caduc, schwa. It's amazing the number of names this little sound has. It's also a problematic sound: how do you recognize it and how do you know when it's " silent?" These questions have kept linguists occupied for years, off the street and out of trouble. In this section, we will approach these questions.
First, though, a bit of clarification. The sound is neither silent nor mute. Pace Simon and Garfunkel, the sound of silence is an oxymoron. It's not a schwa, at least not the way linguists define schwa, which is a central, unrounded, unstressed vowel. Although, just to confuse things, the schwa symbol [?] is used to represent the e-caduc in French. The e-caduc is pronounced just like the sounds spelled with {oe}, but unlike those vowels, the e-caduc may disappear, depending on its environment. Remember, all vowel sounds in French are produced fully and are never reduced or dropped, like in English. So e-caduc (falling e) is a bit of an outlier among French vowels. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's go on.
How do you recognize the e-caduc? First of all, let's say that it is spelled with the undecorated letter {e}. If you have an accent on the {e}, then it's not an e-caduc. We have to recognize what it isn't, or rather, what isn't it.
The e-caduc only appears in a very particular environment. It cannot be stressed, so it is never the last sound in a word. All those {e}'s at the end have another function: to show the verb conjugation, to show gender, to show that a nasal consonant is pronounced, or simply spelling conventions. So the e-caduc never represented by the last letter in a word, nor is it found in the last syllable (remember, that's the stressed syllable in French and e-caduc can't be stressed). Generally, in spelling, an e-caduc is not followed by geminate (doubled) letters, thus the difference between vous serez (you will be) and vous serrez (you squeeze). It also is never found around other vowels, either directly before or after. Nor can these vowels be found in a closed syllable (remember, we're talking sound, not spelling. Click here for a refresher on syllables.) Finally, it is never the initial sound in a word, though it can be in the initial syllable.
Okay, so what's left? Briefly, the e-caduc is represented by the undecorated letter {e}, in an open, non-final syllable that has a filled onset. If all that jargon makes your head hurt, stop here and take a deep breath. It's not nearly as complicated as it all sounds. Click here for some examples of syllabification. If you want, click here for a short game to help you with determining is a letter {e} is an e-caduc.
Now that you can recognize the e-caduc, you have to figure out when to pronounce it and when to drop it. For this workshop, we're going to keep things simple. Most of the variation happens at the edges, because the e-caduc is affected by the syllable that precedes it. So we're not going to worry about the e-caducs in the first syllable. Most of the time, you can follow the "law of three consonants," which means that you keep the e-caduc if dropping it brings three consonants together. But really, it's what comes before the e-caduc that's important, so you keep it if there are two consonants preceding it. Otherwise, drop the sound. In this workshop, we'll practice the e-caduc in middle syllables, first when you keep it and then when it's dropped.
In these words, because there are two consonant sounds before the e-caduc, you keep it.
In these words, you drop the e-caduc. Be careful of false elegance: pronouncing the e-caduc when it should be dropped is not a sign of better pronunciation. On the contrary, it shows that you haven't mastered the rules of French. So practice these words correctly and fake everyone out.
