Some notes on using How to Pronounce to learn how a French name or word is pronounced

How to Pronounce is a web page that can be used to learn how foreign words are pronounced. I don't like the website very much— visually, it's too busy with ugly ads—but it is useful. There may be more attractive websites that serve the same purpose, and I hope one day to find one.

Until then, this is a guide for anyone who can't easily figure out how you use the How to Pronounce page. Start by right-clicking on this link to open the page in a new link. (It seems that sometimes the back-button doesn't work, which means that, if you just click on the link, you might not be able to use the button to go back to the page you are currently reading.)

The link takes you to the page for the pronunciation of the name Jean in French. Once there, you'll see the main section, which looks like this:

You see three examples of the word's pronunciation. In my experience with this website, the top two have been made by male and female native speakers. Click on the "Play" right-pointing-arrow to hear their pronunciation, making sure your computer's speaker is not muted. Do not click on anything marked as "Posted by Guest".

You can use this page for any of the tricky French names or words we talk about on these pages. Just paste or type the name into the search bar at the top, and click on Pronounce.