How to pronounce French words ending with "tion" and "sion"

The hardest thing is when words have the same spelling in 2 languages and yet, the pronunciation changes! How can you guess it?

That is exactly what we are going to focus on today with the pronunciation of words ending with the sound “tion”. Note the spelling can differ. However, the sound is the same. 

How you pronounce “tion” in English

If you are an English speaker, anytime you see “tion” or “sion”, you say “shun”. In phonetics the transcription is like this: “/ʃən/”. 

By the way, when you master phonetics, you can read any sounds and it’s fantastic to learn languages or check any sound of any word.

Another tip for you or more for people learning English, the intonation varies. What does it mean?

Well, whenever you come across a word ending with “tion” or “sion”, first, you never stress this part of the word and secondly, depending on how many vowels there are, you will adapt your intonation… Have a look at the visual to understand it better.

In other words, you will always stress a syllable before “tion” or “sion”.

How we pronounce “tion” in French

Now, let’s study the French pronunciation in detail. To start with, the “shun” becomes “see-yon”. Not only do you change the sound of the first consonant but the second part of the world is a nasal sound in French!

In phonetics, the “spelling” of the French sound of “tion” or “sion” is: [sjɔ̃].

Contrary to English, French requires the stress on the last syllable of any word. Therefore you’ll stress the “tion” or “sion” part since they are at the end of the word.

By the way, don't forget that when there's a vowel before and after the letter "s", the sound becomes "z" like this:

• un poisson (poissssson) >>> a fish
• du poison (poizon) >>> poison

 Therefore, with French words like "télévision", "révision" or "maison", you'll say "z".

Same “tion” sound but different spellings.

Once you grasp how to pronounce the “tion” sound in French, you only need to pay attention to the spelling. The good news is they are pretty similar in both languages because the words come from French and were adapted to English to facilitate the pronunciation. The slight differences will be with an accent or “xion” instead of “tion” sometimes…

Let’s play with some examples:

• Je préfère cette option >>> I prefer this option. 
• Le téléphone est une diversion >>> the phone is a diversion. 
• Il a une bonne connexion >>> He has a good connection. 

So, now you are prepared: when you see French words ending with “tion” or “sion”or even “xion”, your brain should switch from English to French and you should pay attention to the pronunciation and the intonation.

Indeed, you will stress the last part of the word and you will do your best to master the nasal sound.

Do you have any "questions"? Or you don't have any "confusions" now...