is the pronunciation correct?

In French lesson 1-12 I questioned several pronunciations, but here are two that I remember: for "etre en retard" the speaker said [eh <pause> tran-retar] a distinct pause between the e and the tre of etre. It really sounds quite wrong to me. for "elle a froide" the speaker said [el-a-froi] with no 'd' sound. Why not??? Thanks for your help!

Bonjour Lance! The pronunciation is that lesson is correct. 'Être en retard' is a phrase that can be quite a tongue-twister so what we tend to do is mash all three words together which often means we don't even say something more like 'être-hor-tard'. Unfortunately, this happens with a few phrases in French and you just have to get used to tuning your ear to differences in pronunciation. In the phrase "elle a froid" we do not say the 'd'. In French, we generally only say the last consonant in a word in the following word begins in a vowel. For example, "Vous avez froid?" "Are you cold" Here we join 'vous' and 'avez' by pronouncing the 's' but we do not pronounce the 'z' or 'd' at the end of 'avez' and 'froid' respectively. This convention helps the French language to flow better and improves the sound of the sentence as a whole. I hope this helps and keep up the great work! - Marie-Claire

Thanks very much for the feedback, Marie-Claire.