Je lis le procès-verbal.

Je only contracts to j' before a vowel sound or a silent h.

• j'aime
• j'habite

Here, the next word is lis, which begins with the consonant sound l, so you keep je:

je lis

Lis is in the present indicative.

So Je lis le procès-verbal is a present-tense sentence. Depending on context, the French present can match several English ideas:

• I read the report/minutes
• I am reading the report/minutes
• I do read the report/minutes

French uses the present more broadly than English sometimes does.

A simple approximation is:

• je ≈ zhuh
• lis ≈ lee

So je lis sounds roughly like zhuh lee.

A few useful notes:

• the j in je sounds like the s in measure
• the s in lis is silent
• in normal speech, je can sound very light

Because in French, many verb endings are written but not pronounced.

In the present tense of lire:

• je lis
• tu lis
• il/elle lit

All three are pronounced the same way: lee.

The spelling still matters because it shows the grammar and helps connect the forms of the verb.

The infinitive is lire, meaning to read.

Its present-tense conjugation is:

• je lis
• tu lis
• il/elle/on lit
• nous lisons
• vous lisez
• ils/elles lisent

This is an irregular verb, so it does not follow the pattern of a regular -er verb like parler.

Le is the masculine singular definite article, meaning the.

It is used here because procès-verbal is a masculine singular noun. So:

• le procès-verbal = the report / the minutes / the official record

French uses articles more consistently than English, so where English might sometimes drop the, French often keeps it.

Procès-verbal is masculine.

So you say:

• le procès-verbal
• un procès-verbal

And if you want to describe it with an adjective, that adjective must agree in the masculine form:

• le procès-verbal officiel

Because it is a fixed compound noun in French.

French often uses hyphens in compound words, and procès-verbal is the standard spelling. You should learn it as one unit of vocabulary rather than trying to interpret each part separately every time.

The plural is procès-verbaux.

So:

• le procès-verbal
• les procès-verbaux

This plural can look surprising because verbal changes to verbaux. That is a common plural pattern for some words ending in -al.

A rough English-friendly approximation is:

pro-SEH ver-BAL

But keep in mind:

• French does not stress words as strongly as English
• the r is a French r, not a strong English r
• the è in procès has an open eh sound

A more careful breakdown is:

• pro
• cès ≈ seh
• ver
• bal

No. You do not pronounce a liaison between lis and le.

So it is pronounced as if separated:

je lis | le procès-verbal

not something like je li-z-le.

That is useful to know, because English speakers often expect written final consonants to be pronounced, but in French they often are not.