French pronunciation and IPA tool
Hear French text, look up word-level IPA, explore ambiguous pronunciations and practice nasal vowels, u vs ou and silent consonants.
Enter French words or a passage
Listen and explore the IPA
Practice the sounds
Audio uses a French device voice. IPA below is an isolated-word reference for 91 entries, not an automatic sentence transcription. Unknown words remain untranscribed.
| French | IPA and meaning |
|---|---|
| bonjour | /bɔ̃ʒuʁ/ — hello |
| merci | /mɛʁsi/ — thank you |
| français | /fʁɑ̃sɛ/ — French |
Practice French sounds
Listen, repeat, then switch between the two words. Device voices vary; these are listening models, not an evaluation of your accent.
u and ou
Keep the tongue forward for /y/ in rue while rounding the lips; /u/ in roue is made farther back.
Nasal and oral vowels
Bon has a nasal vowel /ɔ̃/. In beau /o/, air passes through the mouth.
Open and close vowels
Peur uses /œ/; peu uses /ø/. Both have rounded lips.
Silent final consonants
The final t is silent in petit alone, but pronounced in petite.
Reading French IPA
Slashes enclose a broad sound transcription. /ʃ/ is the sound at the start of chat; /ʒ/ starts je. French /ʁ/ is commonly made near the back of the mouth. A tilde marks a nasal vowel: /ɑ̃/ in banc, /ɛ̃/ in pain, /ɔ̃/ in bon and /œ̃/ in un. Many speakers merge /œ̃/ with /ɛ̃/.
Why doesn’t word-by-word IPA match every sentence?
Connected speech changes word boundaries. A usually silent consonant may appear in liaison, as in les amis /lezami/. Optional liaison, vowel linking and the omission of unstressed e depend on style, region and context. This guide does not combine isolated transcriptions into a supposed sentence pronunciation.
What if a word has several pronunciations?
All listed interpretations appear together. Fils can mean son /fis/ or threads /fil/; est can mean is /ɛ/ or east /ɛst/. A device voice chooses from the text context and may not read your intended sense. Plus also depends on its grammatical use and surrounding sounds.
For continuous narration, try French story listening practice. References: nasal vowels and fils in the Académie dictionary.