In today’s lesson, we’ll have a good look at how to pronounce the eu sound in French words. In most instances, eu sounds like “uh” as in un peu (a little). However, there is an instance where the pronunciation changes. Keep reading and we’ll explain with audio example sentences.
eu sound in French
/uh/ [ø]
EU – most common pronunciation explained
In our first several examples, eu sounds like [ø]. For all of our example sentences, we’ll first say the word in question, then provide a complete sentence including the word.
Veux -> Qu’est-ce que tu veux ?
Want -> What do you want?
Feu -> Je vais allumer un feu.
Fire -> I’m going to start a fire.
Peu -> Je parle un peu.
Little -> I speak a little
Bleu -> Le ciel est bleu.
Blue -> The sky is blue.
Over the past ten years of teaching French, I’ve found the many students have a hard time pronouncing the following three words: heure (hour), fleur (flower) and gazeuse (sparkling/fizzy).
Heure -> A quelle heure commence le film ?
Hour -> What time does the movie start?
Fleur -> J’aime la fleur rouge.
Flower -> I like the red flower.
Gazeuse -> Je commande une bouteille d’eau gazeuse.
Sparkling -> I ordered a bottle of sparklign water.
Less common pronunciation
When eu appears as the past participle of the verb avoir (to have), the pronunciation changes and sounds like this: [y]. Here’s an example:
Eu -> j’ai eu une bonne note.
Had -> I had (got or received) a good grade.
Conclusion
Et voilà ! You should now be very clear on how to pronounce eu in French words. To further improve your pronunciation, check out our audio lesson covering 29 French reading rules. Another resource which we feel would be very useful is Camille from French Today’s French Pronunciation Audio Guide.
