Today we’ll have a look close look at the pronunciation of l’œil and les yeux (eye and eyes) in French. After watching a quick video and listening to our audio clips you should have a much firmer grasp of these two tricky words!
Un œil, les yeux
an eye, eyes
Eye / eyes in French: l’œil, les yeux
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Word origin
According to Wiktionary.org, œil (eye in the singular form) comes from oculus in Latin and yeux (eyes in the plural form) comes from the Latin oculos.
L’œil, les yeux pronunciation
In the following video online French teacher and author, Dylane, suggests a great way to pronounce œil (eye in the singular form). She suggests to say the letter -e in French [uh] followed by the -y in the English “yes”. Eyes in the plural form is yeux (sounds like “yuh”). With the definine article (le) and the liaison you get: les yeux. Here you can learn about Dylane’s books.
Example sentences
The first example sentence is a famous quote from the book Le Petit Prince (the Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. There are lots of translations online but I took the liberty to translate it my own way. This example sentnce uses the personal pronoun on, which translates to you, we and “people” in general.
On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
You can really only see clearly with your heart. What really matters is invisible to the eyes.
To talk about eye color in French, use the expression avoir les yeux + color name. For brown, the French adjective marron is invariable and does not have a plural form.
Guillaume a les yeux bleus. Véronique a les yeux verts. Corinne a les yeux marron.
Guillaume has blue eyes. Véronique has hazel eyes. Corinne has brown eyes.
In French, the expression “mon œil !” (literally my eye!) means “yeah right!” or “I don’t believe you!”.
Tu as fait tout ça ? Mon œil !
You did all that? I don’t believe you!
Conclusion
Et voilà ! C’est la fin de la leçon ! I hope you have a much better grasp of how to pronounce and use un œil / les yeux (eye, eyes) in French. Now check out our fun lesson covering the expression coûter le yeux de la tête (to be very expensive).
