French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "aller" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce aller in French?

aller is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a.le/. It means “to go.” ah-LAY — and there is no "r" sound at the end at all, despite the spelling.

ah-LAY — and there is no "r" sound at the end at all, despite the spelling.

aller /a.le/

al-LER, with the lift on the second syllable, as with every -er infinitive. Both vowels stay full and clear; neither reduces to a schwa.

Listen: aller

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Sound it out

a A short, open, unstressed "ah".

ll A single light "l" sound. The doubling is purely orthographic here and does not lengthen the consonant.

er The -er infinitive ending, pronounced as a closed "ay" /e/. The "r" is completely silent — this is the defining feature of the largest verb family in French.

Hear it in a sentence

Je dois aller à la banque.

I have to go to the bank.

Listen: Je dois aller à la banque.

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"Je dois aller à la banque" stacks two verbs, with "dois" conjugated and "aller" in the infinitive. Note "aller à" — a French speaker does not merge those two "a" vowels, so you hear a brief hiatus, a-LAY-a-la-BAHNK. "Banque" ends in a nasal vowel plus a hard "k" from the "qu", with the final "e" silent.

Where English speakers slip

The final "r" is the whole problem. English speakers see "-er" and say "-er", producing "a-LAIR" or "AL-ler". Every regular -er infinitive in French — parler, manger, donner, travailler — ends in a bare "ay" with no consonant after it. Once you internalise that one rule you have fixed the pronunciation of several hundred verbs at once.