LingoDrop
French · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "du" in French?
dü — a "d" plus the tight French "u". One syllable, and definitely not "doo".
One unstressed syllable, leaning on the noun after it. Note that "du" is itself a contraction — "de + le" fused into one — so it already carries two grammatical jobs in a single beat.
Listen: du
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Je bois du thé.
I drink tea.
Listen: Je bois du thé.
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"Je bois du thé" uses the partitive: French cannot say "I drink tea" with a bare noun, so it says "I drink some-of-the tea". The "h" in "thé" is silent and the "t" is unaspirated, giving a clean /te/. Change the drink to a feminine noun and the article changes too — "je bois de la bière".
Where English speakers slip
Almost everyone says "doo" first, importing the back-rounded /u/ from English. That vowel exists in French too, and it makes different words — "doux" (soft) is /du/. The distinction matters. Round your lips but keep the tongue high and forward where it sits for "ee". Structurally, learners also write "de le" out in full; the contraction to "du" is not optional.