French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "est-ce que" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce est-ce que in French?

est-ce que is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɛs.kə/. It means “(introduces a yes/no question).” ess-kuh — two quick syllables that native speakers fire off almost as one. Often compressed to just "esk".

ess-kuh — two quick syllables that native speakers fire off almost as one. Often compressed to just "esk".

est-ce que /ɛs.kə/

The phrase is unstressed throughout — it exists only to flag that a question is coming, so it stays fast and flat, and the pitch rises later, on the sentence's real content.

Listen: est-ce que

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Sound it out

est Here the "s" IS pronounced, because of the inversion with "ce" — the phrase is literally "is it that". So it is /ɛs/, an open "eh" plus a hissing "s", unlike the bare /ɛ/ of "est" on its own.

ce The "c" merges into the "s" sound before it, so you do not hear a doubled hiss.

que A plain "k" plus a weak schwa. In fast speech the schwa drops out and the whole phrase becomes a single cluster, "esk".

Hear it in a sentence

Est-ce que tu es prêt ?

Are you ready?

Listen: Est-ce que tu es prêt ?

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"Est-ce que tu es prêt ?" shows the construction's whole purpose: it lets you keep normal subject-verb word order and still ask a yes/no question, with no inversion needed. "Tu es" runs together as /ty‿ɛ/ and often reduces to "t'es" in speech, and "prêt" ends in a silent "t" with the circumflex marking a lost "s" from the older spelling "prest".

Where English speakers slip

Learners tend to enunciate all three words carefully — "est ... ce ... que" — which sounds unnaturally slow, and they often say the first word as a bare /ɛ/ because they learned "est" that way. In this fixed phrase the "s" is pronounced. Aim for a rapid "esk" that gets out of the way, and let the question mark do its work through rising intonation at the end of the sentence.