LingoDrop
French · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la" in French?
lah — a light forward "l" plus a bright open "ah", and nothing more.
Unstressed, leading into the noun. Note that "la" keeps its full vowel where "le" reduces to a schwa — that difference in vowel quality is often the clearest way to hear which gender an article is marking.
Listen: la
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
La maison est grande.
The house is big.
Listen: La maison est grande.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"La maison est grande" runs the article into a two-syllable noun and then an adjective agreeing in the feminine. "Maison" has a nasal vowel at the end and, crucially, a single "s" between vowels pronounced as "z": meh-ZOHN. "Grande" gets a pronounced "d" thanks to the feminine "-e", where the masculine "grand" would end in silence.
Where English speakers slip
Phonetically this is one of the easiest words in French, so the mistakes are structural rather than sonic: forgetting to elide before a vowel ("la eau" instead of "l'eau"), and letting the "a" drift toward the flat English "a" of "cat". Keep the vowel open and back, closer to "ah". Also resist making the "l" heavy — French "l" is always light, wherever it sits.