LingoDrop
French · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la lune" in French?
lah LÜN — the tight French "u" between two light "l"-ish sounds, with a real "n" at the end.
The phrase peaks on LUNE, one syllable. The word gives "lundi" its first syllable — Monday is moon-day — though the vowel changes to a nasal there.
Listen: la lune
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
On voit bien la lune ce soir.
You can see the moon clearly tonight.
Listen: On voit bien la lune ce soir.
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"On voit bien la lune ce soir" uses "voit" /vwa/, with the "t" silent, and "bien" as an adverb meaning "clearly" rather than "well". "Ce soir" means tonight specifically. Note that French uses "on" here where English says "you can" in the impersonal sense — "on voit" is "one sees".
Where English speakers slip
The vowel gets substituted with "oo", producing "loon", which is the standard /y/-to-/u/ error. Round your lips while keeping the tongue forward. The English word "lunar" also tempts people toward a "yoo" glide — French /y/ has no "y" in front of it. And the "-une" ending gets nasalized by learners over-applying the nasal rule; the silent "e" keeps that "n" real.