French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "la personne" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce la personne in French?

la personne is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /la pɛʁ.sɔn/. It means “person.” lah pehr-SON — always feminine, whoever it refers to, and the final "nn" is a real consonant.

lah pehr-SON — always feminine, whoever it refers to, and the final "nn" is a real consonant.

la personne /la pɛʁ.sɔn/

The phrase peaks on -SONNE. Grammatically, this noun is a curiosity: it is feminine even when it refers to a man, so "cette personne" is correct for anyone at all.

Listen: la personne

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

la The feminine article. It stays "la" for a man or a woman, because the noun itself is grammatically feminine regardless of who it describes.

per An unaspirated "p", an open "eh", then a uvular "r" that must not swallow the vowel.

sonne An "s", a short open "o", then a single "n" sound made real by the doubled letters and kept audible by the silent "e". Not a nasal vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

C'est une personne très gentille.

She's a very kind person.

Listen: C'est une personne très gentille.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"C'est une personne très gentille" uses the feminine adjective "gentille", /ʒɑ̃.tij/, with a "y" sound at the end — the masculine "gentil" has a silent "l" instead. The agreement follows the noun's grammatical gender, not the person's, which is why a man can be "une personne très gentille". "C'est une" links smoothly across.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest error is switching to "le personne" when the referent is male. The article never changes. Phonetically, the doubled "nn" gets nasalized by learners applying the nasal rule too widely, and English drags the stress to the first syllable. Keep the vowel oral, the "n" real, and the weight at the end.