French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "le cœur" in French?

luh KUR — with rounded lips on the vowel and a throat "r". The "œ" ligature is one sound.

le cœur /lə kœʁ/

The phrase peaks on CŒUR, one syllable. It rhymes exactly with "sœur", which makes the two easy to drill together — same vowel, same ending, different opening consonant.

Listen: le cœur

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Sound it out

c A hard "k". Note that "c" before the "œ" ligature behaves as it would before "o" — hard, not soft.

œu The open rounded vowel /œ/, as in "sœur" and "neuf". Lips rounded, tongue mid-front.

r A final uvular "r", fully pronounced, with the lips staying rounded through it.

Hear it in a sentence

Elle a un grand cœur.

She has a big heart.

Listen: Elle a un grand cœur.

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"Elle a un grand cœur" links the pronoun into the verb, /ɛ.l‿a/, and then "un grand cœur" has no liaison between "grand" and "cœur" because the noun starts with a consonant. "Grand" therefore ends on its nasal vowel with the "d" silent. The idiom means the same thing as in English.

Where English speakers slip

The vowel gets unrounded into an English "er" as in "cur", or substituted with "oo". Round your lips while keeping the tongue mid and forward. The final "r" also gets curled, which drags the vowel with it — French keeps them as two separate events. And the ligature is just a typographic convenience, not an exotic sound.