French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "le grand-père" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce le grand-père in French?

le grand-père is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /lə ɡʁɑ̃.pɛʁ/. It means “grandfather.” luh grahn-PEHR — a nasal in the middle, no liaison at the hyphen, and a throat "r" at the end.

luh grahn-PEHR — a nasal in the middle, no liaison at the hyphen, and a throat "r" at the end.

le grand-père /lə ɡʁɑ̃.pɛʁ/

le grand-PÈRE, weight on the last syllable. The compound mirrors "grand-mère" exactly, so the two can be drilled together — same first element, same rhythm, different second half.

Listen: le grand-père

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

Sound it out

gr A hard "g" into a uvular "r", both back-of-the-mouth sounds.

and The nasal vowel /ɑ̃/ with both the "n" and the "d" silent. The hyphen does not trigger a liaison in this compound.

père An unaspirated "p", an open "eh" from the grave accent, and a final uvular "r" kept audible by the silent "e".

Hear it in a sentence

Mon grand-père a quatre-vingts ans.

My grandfather is eighty.

Listen: Mon grand-père a quatre-vingts ans.

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

"Mon grand-père a quatre-vingts ans" contains a liaison at the end: "vingts ans" links the silent "s" as a "z", /vɛ̃.z‿ɑ̃/. The number itself is a curiosity — "quatre-vingts" is literally "four twenties", a vestige of an old base-twenty counting system. "A" here is the verb "avoir", used for age.

Where English speakers slip

Learners make a liaison across the hyphen, saying "grahn-t-PEHR", which does not happen in this compound. They also pronounce the "d". English stress pulls to the front, as in "GRANDfather"; French puts it at the end. And the age construction needs "avoir" — "il est quatre-vingts ans" is a persistent beginner error.