French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "l'eau (f.)" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce l'eau (f.) in French?

l'eau (f.) is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /lo/. It means “water.” loh — just two sounds. Those four letters "l'eau" produce one short syllable, nothing more.

loh — just two sounds. Those four letters "l'eau" produce one short syllable, nothing more.

l'eau (f.) /lo/

A single syllable, so the word carries whatever stress its phrase gives it. Since the article is fused on, there is no separate beat for "l'" — do not let it become "luh-OH".

Listen: l'eau (f.)

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Sound it out

l' This is the article "la", with its vowel dropped because "eau" begins with a vowel. The apostrophe marks the elision. It adds no syllable of its own — the "l" simply attaches to the front of the word.

eau Three letters, one sound: a closed "oh". This spelling comes from Latin "aqua" by way of centuries of sound change, and it is always pronounced /o/. Keep it pure with no glide toward "oo".

(f.) Not part of the word — it is the dictionary's note that "eau" is feminine, which is why the article was "la" before elision squeezed it down to "l'".

Hear it in a sentence

Je voudrais un verre d'eau.

I'd like a glass of water.

Listen: Je voudrais un verre d'eau.

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"Je voudrais un verre d'eau" repeats the same elision trick with a different word: "de eau" becomes "d'eau", because French will not tolerate two vowels meeting across that boundary. So the sentence has both "l'eau" as the headword and "d'eau" in use — the same rule, two different little words. Note also "voudrais", the conditional, which is what makes the request polite rather than blunt.

Where English speakers slip

The spelling "eau" throws people badly, because English has nothing like it. Learners guess "ee-ow", "ay-oh", or a two-syllable "eh-OH". It is one sound: "oh". The second problem is the apostrophe — English speakers give it a beat, saying "luh-OH", when the article has been deliberately compressed to avoid exactly that. It is one syllable: loh, rhyming with "low".