French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "maintenant" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce maintenant in French?

maintenant is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mɛ̃t.nɑ̃/. It means “now.” man-t'NAHN — usually two or three beats, with a nasal at each end and the middle "e" dropped.

man-t'NAHN — usually two or three beats, with a nasal at each end and the middle "e" dropped.

maintenant /mɛ̃t.nɑ̃/

main-te-NANT, with the weight on the final syllable. In normal speech the middle schwa disappears, so what you hear is closer to "mant-NAHN" — two beats bracketed by two different nasal vowels.

Listen: maintenant

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Sound it out

main The nasal vowel /ɛ̃/ — an open "eh" through the nose. This is the same syllable as the word "main" (hand), which is where the word comes from: "maintenant" is literally "holding in hand".

te An unaspirated "t" plus a schwa that most speakers drop entirely, compressing the word to two spoken syllables.

nant An "n" plus the other nasal, /ɑ̃/, open and unrounded, with the final "t" silent.

Hear it in a sentence

Je dois partir maintenant.

I have to leave now.

Listen: Je dois partir maintenant.

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"Je dois partir maintenant" ends on the adverb, so the final nasal gets full length. "Partir" keeps its final "r" as an -ir infinitive, so the sentence has a throat rasp immediately before the nasal — a good coordination exercise. Two verbs stack, with "dois" conjugated and "partir" left in the infinitive.

Where English speakers slip

Learners pronounce all four written syllables carefully, "man-tuh-NAHN", which is understandable but slow; native speakers compress the middle. They also flatten both nasals into ordinary vowels with real "n" consonants. The two nasals are genuinely different — /ɛ̃/ at the front, /ɑ̃/ at the back — so the word is a useful drill for hearing the contrast within a single word.