French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "manger" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce manger in French?

manger is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mɑ̃.ʒe/. It means “to eat.” mahn-ZHAY, where "mahn" is nasal with no real "n", and the "-er" ending is a clean "ay" with no "r" at all.

mahn-ZHAY, where "mahn" is nasal with no real "n", and the "-er" ending is a clean "ay" with no "r" at all.

manger /mɑ̃.ʒe/

man-GER, with the lift on the second syllable. This holds for all -er infinitives: parler, chanter, regarder — the beat always lands on that final "-er".

Listen: manger

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Sound it out

man The nasal vowel /ɑ̃/. Open your mouth as if for "ah", then let the air out through your nose. Tongue stays down; the "n" is a nasalization marker, not a consonant.

g Before "e" or "i", French "g" is soft: the buzzy sound in "measure". Not the hard "g" of "go", and not the English "j" of "jam" either.

er The infinitive ending of every regular French verb of this type. It is pronounced as a closed "ay" /e/ — the "r" is completely silent.

Hear it in a sentence

On mange à midi.

We eat at noon.

Listen: On mange à midi.

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"On mange à midi" swaps the infinitive for the conjugated form "mange" /mɑ̃ʒ/, where the final "e" is silent but keeps the soft "g" audible. "On" is another nasal vowel and, in everyday French, it stands in for "nous" — this sentence literally reads "one eats at noon" but means "we eat at noon". The "à" is a bare vowel, so "mange à" glides straight together: mahnzh-a-mee-DEE.

Where English speakers slip

The "-er" ending is where nearly everyone slips, pronouncing an English "r" and saying "mahn-JER" or "MAN-jer". There is no "r" sound in the infinitive ending at all — it is simply "ay". Compounding it, learners use the hard English "j" from "manger" the English word (a feeding trough, from this very French root), which puts a "d" in front of the soft consonant. And the first syllable needs nasalizing, not a flat "man" as in the English noun.