French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "personne" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce personne in French?

personne is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pɛʁ.sɔn/. It means “nobody / no one (with ne).” pehr-SON — a throat "r" in the middle, and the final "nn" is a real consonant, not a nasal vowel.

pehr-SON — a throat "r" in the middle, and the final "nn" is a real consonant, not a nasal vowel.

personne /pɛʁ.sɔn/

per-SONNE, weight on the second syllable. English stresses the first — PER-son — so the beat has to move back.

Listen: personne

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Sound it out

per An unaspirated "p", an open "eh", then the uvular "r". Keep the vowel clean and separate from the "r".

so An "s" plus a short open "o" as in "cot".

nne A single "n" sound, and a real consonant. The doubled letter is what keeps the vowel oral: a lone "n" in that position would nasalize it, the way it does in "son" or "bon".

Hear it in a sentence

Il n'y a personne ici.

There's nobody here.

Listen: Il n'y a personne ici.

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"Il n'y a personne ici" uses "personne" as a negative pronoun meaning "nobody", paired with the "n'" before the verb. The same word is also a perfectly ordinary noun meaning "a person" — context and the presence of "ne" decide. "Il n'y a" compresses to something like "eel-nya" in speech.

Where English speakers slip

The doubled "nn" gets nasalized by learners who have absorbed the nasal-vowel rule too broadly, producing "pehr-SOHN" through the nose. The vowel is fully oral and the "n" is a real consonant. English stress also drags to the front. And the double life of the word catches people out: with "ne" it means nobody, without it, a person.