LingoDrop
French · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "quand" in French?
kahn through the nose — a hard "k" plus a nasal vowel, with both the "n" and the "d" silent.
One nasal syllable ending in open air. Five letters, two sounds, which makes it a good example of how much French orthography is historical rather than phonetic.
Listen: quand
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Quand part le prochain train ?
When does the next train leave?
Listen: Quand part le prochain train ?
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"Quand part le prochain train ?" inverts verb and subject, which is standard in this question shape. There is no liaison here because "part" begins with a consonant — but add "est-ce que" and the "d" of "quand" would wake up as a "t". "Prochain" ends in the nasal /ɛ̃/, so the sentence contains two different nasal vowels.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers add a "w" after the "qu" and pronounce the "n" and "d", producing "kwand". None of that belongs: bare "k", nasal vowel, nothing at the end. The liaison exception is the twist worth memorising — before a vowel that silent "d" comes back as a "t", not a "d", which surprises people the first time they hear it.