French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "quelqu'un" in French?

Q: How do you pronounce quelqu'un in French?

quelqu'un is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kɛl.kœ̃/. It means “someone.” kel-KUHN — the apostrophe fuses two words, and the ending is a nasal vowel with rounded lips.

kel-KUHN — the apostrophe fuses two words, and the ending is a nasal vowel with rounded lips.

quelqu'un /kɛl.kœ̃/

quel-QU'UN, two beats with the weight at the end. The elision is what keeps it to two — without it you would have three, and French compressed it precisely to avoid that.

Listen: quelqu'un

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Sound it out

quel A bare "k", an open "eh", a light "l".

qu' A bare "k" whose vowel has elided away before "un". The apostrophe marks the dropped schwa, so this adds no syllable of its own.

un The nasal vowel /œ̃/ — rounded lips, air through the nose, tongue never rising. Many speakers now merge this with /ɛ̃/, and both are standard.

Hear it in a sentence

Il y a quelqu'un ?

Is anyone there?

Listen: Il y a quelqu'un ?

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"Il y a quelqu'un ?" is the phrase you call into an empty-seeming room. "Il y a" compresses to /i.lja/, two syllables from three written words. The rising intonation on the final nasal turns it into a question with no inversion or question word. The feminine equivalent "quelqu'une" exists but is rare.

Where English speakers slip

Learners give the apostrophe a beat, producing "kel-kuh-UN", when the whole point of the elision is compression. They also pronounce the final "n" as a consonant. It is a nasal vowel with rounded lips and nothing touching. Compare it with "quelque chose", where the "que" keeps its schwa — the difference is entirely down to what follows.