French · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "se" in French?

suh — a hissing "s" and a weak schwa. Never a "z", and never "say".

se /sə/

Unstressed, glued to the verb it belongs to. In "il se lève" the whole beat is on -LÈVE, with "se" a mere connector.

Listen: se

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

s A voiceless "s" at the start of a word, always. The "s becomes z" rule only applies between two vowels inside a word, which is not the case here.

e The weak schwa /ə/, lightly rounded. Before a vowel it elides to "s'", giving "s'appeler", "s'habiller".

Hear it in a sentence

Il se lève à six heures.

He gets up at six.

Listen: Il se lève à six heures.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Il se lève à six heures" is a reflexive verb in action — literally "he raises himself", which is how French says "he gets up". The grave accent on "lève" marks an open /ɛ/ where the infinitive "lever" has a schwa. And the time phrase carries an obligatory liaison: "six heures" is /si.z‿œʁ/.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers often voice it into "zuh", by analogy with words like "rose" and "phase" where an "s" between vowels is a "z". Word-initial "s" in French is always hissed. Beyond the sound, the real difficulty is knowing that this pronoun changes with the subject — je me, tu te, il se — so "se" only ever goes with third persons. Saying "je se lève" is a much more visible error than any vowel.