Tu as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui.

Tu is the informal singular you. You use it with friends, family, children, or people you know well.

If you wanted to say the same thing more formally, or to more than one person, you would use vous:

• Vous avez l’air fatigué aujourd’hui. → to one man, formal
• Vous avez l’air fatiguée aujourd’hui. → to one woman, formal
• Vous avez l’air fatigués/fatiguées aujourd’hui. → to more than one person

So this sentence sounds casual and familiar.

French often uses the expression avoir l’air to mean to look, to seem, or to appear.

So:

• Tu as l’air fatigué = You look tired
• Tu es fatigué = You are tired

That is an important difference.
Tu es fatigué states a fact more directly.
Tu as l’air fatigué is based on appearance: the person seems tired.

In many situations, avoir l’air + adjective is the most natural way to express look + adjective in English.

Literally, air can mean air, but in this expression it means something more like appearance or look.

So avoir l’air literally resembles to have the look/appearance, even though the natural English translation is just to look or to seem.

It is a fixed expression, so it is best to learn avoir l’air as a whole chunk.

The apostrophe shows elision.

The full form is le air, but French does not keep le before a word beginning with a vowel sound. It changes to l’:

• le
  • air → l’air

This is very common in French:

• le homme → l’homme
• le ami → l’ami

So tu as l’air is just the normal spelling.

Fatigué agrees with the person being described.

In this sentence, fatigué is the masculine singular form. You would use it when speaking to one male person.

If you are speaking to one female person, you would say:

• Tu as l’air fatiguée aujourd’hui.

Agreement changes like this:

• masculine singular: fatigué
• feminine singular: fatiguée
• masculine plural: fatigués
• feminine plural: fatiguées

So the ending depends on who tu/vous refers to.

Yes, absolutely, but it does not mean exactly the same thing.

• Tu as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui = You look tired today.
• Tu es fatigué aujourd’hui = You are tired today.

The first is about appearance or impression.
The second is more direct and states the condition itself.

If you are only guessing from how someone looks, avoir l’air is often the better choice.

Because French does not usually translate look word-for-word in this structure.

English says:

• You look tired

French uses a different construction:

• Tu as l’air fatigué

This is a very common thing when learning French: the most natural translation is often not literal. Instead of trying to match each English word, it is better to learn the full French pattern avoir l’air + adjective.

Yes. Aujourd’hui means today, and it is fairly flexible in position.

Your sentence:

• Tu as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui.

This is very natural.

You can also say:

• Aujourd’hui, tu as l’air fatigué.

That can put a little more emphasis on today.

In everyday speech, the version with aujourd’hui at the end is extremely common and natural.

A careful pronunciation would be approximately:

ty a lèr fa-ti-gay o-zhoor-dwee

A few useful points:

• tu sounds like ty with a rounded vowel
• as is pronounced a
• l’air sounds like lèr
• fatigué ends with an ay sound: fa-ti-gay
• aujourd’hui is roughly o-zhoor-dwee

In natural speech, tu as may sound a bit like t’as, because French speakers often contract it in casual speech.

Yes. T’as is the spoken contraction of tu as.

So:

• Tu as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui.
• T’as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui.

They mean the same thing, but t’as is more informal and more common in everyday speech.

In writing, especially in careful or formal writing, tu as is safer.
In conversation, you will hear t’as all the time.

It depends on tone and context.

Tu as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui can sound caring and natural if you are speaking to someone you know well. For example, it might mean You look tired today — are you okay?

But if said bluntly, it can also sound a little too personal or like a comment on someone’s appearance.

If you want to sound softer, you could add something like:

• Tu as l’air fatigué aujourd’hui, ça va ?
• Tu as l’air un peu fatigué aujourd’hui.

Adding un peu can make it gentler: You look a little tired today.

Yes, very often. This is a very useful pattern.

Examples:

• Tu as l’air content. → You look happy.
• Elle a l’air malade. → She looks sick.
• Ils ont l’air surpris. → They look surprised.
• Vous avez l’air occupé. → You look busy.

So avoir l’air + adjective is a pattern worth memorizing, not just this one sentence.