[WWI] Speaking of Pronunciation...

[Helen and Chris]

am 24.09.2008 21:27 Uhr schrieb Tom Ruprecht unter ruprecht at charter.net:

> I just happened to look up how to pronounce Suiza in a
> Spanish-English dictionary, should have asked an Argentinean in the
> first place... :-)   I can't seem to find out how to pronounce French
> names- can anyone help me with Morane-Saulnier?  I've been thinking
> moe RAHN sal nyay (?)  There are others I can't think of right now.
> 
> Rupe
> 


mo ráhn - sol nié

Diego has supplied the correct pronunciation (soo-ee-za), but English pronunciation has contracted that to sweeza.

Michael is absolutely spot on with his pronunciation of Morane-Saulnier.  I asked Helen (who teaches French) how she would write it and she came up with mor ann - sole nee ay.  Exactly the same as Michaels.

The trick with French, Rupe, is to realise that all syllables are the same length.  The same as Japanese, so I'm told.  English speakers tend to want to stress and expand at least one syllable. Hence your stressing and expanding RAHN.

Equally difficult for English speakers is that English vowels are dipthongs (a slurring of more than one sound) whilst French vowels are pure.  The letter "A", for instance, is pronounced ay-ee in English.  The French use the pure short ah (as in taxi).

And there are loads of pronunciation variations between English and French.  "Qu" isn't "kw" (queen) but "k"; the "i"  in French is similar to the English "a" (wine = vin; pronounced "van"); "er" isn't "err" but "air".  So the beautiful Brittany town of Quimper isn't "KWIMper" but "Kam pair".

Don't get dis-heartened - 60% of English words (some 10,000) are of French origin.

But what do I know?  Ask the French contingent - it's their language!

HTH

Chris.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.wwi-models.org/pipermail/wwi/attachments/20080925/125e35ee/attachment.html