Pronunciation of French words in English

Josh Lalonde   Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:28 pm GMT
When I say certain French words in English, I use a semi-nativized pronunciation that only partially adapts them to English phonology. I was wondering how non-French speakers pronounce these words. Do you pronounce them as if they were English words, or closer to their French pronunciations?
genre [ZE~r/@]
coup de grâce [ku d@ gr/Qs]
coup d'État [ku de"ta]
haute couture [o? kuty6]
dénouement [denumA~]
milieu [milj2]
Guest 224   Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:16 pm GMT
I do the same thing. I pronounce French loan words the same way as I would in French.

But that makes me come off as a little pompous...or incomphrehensible to most Americans
Lazar   Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:43 pm GMT
I use a mixed system for French words in English:

genre ["ZAnr\@], no nasalized vowel. (So you use [E] rather than [A] there?)
coup de grâce [%k_hu: d@ "gr\A:s]
coup d'état [&k_hu: deI"t_hA:]
haute couture ["7Ut k_hu:"t_hU@`], treating <u> as if it were <ou>.
dénouement [%deInu:"mA~:]
milieu [mIl"j3:], using [3:] as a poor approximation of [2].
Josh Lalonde   Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:29 am GMT
<<(So you use [E] rather than [A] there?)>>

No, that should have been [Za~r\@]. It's phonemically /A~/, but Quebec French has different realisations of nasalized vowels than Metropolitan French. And I think my pronunciation of 'coup de grâce' actually uses the French /A/ as opposed to my English /Q/ (it doesn't rhyme with 'cross' for example): [ku d@ gr/As].

<<milieu [mIl"j3:], using [3:] as a poor approximation of [2].>>

That's the standard way of doing it in England, as far as I can tell. But [3:] isn't really any more native a sound than [2] in your accent is it? Is this an inheritance from older non-rhotic speech that would presumably have had /3:/ as phoneme and used it for French /2/?
Lazar   Sat Jun 02, 2007 3:45 am GMT
No, [3] doesn't occur in any native words in my dialect, but it just feels more native to me than the actual rounded [2]. I think it's similar to how some fully rhotic speakers have a special sound, [I@], that they use only in the word "idea". It's as if [3] could naturally be "inferred" as a derhoticized version of my [3`], whereas [2] sounds completely foreign. This may partly be the result of familiarity with British English.

(I don't think it's a regional inheritance. [3`] is basically universal here, even for non-rhotic speakers. The only exception is a very conservative realization, almost extinct now, which is something like [Y].)
Travis   Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:20 am GMT
I myself tend to use more anglicized pronunciations than those you have listed, even though such varies from word to word:

genre ["Za~:nr\@:] or ["Za~:R@:]
coup de grace [%k_hu: d@: "gRas]
coup d'etat ["k_hu: de"t_ha:]
haute couture ["ho:t k_hu"t_hu:R]
dénounement [%de~:nu~:"ma~:]
milieu [mI:M"ju:]

Note that the alternation between having [n] and having a bare nasalized vowel in "genre" is *not* actually an attempt to imitate French pronunciation, but rather because coda /n/ is rather unstable in my dialect in actual everyday speech and is very readily elided, leaving the preceding vowel nasalized.
Travis   Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:24 am GMT
Whoops, that should be:

haute couture ["hot k_hu"t_hu:R] or ["ho? k_hu"t_hu:R]
Travis   Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:29 am GMT
>>No, [3] doesn't occur in any native words in my dialect, but it just feels more native to me than the actual rounded [2]. I think it's similar to how some fully rhotic speakers have a special sound, [I@], that they use only in the word "idea". It's as if [3] could naturally be "inferred" as a derhoticized version of my [3`], whereas [2] sounds completely foreign. This may partly be the result of familiarity with British English.

(I don't think it's a regional inheritance. [3`] is basically universal here, even for non-rhotic speakers. The only exception is a very conservative realization, almost extinct now, which is something like [Y].)<<

In names here, German /2:/, /9/, and /E:/ have been turned into /e/; however, this is purely learned in nature and is not a synchronic replacement of German phonemes with English ones.
furrykef   Sat Jun 02, 2007 5:43 am GMT
One amusing example, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection:

"Many native speakers of English pronounce the word lingerie as [lɑnʒɜˈɹeɪ], excessively depressing the first vowel to sound more like a 'typical' French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ray, by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in -é(e), -er, -et, and -ez. A closer English approximation of the native French [lɛ̃ʒəʀi] would be [læn.ʒə.ɹi]."

In other words, we alter the pronunciation of "lingerie" because the actual French pronunciation somehow doesn't sound French enough.

- Kef
Lazar   Sat Jun 02, 2007 6:23 am GMT
Yeah, ever since I learned rudimentary French, I've been annoyed by the common American pronunciation of "lingerie".
greg   Sat Jun 02, 2007 8:41 am GMT
« Many native speakers of English pronounce the word lingerie as [lɑnʒɜˈɹeɪ], excessively depressing the first vowel to sound more like a 'typical' French nasal vowel (...) ».

C'est peut-être la raison pour laquelle on a l'impression qu'ils essaient de dire *<longerie>.




« A closer English approximation of the native French [lɛ̃ʒəʀi] would be [læn.ʒə.ɹi] »

La transcription phonémique de Fr <lingerie> est bien /lɛ̃ʒəʀi/ = /lE~Z@Ri/, mais sa réalisation phonétique la plus répandue (en France) est /lɛ̃ʒʀi/ = /lE~ZRi/ → deux syllabes, pas trois.




Lazar : « coup d'état [&k_hu: deI"t_hA:] ».

Le [&] initial semble former une syllabe adventice. S'agit-il d'une épenthèse ?
Josh Lalonde   Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:31 pm GMT
I've noticed that everyone seems to use /A/ [A:, a] for the last syllable of "coup d'état". I find it interesting that I use /a/, a checked vowel, in this free situation. I can't think of any other words where I do that (except when final consonants are elided).
Skippy   Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:15 pm GMT
Whenever I'm speaking English and I say a foreign word (German, French, Spanish, whatever) I always say it with a thick American accent... I get annoyed when people say "hello, my name is .... and I'm from Mexico City" and they say their name like they would in Spanish... One would usually not understand them. When you're in a mindset that you're having an English conversation, unexpected foreign words as spoken in foreign languages sound weird.

When I was in Berlin and I asked someone where something was, he said "Friedrichstrasse" but he said it like /fwi-dwik-stwase/ (he never got the hang of those German uvular r's...) and in the back of my mind I was thinking "call it that when we speak German, when we're speaking English, say it like in English."

A lot of these words, like coup d'etat, rendezvous, or lingerie, are so embedded in the English language (like with Schadenfreude or Gesundheit from German or burrito or enchilada from Spanish) that an English (American, Canadian, or English) accent would be expected...

In Texas, if you said a French word with a French accent while NOT speaking French, they'd immediately assume you're an elitist New Englander. In French-speaking Louisiana, they would never do this.
furrykef   Sat Jun 02, 2007 6:44 pm GMT
<< C'est peut-être la raison pour laquelle on a l'impression qu'ils essaient de dire *<longerie>. >>

greg, forum rule #8 is "If you want to post to this forum, you must agree that you will not post messages in languages other than English to the English forum."

Besides, what's the point of posting if only a few people will understand you?

- Kef
Uriel   Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:05 pm GMT
genre [ZE~r/@]
coup de grâce [ku d@ gr/Qs]
coup d'État [ku de"ta]
haute couture [o? kuty6]
dénouement [denumA~]
milieu [milj2]

Let's see, I say:

ZHAHN-ruh
coop duh grahss
coo duh TAH (don't know why I keep the P in one but omit it in the other!)
hote (like coat) cooTOOR
daynooMAHNT
millYOO

I don't ever hear much spoken French, so I have nothing to "normalize" my pronunciation against.

Skippy, here in New Mexico it's so common to hear Spanish names and words pronounced "correctly" (as they would be in Spanish), that to me it sounds weird to hear someone give their name as "Her-nan-dez" instead of the usual "Air-non-dess"! I have two coworkers who are ethnically hispanic but had the strange fortune to hail from the Midwest, and they have so heavily anglicized the pronunciation of their names that you can barely recognize them (and the Oklahoma drawl REALLY sounds funny coming out of their mouths!) I shouldn't talk, though -- my name's been anglicized, too.

Some words that have passed into general American usage like "mesa" or "arroyo" or "enchilada" or "guacamole" can be said either way, but you know the real deal when you hear it (and if it's food, it'll probably be tasting better). And we preserve the Spanish pronunciation in place names as much as possible -- even in an American accent, "La Union" is still "la oonYONE", not "la YOONyun".