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dove??
Is this pronounced dough-veh<BR>or<BR>dough-vay?
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in what language? In English it's pronounced Duhv.
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Are you talking about a "duvet", a sort of bed covering, like a comforter?<BR>If so it is pronounced "doo-vay" with accent on the second syllable.
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Simple question with a slightly complicated answer.<BR><BR>First, dough is a good equivalent to the first syllable. The pronounciation of the "veh" part is about halfway between veh and vay, if that makes sense. It's an abbreviated vay without actually using the y sound.<BR><BR>If you are simply asking "where is he/she/it?" the accent is on the second syllable, and it is actually a contraction (of dove è or dov'è).<BR><BR>Otherwise, the accent is on the first syllable. In neither case is the accented syllable stressed as much as we tend to stress syllables in English.
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If you're speaking English it sounds like "DUV" as in the soap or the bird.
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A website I found spells it phonetically as doav-ay.<BR><BR>If you ask an Italian "Dove bar?" and pronounce it correctly, they will direct you to a place where you can have a delicious cappucino. However, if you pronounce it incorrectly, they will say "No grazie, I prefer gelato."
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daw-ve
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And how do the Italians pronounce "Dove" soap? I've seen it on the store shelves there : )
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they pronounce it dav (like duck or sort of, but with a v at the end)
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Maybe I'm particularly stupid today, but I have just read this entire thread and have no idea what you are all talking about. What is "dove"?
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"Dove" is Italian for "where". So a helpful thing to be able to pronounce. The two options given by the original poster will both work, and (as StCirg points out) the real question is which syllable to stress. As one is typically using the word in a sentence, and the sentence will like use the word for "is" as well, one would say "dough-VAY" the whatever.
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Soaps, etc.<BR><BR>http://www.dove.com
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Thanks for your replies.<BR>My confusion lies in the second syllable of this Italian word. Do you pronounce it with a long a....like vay? or short e....like veh?
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Thanks, Therese. I guess it would be a good word to know. Maybe that's why I wander around lost so often in Italy, fun as that it is. I'll have to add dove to my 15 word Italian vocabulary.
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<BR>The linguistic next door neighbor of dove is, of course, the Spanish donde.
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doh-veh
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Or like you would pronounce daw-veh?
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I know how to pronounce it, but I don´t know how to write it phonetically in English. Dough is certainly the wrong sound. Do is pronounced like daw in dawson.
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Know It All: It is most definitely not pronounced like daw in dawson. Italian is a remarkably easy language as far as pronounciation goes. An "o" is always pronounced just like the letter "o" in English.<BR><BR>To repeat: dough (or doh or doe, or however you want to transliterate it)is the first syllable.<BR>something between veh and vay is the second syllable. That is, start to pronounce vay, but stop short of actually pronouncing the y.
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X:<BR><BR>We Italians have a knack for mispronouncing foreign words. The soap "Dove" is pronounced exactly like the Italian word "dove" (where). The same is true for many other english-languace brands, such as "Carefree" and many more. One interesting thing is that English language brands are used mainly on beauty or similar products: to the Italian buyers they sound good (even if mispronounced), while food stuff may have eiher an itlaian r a french name, only cheeses can have german names, but no food with an English name will have much success. Except for junk food. We tend to think that Americans and English eat nothing but junk food, so if ever a quality food would come from the other side of the Atlantic ocean (or from the Uk) its name would be fast changed in order to make it more acceptable to the Italians.
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What is the difference between dove and pidgeon?
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Pidgeon is the last name of Walter, an old movie star.<BR><BR>Pigeon is the bird/fowl; i.e. carrier, etc.
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My favorite example of the Italians pronouncing English brand names according to Italian phonetics is "Coppertone", the sun screen. I've actually had difficulty convincing some Italians that this is not an Italian brand, as it sounds just fine in Italian (and means something like a big blanket or tarp, albeit spelled with only one "p" in Italian, and so would be just fine for the name of a sun screen).<BR><BR>Colgate also sounds pretty funny when pronounced with three syllables.
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Therese (just like Therese Malausseine?):<BR><BR>Yu know? I am not even sure how is Colgate pronounced in English. I can easily pronounce "coppertone" (on the whole the name of the brand is composed of two rather common words), but Colgate... It is Colgate to me, I mean pronounced in Italian!!! I can't think of any other way of pronouncing it, no more than I would be able to pronounce an Italian word in English!
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<BR><BR>On the topic of the way Italians pronounce English, I think one of the most endearing things is the way so many seem to add a short "a" on to the ends of a lot of English words. I remember our bus tour guide in Rome pointing out walls that were built to defend against the "Barbarian attacks-a."
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<BR><BR>Alice:<BR><BR>Colgate in English is pronounced as if it were another two common words, "cold" and "gate", except that you leave out the "d" in "cold". It's also the name of a university in upstate New York, by the way. <BR><BR>For the non-italophones on the forum, the Italians say Colgate as cole-GAH-tay (more or less). <BR><BR>Oh, and "Therese Malausseine" is not ringing any bells for me. A literary reference? Bringing up the question of your choice of names, presumably somehow connected to Mark Twain.
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Cold gate?! you just opened whole new horizons to me! I am honest, I never cold have guesed about it ^_^<BR><BR>As for Therese Malaussene (there was an "i" too much inmy previous spelling), that's one character in the lovely Daniel Pennac "Malaussene" serie (http://tinyurl.com/2u0x).
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