Andrea, next time, try to drink Dom Perignon ... <BR> <BR>Betty, a maie is a bowl or a plate used to knead dough or to store bread, a maye a stone vessel where freshly pressed olive oil pours in. Regarding "official" pronunciation, Petit Robert isnt the best reference, and I'll have to check in the Littré. I can however tell you that there is a marked difference in the way you pronounce "maie", "mai", and "met" (respectively mée, mé, and mè), but regional accents can also contribute to the confusion.

Thanks, Marcya and Tom. I looked at Keyboard/Language thing. Looks like it might help with accents but not with IPA which is a whole different set of characters, some of which are not used in any standard language that I know of. Accents are not really a problem as long as I am writing in Word. I appreciate the suggestion, though. And thank you, Florence, for teaching me some new vocabulary. I had wrongly assumed that, since these words were capitalized in the PR, they were proper nouns. Maybe I can't count on that dictionary as much as I thought I could. I did, however, find those words listed shortly after "mai."

Bonjour, <BR> <BR>I've been reading this topic with interest. One of my missions in life is to become fairly fluent in French, and I have recently spent quite a bit of time with the IPA and various texts and tapes in persuit of that effort. I especially appriciate Betty's excellent contributions to this discussion and Tom's note on installing the IPA. <BR> <BR>I was able to install the standard French, however I cannot find the IPA anywhere in the control panel for Windows ME. I do appreciate having the French keyboard readily available at as I do frequently type letters in Franch. All you need to do once it is installed is to hit the left {alt}and {shift} simultaneously and voila you have converted your entire keyboard to standadrd French. <BR> <BR>If anyone knows where you can find a list and install the IPA characters I would appreciate it. <BR> <BR>I realize that this is not a language BB per se, however for all of us who travel and especially those who do attempt to speak the language, I would like to see a little more of it. I also will attempt to add to the comments occasionally. <BR> <BR>Sincerely, <BR> <BR>Randy Smith

Andrea, <BR> <BR>The reason you probably could not find "veuve" in your French-English dictionary is that the dictionary more than likely lists the masculine form of the noun. In other words, check to see if your dictionary lists "veuf." This is the masculine "widower," and under that listing it will probably give you the feminine version of the noun, "veuve." <BR> <BR>Of course, masculinity and femininity in language are topics best left for another lesson. <BR> <BR>All the best, <BR> <BR>Rob <BR> <BR>PS: Let's not forget that "ai" can also form an "e" sound, as in "let." For example: aigle, aimer, and aile. That, I suppose though, is neither here nor there.

Wow, so much arguing on this board... Well, being a little bored here at work, I tried to find a web site that might have the pronunciation of Taittinger (yeah, i noticed the mis-spelling too after looking it up, and will admit i'm not a big wine conisseur either..lol) and I couldn't find anything, and very few (50ish) web sites for that matter. You'd think this would be a high priority detail!! <BR> <BR>Rex, I'm not trying to get into a debate with you about this, but casually questioning... are you sure about the pronunciation of laitier and laitue? I'm pretty sure that you still use the same 'lait' sound. If not, must be some rare exception.

Florence is right about the way Taittenger should be/is pronounced. <BR> <BR>However, I disagree with her opinion about maie, mai and mets. <BR> <BR>I would pronounce maie exactly like mai (and anyway it's such a rare word that it doesn't really matter). <BR> <BR>And concerning mets, though indeed it *should* be pronounced "mè", I'm sure that 98% of the population would pronounce it "mé". The others would appear as snobs (well...even merely using this word is likely to make you appear as snob, actually) <BR> <BR>I don't really think that people trying to speak french should bother with such insignificant differences that french people themselves ignore.

I hope this cut and pasting works. This is not ALL of the diacritical marks--just some that I thought I might occasionally like to have. (I think I first got this info. from Rex.) To produce these characters, hoild down thre "alt" key at the SAME TIME that you type the 3-digit number indicated on this list. (This works when you're using Windows on a PC. I don't know about Macs or other systems.) P.S. Hurrah, Betty!) <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>133 à <BR>131 â <BR>132 ä <BR>160 á <BR>138 è <BR>130 é <BR>144 É <BR>136 ê <BR>137 ë <BR>140 î <BR>141 ì <BR>139 ï <BR>149 ò <BR>147 ô <BR>148 ö <BR>162 ó <BR>150 û <BR>151 ù <BR>163 ú <BR>164 ñ <BR>165 Ñ <BR>135 ç <BR>128 Ç <BR>145 æ <BR>146 Æ <BR>168 ¿ <BR>155 ¢ <BR>156 £ <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>

Why would using the word 'mets' make you a snob in France? I'm just wondering.... isn't mettre, 'to put' as in to put something somewhere? And mets is just a conjugation of that, correct? I'm certainly not a francophone though, so I guess it may mean something else. This is a sincere question.

Hey carol, thanks! Always wondered how to do that on my good ol' american computer! <BR> <BR>

Im laughing my derriere off right now. Don't you mecs know when someone is being tongue-in-chic?? Doesn't anyone remember that Snapple commercial that was on a few years ago with all those Parisians arguing over how to pronounce something with "de la" in it?? The man at the ends says, "No, that is not right!" My points is this: Everyone pronounces things differently. People in the South (US) pronounce things differently than people in the North. People from Queens pronounce things differently than people from Scarsdale. The reason I excoriated Betty the way I did was her adamant belief that I was wrong and she was right! Does Betty deal with Veuve Cliquot? Does she work with it? Does she open bottle after bottle and pour it into people's glasses? I think people who are in the hospitality business would be better at knowing how to pronounce Veuve Cliquot, rather than someone who is a teacher. (Unless Betty is swilling Champagne with her students.).....And this is for the moron who said I worked at "some French restaurant in Philadelphia." That some restaurant was Le Bec Fin, one of the finest French restaurants in North America. Click on WWW.ZAGATS.COM and see what they have to say about it. Braissez mon derriere, mon frere! JG

John G, <BR> <BR>It seems that you did not a lot of the thread above. Someone in the hospitality business would know better how to pronounce "veuve"? You must not have a clue about what an advanced degree means - - and from MIDDLEBURY - - from gosh sakes (the Harvard of foreign language instruction). <BR> <BR>Moreover - - as was explained above, "veuve" is an ordinary word - - means "widow". <BR>

I graduated from Dartmouth in 1985, so Im not impressed by Middlebury. I am impressed with the Breadloaf School, however, which I doubt Betty Boop attended. Who cares if Veuve means widow? Like I said, some pronunciation is subjective. You people are a little too anal retentive for moi. It's time for a Chateau d'Yquem 1961 enema. JG.

Merci Betty et Florence..... Mais il y a personne ici qui a bien expliqué la nasalité et comment est que le son resonne dans nos chambres nasales. C'est une chose de l'oreille, n'est-ce pas? <BR> <BR>What's funny is that I usually get mistaken for a Francaise "du sud" or an etrangére of unknown origin. <BR> <BR>Andrea, love your question. Chin chin!

John G.: je suis surprise d'apprendre que la meilleure façon d'apprendre à prononcer Veuve Cliquot, c'est d'en verser bouteille après bouteille ... et vous êtes un grossier merle ! <BR> <BR>Clairobscur: I agree that 1) using the word "mets" will make you sound like a snob, or at least like some dinosaur, 2) that 98, or even 99,9999% of the French population couldn't care less about differences in pronouncing words ending in ai, aie, and et. I've discussed the subject out of curiosity with my mother and some collegues, who all confirm that's the way it was taught and paying attention to the pronounciation was supposed to give away the spelling and ethymology (sp?) of a word. I agree that this discussion is purely academic and has not much relevance to either everyday life or travel. <BR> <BR>Kalena: it would be better not to venture into the mystery of nasalisation in French. There is a good explanation in Molière's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" ;-&gt; <BR>

Andrea, from someone who majored in French at University - you are right, your friend is wrong. <BR>Take comfort in that - she sounds like the sort of person who will go her own way, no matter what. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. I don't know about you, but where I live you could spend half-an-hour trying to get a bottle of "grron marrnyay" (Grand Marnier)in a bottle shop if you insist on sticking to correct pronunciation, and then with no guarantee of success!!

OK....this is the last word.....I asked a wine distributor in Philly how you pronounce Veuve Cliquot. He said it is VOOV klee-COE. I think he should know. No more arguing, OK? Cheers, JG

What an amazing post. The biggest disaster in American history and the last entry was concerned with being the winner in a pronunciation argument.<BR><BR>On September 11.<BR>

What's a peuple?????????????And how does one prononce that???????

Peuple isa french word for people.<BR><BR>Maybe something pup'll but in as close to one syllable as you can pronounce it.<BR>

In case anyone wonders some day: Those instructions that I posted for typing the diacritical marks made sense when i posted them. However, Fodors did something a few months ago that changed the way many letter s and symbols show up. so what you see now is NOT what I typed at all. That's also why on many posts what were originally apostrophes and quotation marks show up as little squares now. One of Fodors' many "improvements."